Tapu Misa: You don’t need enemies when the worst one is yourself

A bit of a tip: When a journalist takes you to lunch, puts a tape recorder in front of you and presses the record button, it's safe to assume that nothing you say is going to be held in the strictest confidence.

In fact, if it's election year and you are a politician who has just been given a get-out-of-jail card by the Serious Fraud Office, the best course of action is: shut up; or run screaming from the room. It is definitely not throw caution and career to the wind and tell him what you really think.

That is never a good idea, especially when it involves bad-mouthing people whose votes you need to get you back into your old high-paying job.

Otherwise, you're apt to find, as did an obviously stressed and embittered John Tamihere after publication of that interview with Investigate magazine, that you no longer need your enemies to get you into trouble since you're doing such a good job of that yourself.

I know that Labour has a tremendous capacity for putting re-election before pride, but you'd have to wonder whether Tamihere and Labour might have gone past the point of no return this time.

But where Tamihere's unguarded frankness will lead him if that forgiveness isn't forthcoming is anyone's guess. Not the Maori Party, I'd wager, given that he has been just as uncomplimentary about Tariana Turia in the past.

But at least he has livened things up. Just when it was starting to look like Labour was cruising into the next election, glowing from the latest poll figures - despite NCEA, an over-stretched police force, and the mounting cost of our "free" education system - along comes Tamihere to give National a helping hand.

Just as well. If he seems intent on making his enemies redundant, so Labour has succeeded in doing the same with National, outflanking it on the centre-right, even on issues on which it might have been expected to hold a more socialist line.

Take, for example, that vaunted Working for Families package, which came into force last week. In trying to satisfy both sides of the political spectrum - helping poor families while getting tough on beneficiaries - it stops short of being the visionary package it might have been.

So rather than make the needs of children its primary aim, it continues to distinguish between the children of the working poor and the children of those on benefits. It's not that they don't need the extra money; it's that their parents don't deserve it.

That might please the more hardline welfare reformers, but even then, according to Auckland University economist Dr Susan St John, the package fails "spectacularly" to reward extra hours worked by anyone on middle to low incomes, and "needlessly entrenches disincentives to work".

That's the trouble with trying to please everyone: you end up being ineffective and blunting your best work.

Speaking of trying to be all things to all people, I see that Labour now has all its ethnic bases covered with the inclusion of Asian businessman Steven Ching on its party list. This is obviously a good thing if you see the value in having a multitude of voices in any organisation, as I do, but almost impossible to live up to when you are the sole voice of "your people", as Muslim MP Ashraf Choudhary found when he failed to vote the right way (that is, in line with conservative Muslims) on liberal legislation.

Where did we get the idea that Muslims, Asians, or Maori for that matter, are any more likely to think with one mind on any given subject than Pakeha?

Still, better the weight of unrealistic expectations than no representation at all. Or no employment if you happen to have an Asian name, as a study by the University of Auckland Business School people has found.

After surveying 350 managers and professionals, the study concludes that job-seekers with Chinese and Indian names are less likely to be hired than those with Anglo Saxon names, even when the Asians were born here and just as qualified.

This is not news to those of us who have worn unusual names all our lives, and is certainly not unique to New Zealand. Other overseas studies have reached similar conclusions about what the Auckland study calls the "ethnic penalties" attached to having an exotic name.

I've known a few recent immigrants who have found it easier to adopt English first names, not just for work but to make it easier for the linguistically challenged among us to pronounce them.

It's a reaction I understand perfectly. In my school days I would have loved a nice English name. Susan Smith or Janet Jones would have done nicely. Then I could have melted in more easily and avoided the daily humiliation of having my name mispronounced at every roll call.

Of course, I've come to appreciate the benefits of not being another Janet. But some people weren't given a choice. Their names were Anglicised whether they liked it or not, because no one could be bothered making the effort to get it right. At one time, factories were full of Pacific Islanders called Joe or Sam.

A friend once interviewed a Maori woman, middle-aged now, who still remembers with bitterness how her headmistress reacted to her Maori name. The teacher didn't even bother trying to say it. "Why don't we just call you Susan?" she said, and proceeded to do just that.