By JOHN ARMSTRONG Political editor
During long, slow afternoons in Parliament, Labour MPs play a cruel game to pass the time and keep themselves amused.
They pull out the latest TV3-CM Research poll and start taunting National counterparts by quoting the report card on Jenny Shipley.
Her ratings invariably show that most voters think National's leader talks down to people, is more style than substance, is somewhat narrow-minded and is out of touch with ordinary people. The picture is even worse when Shipley's scores are contrasted with Helen Clark's.
There are some pluses for Shipley. She is generally regarded as a capable leader; she narrowly outscores Clark on her understanding of the economy.
But Shipley has become a big turnoff for many voters. Literally. Her interview on TVNZ's Face the Nation a week ago prompted a ratings plunge. The programme was watched by only 189,000 viewers, compared to 253,000 the week before and 328,000 the week before that.
Although Shipley's leadership is not under immediate threat, serious doubts about her electability and the unlikelihood of her getting the better of Clark head-to-head will be the strongest undercurrents at this weekend's National Party conference in Christchurch.
Delegates will demand a strong performance in today's showcase leader's rally - and will match that against Bill English's delivery of his speech on the economy tomorrow morning.
Shipley's supporters argue that voters are not so much shunning her, rather they are not interested yet in hearing what National has to say.
National MPs say they were never going to make much headway during the first half of this year against a fresh-faced regime in the Beehive. They comfort themselves that they are through the worst. The party's poll rating has recovered to a level many would not have dared hope, principally because core voters have drifted back to the party on the back of discontent with Labour's Employment Relations Bill.
Measures deemed as business unfriendly have re-established what Shipley calls "points of difference" with Labour. But her colleagues say National will not reconnect with the bulk of voters until those people start "feeling the difference" in terms of the negatives of Coalition policies.
In the meantime, the party is engaged in a listening exercise, with indications it will be far more pragmatic and flexible about how it reaches policy goals than during its decade in power.
It realises it preached too hard the virtues of economic orthodoxy and got little spinoff from marginal-sized tax cuts, all of which obscured the billions extra poured into social programmes. The party recognises it made major political mistakes with superannuation, market rents for state houses and student loans policy. It was punished by old and young - and by middle-aged voters who thought such policies unfair.
Shipley has challenged her caucus to be radical in its rethink. Teams of MPs have been setting guiding principles as policy foundations before honing detail. That will not emerge until next year, by which time the public and media will be expecting progress on crucial items such as tax policy.
Progress on this behind-the-scenes work will be conveyed to delegates this weekend to reassure them that National is not "missing in action" and that the caucus is developing a strategy to win the 2002 election.
Above all, the conference will be wanting reassurance about Shipley, particularly following her heart surgery.
English has gone Awol this year, presumably as his insurance against being thrust towards the leadership too soon. He will not want it until next year at the earliest. That would give him a decent run up to the next election - but not long enough to be blamed for losing it.
In the interim, he can wait for Shipley to stumble - as she did this week in failing to prove that Clark got Labour Party officials to "dig the dirt" on Dover Samuels so she could get rid of him.
Shipley's problem is that she has already been Prime Minister. Usually, leaders use Opposition to experiment with what works for them and what works for voters. But once you have been Prime Minister and constantly in the spotlight - as Shipley was for two years - impressions get cast in stone.
National strategists acknowledge that this entrenched voter perception must be turned around, but do not plan any drastic - and too transparent - image remake.
Instead, a conscious effort is being made to make her look less haughty, less inflexible and more open. Some of this was apparent in the Face the Nation interview. Shipley was more relaxed; her engine had been tuned down a notch or two; she was straightforward about admitting mistakes; she was more direct in her language; there was less of that empty Shipley rhetoric.
But that is insufficient to counter Clark - a far more adroit and ruthless Prime Minister than Shipley was, and one not fatally compromised by relying on self-serving allies to stay in power.
National, however, has decided that the best way of undermining the Labour-Alliance Coalition is to portray Clark as being THE Government and chip constantly away at her credibility.
This puts even more pressure on Shipley to confront Clark, when she might be better deployed presenting big-picture themes and standing above the fray.
Clark, too, struggled as Opposition leader, never really getting the better of that wily political animal Jim Bolger.
In the end, Clark was able to push the sleaze button and eject a tired Government desperately grasping for fresh ideas. Shipley does not have the luxury of being able to wait that long. And the public has had a gutsful of Parliament's endless scandal-mongering.
Shipley's dilemma is that scandal-mongering is the bread and butter of Opposition - and gets you on television.
If you don't, you don't exist. The polls register accordingly - and you're political dead meat. And when attention-seeking fails to hit its target - as happened this week - you're dead meat too.
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