Bill Ralston: Bad timing for tunnel option

Okay, I think it's safe to say the honeymoon is over for National. It took a battering last week and, all the more surprising, the wounds were largely self-inflicted.

It's a little hard to see the political strategy behind the decision to announce it was scrapping the Waterview tunnel and pushing the motorway extension through the demolished homes of several hundred people who, it was kind of hoping, might vote for it in the Mt Albert by-election.

I guess you can give the Government points for being honest about its intentions and not sneakily holding the decision back until after polling day, but politically it makes no sense.

It is quite hard to see how it expects Melissa Lee to perform well at the ballot box when it is cheerfully alienating those voters whose homes will be bulldozed plus the many thousands more who will soon have a six-lane highway screeching past their backyards.

If I was a Mt Albert resident near that route I would be praying my house was going to be demolished. I would rather have the compensation than have my house unscathed but considerably reduced in value thanks to its new proximity to a huge motorway.

It is hard not to feel a little sorry for Lee who, like some loyal foot soldier in World War I, is being ordered over the top into withering fire from all sides. Then again she did manage to shoot herself in the foot with her crazed comment that the motorway would speed South Auckland criminals through the electorate, presumably into the depths of West Auckland, where they would become irretrievably lost and perish.

I know a police officer apparently told her that story but she should remember (a) not everything policemen tell you is necessarily true and (b) even if it is true there are some things you just do not repeat in public. She should ask Lockwood Smith, who is still smouldering about his exile to the Speaker's chair because he once idly speculated about Asians having small hands.

By the way, much to National's chagrin, Lockwood appears to be exacting his revenge for not getting a Cabinet job by becoming the most independently minded Speaker I can remember. National gets few favours from him in the chamber.

There are a few contenders emerging to become the next High Commissioner to Ottawa, which in New Zealand politics has always proved for governments a great place to dump unwanted politicians. Smith is fast becoming the leader of that pack. Actually, the Ottawa job isn't bad because you also have diplomatic accreditation to the Caribbean islands so Lockwood could regularly don his Speedos and escape the icy blast of the Canadian winter.

Maybe it is also a role Lee could consider if she fails dismally in Mt Albert because there is a real risk her political career could suffer terminal damage thanks to the destructive nature of the campaign.

By-elections put individual candidates under the microscope and she is attracting the kind of intense scrutiny that usually only leaders attract in election campaigns. This is tough on a first-term list MP with extremely limited experience on the hustings.

Predictably, Labour launched a smear campaign, in this case over the fact she received NZ On Air money for her television production company and she once made an online commercial for National, implying somehow this was irregular. It doesn't appear to be but Trevor Mallard seems to work on the theory mud sticks.

Labour does have a nasty habit of playing the man and not the ball. It doesn't seem to realise that this tactic usually backfires. At the last election it threw an enormous amount of dirt at John Key and it still lost badly.

Frankly, with the issue of the Supercity and the motorway extension, it has more than enough ammunition to fight the by-election and win without putting the boot into Lee by questioning her honesty.

While it might have been a diversionary tactic, the Government added to its troubles by appointing Christine Rankin to the Families Commission. Public opinion seems evenly divided over Rankin but it gave Labour another chance to indulge in its favourite sport of character assassination.

Then again, Rankin helped by hurling herself in front of every available camera to attack her old Labour enemies until someone in Government gave her the helpful advice to take a big cup of "shut the hell up" - or words to that effect.

The bungles of the last week are relatively minor, they have inflicted little real damage on the Government's credibility, but it is the first disturbing sign of speed wobbles in a new administration that has set itself a cracking pace.