John Armstrong: Clark's flimsy excuse for early poll

Helen Clark has come up with a flimsy and unconvincing excuse for calling an early election.

The country will go to the polls on July 27 because she says Parliament has descended into "farce" and too much time is being wasted.

She wants you to believe Labour's huge lead in the opinion polls had no bearing on her thinking.

Yeah, right.

Given its current advantage, Labour would be mad not to go to the polls as soon as it can to cash in.

The trouble is the country has no tradition of early elections and does not see any need for one.

To try to create the necessary climate, Labour insiders quietly dropped hints via the media in a calculated two-month softening-up exercise to attune the nation to the likelihood of an early poll.

They knew they could trust the Pavlov's dogs in the business sector to call for an end to the speculation and uncertainty.

That allowed the Prime Minister to set the date so a "sense of stability" could be restored quickly.

All of which is very clever but rather too transparent - especially as there is absolutely no sense of instability.

Still lacking a bona fide reason to call an early election, Helen Clark has had to concoct one.

She singled out the Opposition's attempts to have Jim Anderton ejected from Parliament on the grounds that he is a party-hopper.

"While this has not affected the functioning of the Government, it is now undoubtedly having an impact on our ability to progress our programme in Parliament," she said.

"Large amounts of time are being wasted on most sitting days on pointless points of order."

In fact, only small amounts of parliamentary time are now being devoted by the Opposition to hounding Mr Anderton - 20 minutes a day at most.

The reasons for the Government's difficulties in advancing legislation are more mundane: Parliament's agenda is clogged; the Greens are reluctant to allow the House to work extended hours; National and Act do their best to hold up bills they do not like.

It is not Parliament that has become a farce, it is Mr Anderton's position in it.

Using his self-serving behaviour to justify calling an early election would have been more honest. But blaming him would have meant dumping on a loyal ally, and Helen Clark wants to keep him on side in case she does not have the numbers to govern alone post-election.

So the Opposition gets the blame for simply doing its job.

Will the public buy this charade? Not likely. Will it alter anyone's vote. Not likely.

Helen Clark formally kicks off Labour's campaign in Auckland in two weeks. By then, the argument over the election's timing will have passed and the real shouting begins.

Feature: Election 2002

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