John Armstrong: Truth of leaks a likely casualty of campaign war

As one long-time inhabitant of the Beehive noted yesterday, attempts to track down the source of damaging leaks rarely uncover the culprit.

So no one is holding their breath in anticipation of National discovering who was responsible for leaking faxes and emails containing advice to Don Brash from the Business Roundtable and senior Act party figures.

While the parliamentary rumour mill was busy yesterday, National was scotching suggestions the leak was the work of a long gone staff member with a personal axe to grind.

National's interests are best served by letting the matter die this side of the election even though it would like to confirm its suspicions that Labour is implicated in the leak.

Those suspicions centre on the timing of the publication of the embarrassing material - the day before Dr Brash was due to revisit his Orewa blockbuster on race in a speech in Whangarei.

National's annoyance was apparent yesterday in Dr Brash's blaming of National's "political opponents" for the leak, only for him to then admit he lacked evidence to prove Labour was responsible.

Labour was delighted. Once again, National was diverting attention away from its core messages. Labour's Steve Maharey had another excuse to raise the "hidden agenda" scenario - a theme also hammered by Winston Peters in a lunch-time speech in Christchurch.

While National was allowing itself to be distracted from the "real issues", Labour was deliberately avoiding reacting to Dr Brash's "no special treatment for Maori" re-run.

Labour is punting Monday's speech will have nothing like the impact the first rendition did in January last year.

Then, Dr Brash's Orewa address breached a dam of resentment. Once acknowledged, that unhappiness dissipated. There is no longer a dam to breach, especially as Labour has spent the intervening period trying to remedy that unhappiness.

This time, there was no surprise. Voters always expected Dr Brash would return at election-time to the theme which worked the magic for National.

Monday's speech also lacked any humdinger, attention-grabbing policy initiative.

Given the speech's billing and media coverage, National will still be expecting the Orewa re-run to, at a minimum, buttress the party's tax cut-driven recovery in the polls.

A full assessment of how the voters have responded will await three more due between Friday and Sunday.

National has fired both barrels - tax and race. There is something of a hiatus in the campaign until the smoke clears and the true impact is visible for everyone to see.