Jon Johansson: MP Rich sacrificed to expediency

The sacking of Katherine Rich has created an enormous perception problem for the National Party among women.

Positive opinions of National are already quite muted among women, with opinion polls showing Labour outpolling it by some 10 to 15 points (depending on which poll one looks to). This is a larger gap, on average, than exists among men in party preferences.

How, then, will women view Don Brash's latest attempt at projecting his strong leadership at the expense of his party's most competent female MP?

Katherine Rich has been a star performer for National since 2002. In many respects she was foisted into poster-girl status in a caucus with few women, and one in which the forced removal of Georgina te Heuheu following last year's attack by Dr Brash on so-called Maori privilege, and Lynda Scott's decision to abandon politics, has left National threadbare in its efforts to present itself positively to female voters.

More worrying for National as it heads into election year is the issue that has divided Katherine Rich and her leader. Clearly the tone of Dr Brash's attack on domestic purpose beneficiaries was her line in the sand.

As she has previously said, she felt that most of the women caught in this situation had the same aspirations and motivations as she did.

Her advocacy for welfare reform was thus far more oriented towards a nuanced balance of incentives and disincentives. Contrast that with Dr Brash's draconian musing about adoption and punitive financial sanctions for those on the DPB. Empathy and positive incentives versus blame and punishment: which emphasis would most women prefer and respond to?

Ms Rich has made a stand on principle, which is to her credit, while Dr Brash's focus would seem to be wholly dedicated to the acquisition of power, regardless of the increasing wreckage left in his wake. Indeed, when one looks at his leadership a worrying pattern underscores the machiavellian strategies driving him and his cabal of advisers.

First, his election as leader through the means of a secret ballot unarguably lowered the threshold for leadership succession in the party. That might not concern National's leader today but it should concern party president Judith Kirk.

In a party in which leadership instability has been a feature of the post-Bolger landscape, the secret ballot mechanism undermines the very stability that was once National's raison d'etre.

Second, last year's dramatic break from Tuwharetoa, symbolically embodied in the sacking of Maori spokeswoman Georgina te Heuheu, destroyed whatever sympathy Maori once possessed for National, undermining the legacy of the principled leadership of Jim Bolger and Sir Douglas Graham during the early 1990s, not to mention Wira Gardiner's now-forgotten, long-term commitment to facilitating better relationships between Maori and National.

Given future demographic changes, which will see our nation browner and more racially diverse, Dr Brash and his advisers have hopelessly set back National's ability to sell its message of aspiration and choice to Maori well into the foreseeable future. Political expediency won out over long-term strategy.

Now this latest sacking reveals the desperation that the older generation of men leading the party, or advising the leader, feel in their all-or-nothing attempt to win this year's general election.

Making Dr Brash look strong has won out over a principled dispute about welfare policy that surely should have been resolved inside the caucus.

National's politics since Dr Brash took over have also been unremittingly negative. The attack on Maori, and now beneficiaries, panders to the prejudice of a minority who feel insecure about aspects of the Maori renaissance or are bitter about perceived freeloaders having it easy compared to themselves.

Yet many years ago I spent five years on the frontline of what was then the Department of Social Welfare. I have met more of the so-called bludgers that Dr Brash rails against than I'm sure he ever has.

But five years of talking to a vast cross-section of welfare recipients never shifted me from the knowledge that such malingerers as Dr Brash over-generalised about in his Orewa speech only ever represented a small minority of beneficiaries.

I saw more people, many my father's age, who were devastated, depressed or in shock at having to draw on state assistance. That is a more realistic story of our country's beneficiaries than the one offered by Dr Brash.

Ms Rich was serious about welfare reform. She had made Steve Maharey's life uncomfortable for the entire time she was National's welfare spokeswoman. She will be a considerable loss, not least because in a vital election year - one that begins with most New Zealanders feeling good about the country's direction and prospects - another opportunity to present positive, forward-looking policies has been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency and flawed strategy.

National desperately needs to project positive policies. It needs rhetoric that lifts New Zealanders' aspirations, not that divides them against each other.

Dr Brash has now lost one of his leading assets capable of doing this. If National believes its negative, cleavage politics will win the day, it has made a major strategic error.

Even if National holds its party faithful (some 20.93 per cent of the electorate) and attracts some of the low-paid, blue-collar voters to its cause, how can it, with any credibility, attract sufficient numbers of women to make a winning difference?

By exploiting one cleavage, on race, and another, on welfare, there is now every possibility that it has opened an even wider one with the nation's mothers and their daughters.

* Dr Jon Johansson teaches leadership and New Zealand politics at Victoria University.