Audrey Young: The fight is all about 2008

Impugning the integrity of the Auditor-General has been unheard of, at least since Jeffrey Thomas Chapman did time for fraud in 1997.

It took some time for the office to recover from that disgrace, but it did. And the Auditor-General's word has pretty much been gospel. His work is commonly used as a weapon, not a target, by politicians.

But this week the credibility of the incumbent, Kevin Brady, has come under political attack.

The Prime Minister accused him of smearing the reputation of her party and others because of his draft findings on unlawful election spending.

United Future leader Peter Dunne joined in and cast doubts on what confidence can be given to the final report.

Beyond belief is the fact that Brady has been criticised this week for adjusting some of his findings after speaking to political parties. Clearly a case of damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Be warned, Mr Brady, it will only get worse.

What is obvious is that his final report, due in about two weeks, must be discredited for certain parties - Labour, United Future and New Zealand First - to get away with not repaying huge amounts of money that could cripple their bank accounts and their chances at the next election.

As Cabinet Minister Ruth Dyson pointed out this week, National's fight against Labour's election spending is not about the 2005 campaign, it's about the 2008 campaign and who wins.

Labour's counter-attack is unashamedly designed to starve National of funding, including plans to restrict third-party attack advertisements, limit anonymous donations and to extend state funding of political parties.

Labour has thrown so much energy into reciprocating attacks by National in the past three weeks that one wonders if anyone is still running the country.

But National is in danger of overplaying its hand and it devalues the impact of the word "corrupt", such is the laxity with which it is using it against Labour.

Its application by National has no parallels with what would ordinarily be associated with the term corruption.

The Auditor-General appears unworried by the volume of noise carrying on around him and the fevered climate that allows the Prime Minister to accuse him of smearing her party.

It is most unlikely that Clark used the term "smear" unthinkingly. She is famously calculating and is not prone to thoughtless errors. She is often guilty of miscalculating public reaction to her actions - and making suitable adjustments afterwards - but she is rarely guilty of thoughtlessness.

The startling use of the word "cancerous" to describe National leader Don Brash this week was also no doubt deliberately chosen.

Clark's attack on Brash on Wednesday was a shock, not just for its language but for the intensity of it.

It was similar to her blasting on Monday of anyone associated with the malicious rumours that have been spread across the country about her husband, Peter Davis.

Resembling an election campaign in meltdown phase, it propelled the wars back to the front pages after a day's respite for the King of Tonga's funeral.

But it left the lingering question of why the Prime Minister had chosen to reignite the war when there was such a strong public appetite for an end to it.

There are several possibilities. It may have been designed to bury media coverage of the Greens' decision to pay back any election spending deemed to be unlawful by the Auditor- General.

It may have been designed to stop a drift of public sympathy to Brash, who appears to have recovered from the ignominy surrounding his extra-marital affair.

The Machiavellian theory is that Clark wanted an insult so powerful that National would rally around Brash to keep John Key from the leadership.

This pre-supposes that Key is the greater danger to Labour than Brash.

Another school of thought says Labour's interests would be served better with a Key leadership, because of his inexperience and because his centrist thinking would dent National's ability to drag in big-business funding on the same scale as Brash.

Perhaps Clark wanted to use the "cancerous" shock word against National to convey Labour's similar sense of outrage at continually being labelled corrupt over election spending.

Or perhaps she wanted to deflect attention from Labour's resident "villain" and dirt-disher Trevor Mallard, who is really her fall guy and right-hand man, on his return to New Zealand.

His taunts in the House over Brash's affair with businesswoman Diane Foreman were a catalyst for it being raised in the National caucus and then becoming public knowledge.

Clark was forced to criticise Mallard publicly and refer to his "deplorable" behaviour. His sometime Cabinet rival Steve Maharey put the boot into him publicly in a Radio New Zealand interview.

Mallard's public reputation had been seriously damaged but inside the party he is virtually unscathed. He is still among the four most influential people in Labour: behind Clark, her chief of staff Heather Simpson and deputy leader Michael Cullen.

One can only image the private telling off he received down the phone line from Clark in Tonga when he was in transit in Los Angeles: "Trevor, it's me. I've had to call you deplorable and say you'll agree to lift standards in the House.

"Just tell them you'll agree. I was a bit tough on the Auditor-General yesterday but I think it's finally working. By the way: have you got any ideas on how I can put the boot into Brash tomorrow? What did you say? 'Cancerous?' Ha ha ha ha."

If the present battleground feels like a campaign, that's because it is one.

Labour's chances of a fourth term ride heavily on the outcome of the Auditor-General's report and on Brash's credibility.

The 2008 campaign is under way.