Jonathan Milne: A life so ordinary

We all know him from down at the pub. Wife and kids, struggling to make ends meet.

He's blue collar, renting a home in working class suburbs on the southside of town. He drives an imported second-hand Japanese car.

And, mate, he's had it up to here. For all his hard work - hell, he's doing two jobs to get by - and he's hardly earning anything more than the Other Guy next door, sitting at home on the dole watching the talk shows.

He's pissed off.

Rob Muldoon called him the Ordinary Bloke.

But we know him differently. Yup, he's the Kiwi Battler.

In the 1990s, New Zealand Labour Prime Minister Mike Moore took up the forgotten cause of the Kiwi Battler.

Broadcaster Paul Holmes likes to champion the causes of the Kiwi Battler. And John Tamihere got to know him last year.

But this is the 21st century, and the Kiwi Battler now also runs a small business.

In his "I am man" speech in Masterton, Tamihere said he had been inspired by the small businessmen who struggled through obstacles, but just kept getting back up off the canvas.

"These people are true Kiwi Battlers," he said. And he spoke for them: "I believe that the pendulum of political correctness has swung too far. I am sick and tired of hearing about the deficit model, where, as red-blooded heterosexual men, we are supposedly the creators of all that is bad and evil in this world."

But today, the Kiwi Battler sometimes wears a shirt and tie. The Kiwi Battler is also a woman. The Kiwi Battler lives not just in Glenfield or Onehunga, but also in Orewa. Because they're all struggling under the burden of supporting the Other Guy.

And it is to the Kiwi Battler that National leader Don Brash will speak at Orewa on Tuesday.

He will assure the Kiwi Battler that he - or she - is entitled to feel frustrated at carrying the weight of the DPB mum who keeps on having more children; and at the fit unemployed guy who has managed to persuade his doctors to give him a medical certificate to enable him to stay on the sickness benefit in the manner to which he is accustomed.

The Other Guy is the person we don't really know but see out on the street, drunk, slovenly, lazy, criminal, profligate - and we don't like him.

He is anyone else.

And the Kiwi Battler? He is the blue-collar worker, the white-collar worker, the taxpayer, the friend, the neighbour, the man or woman having a beer down at the pub on Thursday after work.

Don Brash has a simple message to bring: the Kiwi Battler is you and me.