'Hits' put smiles on National faces

By VERNON SMALL deputy political editor

Forgery and bumbled tax announcements provided two morale-boosting "hits" for National in an otherwise wretched week.

Its poll rating is flat-lining in the mid-twenties and its campaign is struggling for relevance with a voting population that has rarely seemed more content.

The police decision not to prosecute Prime Minister Helen Clark over her fake artworks swung on her intentions to help a charity, a crime of compassion, if you like.

But the links National can make between her artifice, her signed pledge card and Labour's "hidden health and petrol tax agenda" will be welcome.

National leader Bill English is desperately trying to talk to voters who have, in Mike Moore's words, taken the phone off the hook.

Helen Clark's first week on the stump has focused on keeping National out of the game and consolidating her 50-plus poll rating.

She launched into (her allies?) the Greens early in the week, but the words "National" and "Bill English" never passed her lips.

But after whacking Jeanette Fitzsimons, who had flipped and then flopped on allowing a Labour-led government to form, Helen Clark was noticeably less feral towards the Greens in Thursday's leaders' debate.

Mr English does attack her and Labour, but in other ways they are running similar made-for-television campaigns. Both are swinging through provincial centres, appearing in local media, visiting worksites and glad-handing down the High St.

So far Helen Clark has held daily public meetings. Mr English is yet to do so, but will need to change pace soon to lift his campaign a notch.

He will be hoping Labour's discomfort over tax and leaders' debates over the final three weeks will take the focus off genetic modification. National rightly argues GM does not rate alongside health, education and law and order as public concerns, but GM is less an issue than it is a battlefield that could determine the Government's make-up.

In MMP elections, coalition-making and breaking issues take centre stage, even when there are more pressing public concerns.

So it was in 1996 when Winston Peters was bidding for the balance of power, and so it is now.

Which brings us back to Mr English and his struggle for relevance.

At the moment he needs a coalition of every party, from Act to the Greens, to come close to toppling Helen Clark.

It is the first time in three MMP elections that a party and its allies have got so out of touch with their opponents in terms of political support.

The upshot is that the single nationwide electorate - called the party vote - is forced to think about how to construct a government from the parties available to make it up.

It is commonly called tactical voting, but is more akin to preferential voting across a single, country-wide electorate.

And with such a huge polling abyss between National and Labour, Mr English and Act leader Richard Prebble are left out in the cold.

National MP Gerry Brownlee says: "If you vote for what you don't want, you'll get what you don't want. How dumb is that?"

It probably looks dumb to him, but it sure isn't dumb if you are trying to influence the shape of the Government. The alternative is to influence the shape of the Opposition.

It is this voting behaviour National is fighting and it is Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First who are reaping the benefit.

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