John Armstrong: Opposition gleeful as PM squirms on skewer

The sight of Murray McCully wriggling in his seat in barely suppressed glee really said it all.

Having been well and truly skewered by Helen Clark over hefty payouts to departing Tourism Board members when he was a Cabinet minister in the 1990s, National's backroom strategist seemed to take delight in watching the Prime Minister squirm in Parliament yesterday.

And she may yet have to squirm some more.

The Opposition's convoluted quest to find out exactly what she did or did not confirm to a Sunday newspaper about the circumstances that led to the resignation of Peter Doone as Commissioner of Police five years ago has failed utterly to capture the public's imagination.

As has the charge that she covertly manipulated the Sunday Star-Times to force that resignation when constitutional protocol demanded she keep her mouth shut.

So far, neither National nor Act have landed a king-hit that might seriously dent the Prime Minister's credibility.

But in nuisance value alone, the fuss is doing the job nicely for those parties in distracting attention from the Government's carefully programmed series of spending announcements ahead of next week's Budget.

Now, it emerges that transcripts may exist of Helen Clark's off-the-record conversations with the Sunday Star-Times.

Whether they contain that king-hit remains to be seen. They would certainly settle the argument one way or the other.

In their absence, Don Brash and Rodney Hide still scored something of a points victory yesterday when the two leaders combined in Parliament to deluge Helen Clark with questions asking her to explain supposed inconsistencies in the various statements she has made in recent weeks about what she told a reporter from the newspaper.

Not being someone who holds back under fire, she in turn accused National's "friends" of bankrolling the defamation suit Mr Doone intends mounting against her, while also suggesting the former commissioner was drafting Dr Brash's parliamentary questions on the National leader's behalf.

For once, however, the line of questioning from the Opposition benches struck some raw nerves - particularly when Act's Richard Prebble drew a bruising comparison between her "prevarication" over her statements regarding Mr Doone and Jenny Shipley's dithering over what had or had not been discussed during that infamous 1999 dinner with Saatchi boss Kevin Roberts.

Helen Clark ignored that barb. But prime ministerial pique was vividly on display when she was subsequently accused of leaking the contents of confidential Cabinet documents to the Sunday Star-Times in a calculated bid to up the pressure on Mr Doone to resign.

"By definition, I cannot leak," she declared imperiously, implying that as Prime Minister she had the discretion to reveal confidential information if she judged that necessary.

More worrying for the Prime Minister was Mr Hide's revelation that there might be transcripts of her tape-recorded conversations with the Sunday Star-Times.

Mr Hide wore the demeanour of someone who still has something up his sleeve. And that leaves Helen Clark having to guess just what that might be.