John Armstrong: National await next helping of turkey

Former Labour MP Chris Carter. Photo / Dean Purcell

Spill the beans, Chris. Next instalment, please. Had Chris Carter been in Parliament yesterday, he could not have failed to pick up the subtext in the speeches delivered by a string of National MPs during the free-for-all Wednesday general debate.

Carter has become the turkey who has provided National with an early Christmas dinner. Not surprisingly, National is hungry to hear more gobbling from that quarter about leadership coups real or mythical.

What National wants to know are the identities of those on the "ditch list" - the 17 Labour MPs who, according to Carter, had discussed with him at various times the failings of Phil Goff as Labour's leader.

In particular, National wants to know who were the three Labour MPs who were in Carter's office on the evening of July 28 to discuss - again according to Carter's version of events - the right time to roll Goff.

National's speakers seemed reluctant to offer up possible contenders, partly because they did not seem to really know and partly because the whole coup-that-never-happened scenario may yet turn out - as Goff insists - to be a figment of Carter's imagination.

The closest anyone came to citing potential plotters was Health Minister Tony Ryall, who suggested Ruth Dyson and Shane Jones might have been at the July 28 meeting, only to hedge his bets and say they might not have been.

Thus the silent imploring of Carter to name names. National does not want to be too insistent in its urgings in case Carter finally wakes up and realises how much he is helping Labour's old enemy. Then the fun will end.

In the meantime, there was fun aplenty to be had with Labour's predicament.

Citing Gilbert and Sullivan as an influence, National backbencher Michael Woodhouse had written a little ditty for the occasion: "As some day it may happen that a leader must be downed; he's got a little list, 17 offenders who really must be found; he's got a little list and I certainly agree none of them be missed; but I'm sure Mr Goff would love to get his hands on it."

Comic opera or soap opera? Whatever, Woodhouse's composition was eclipsed by the extravagant prose of colleague Cam Calder.

The National list MP spoke of Labour inhabiting a "home for the bewildered" where its MPs were "slumped in the armchairs of their apathy and indolence, dressed in their pyjamas in the daytime, feet encased in the woolly slippers of indecision and hesitation, a rug of torpor on their knees".

Labour's response was bold. If National wanted to talk about leadership, Labour would talk about leadership too.

Labour's deputy leader, Annette King, stunned the National benches by beginning her speech with the following question, "What is leadership?"

Before anyone got too excited and thought King was about to challenge Goff for Labour's top job, she was lashing the Prime Minister for failing to show real leadership during last week's storm surrounding former Breakfast presenter Paul Henry.

The theme was developed further by Clayton Cosgrove, one of Labour's heavy-hitters in the House, while Brendon Burns, Labour's broadcasting spokesman, upped his credentials for inclusion in that category with a withering deconstruction of TVNZ's role.

Labour's bad luck that Parliament was not sitting last week was good luck yesterday. Labour could justifiably talk about the troubles surrounding Henry and thus avoid having to acknowledge its own.