Paul Thomas: For want of a tax cut, an election may be lost

A little neglect may breed mischief," wrote the American sage Benjamin Franklin. "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; and for want of a horse, the rider was lost."

This election really kicked off when Michael Cullen unveiled the budget with its risible tax cuts, gifting the average family a roll of toilet paper in three years' time. It was an extraordinary miscalculation.

First, it gave National clear space on the very issue that, as telegraphed, formed the centrepiece of its election strategy. When Don Brash duly announced that Christmas was coming early this year, Cullen had little choice but to don the red suit and white beard and start dispensing largesse, thereby undermining his carefully cultivated image as the Iron Chancellor and raising the obvious question: where was all this money hiding when he did his Budget sums?

Second, it exposed Labour to the charge of being complacent, arrogant and out of touch, of exhibiting the classic symptom of a Government in its terminal, decadent phase - that of viewing its prolongation as the natural order of things.

The real significance of the infamous motorcade that scorched across the Canterbury plains to get that well-known rugby fanatic Helen Clark to the game on time is that it bolstered this perception.

In countries where the overbearing, road-hogging motorcade is as common a sight on the roads as the sticky remnants of slow-moving hedgehogs, leaders and led alike would have been staggered at the fuss we made of it.

The French, for instance, have made an art form of the VIP motorcade. The outside lanes of the motorways connecting Paris to its airports are pretty well monopolised by high-speed, siren-blaring convoys whisking African dictators off to splendid lunches at the Elysee Palace.

And of course George W. Bush doesn't go to church without setting in train a logistical exercise comparable to a U2 world tour.

Which is the whole point: we don't like our politicians sealing themselves off behind police escorts and the tinted windows of limousines.

It offends our "Jack's as good as his master" egalitarianism. It suggests that they're getting a bit up themselves, that they've been on the international gravy train for too long.

So, for want of a modest but meaningful tax cut or, alternatively, a resolute stand on the principle of steady-as-she-goes fiscal prudence, an election might be lost, although the polls are confusing. Clearly, one of the two major parties is well out in front, but they can't make up their mind which one.

In the meantime we have an old-fashioned election with the classic ingredients: bribery, mud-slinging, dirty tricks.

And, as a bonus, we've been treated to the clumsiest attempt to influence the outcome of an election since Citizens for Rowling installed Rob Muldoon in 1975: step forward the Exclusive Brethren Church.

You might think it's contradictory, if not hypocritical, that an organisation whose defining feature is the lengths to which it goes to avoid contact with its fellow citizens should inject itself into the ultimate civic event.

It's certainly bizarre that National let itself be lobbied by a tiny sect which can't possibly speak for anyone outside its 2000 members, because its 2000 members don't speak to anyone but each other.

However, as tax-paying citizens they have as much right to wade in as any other group in the community. Not that you'd think so from the way their intervention was characterised as a smear campaign.

Since when did making alarmist, slightly batty, more than slightly dishonest claims about your opponents and the likely consequences of their policies amount to a smear campaign? Isn't that just the normal rough and tumble of electoral politics?

Perhaps it's only a smear campaign when practised by a bunch of unworldly, arch-conservative, religious zanies.

Although the Brethren denounced the Greens as destructive and dangerous, one can't help but think the two have much in common.

After all, both are zealous cliques who keep their distance from mainstream New Zealand in order to maintain their moral purity; both believe we need saving from ourselves; both view the future in apocalyptic terms.

The difference is in the detail. For the Brethren the apocalypse would be three more years of a godless Labour Government.

For the Greens' Women's Affairs spokeswoman, Sue Kedgley, the unthinkable would be the opening of a nationwide chain of Hooters restaurants, the American franchise which has hung its hat, so to speak, on the thrusting mammaries of its scantily clad waitresses.

"It's hard to believe that this could be a serious move in the 21st century," she wailed.

Like the Exclusive Brethren, Kedgley probably doesn't watch TV and therefore hasn't caught up with the fact that in the 21st century sex sells like never before. Like them, she should get out more.