Paul Holmes: Paula Bennett has 'X factor'

The week, I have to say, belongs to Paula Bennett. She connects. She speaks normally. She talks the average person's language. We know where she comes from and she remembers where she comes from. She has the X factor.

Charisma, in its extreme form, can be elevating and inspiring. It can also simply be an aura, a quality, that makes us expect something interesting, something we will connect to or relate to, from the person who has it. So it is with Paula Bennett. She has a little of the darkness that stars have, too, and she is becoming, in her own way, a political star.

This week, she was bashed round the arena. She endured a beating from a senior Labour warhorse, Annette King, over the release of the amounts of money two DPB beneficiaries receive weekly. This, after the women's names were included in a letter Labour acquired in which the two women protested the imminent cancellation of the Training Incentive Allowance (TIA).

Natasha Fuller from Hamilton and Jennifer Johnston from Invercargill claimed that the cancellation prevented the furtherance of their education, through which one was planning to become a schoolteacher and the other a nurse. Both said they wanted this education in order to get off the DPB.

It is well known in political circles that Labour has Bennett in their sights. Bennett is a rising star and a John Key favourite. But under attack from Annette King in the house this week, something akin to the guns of the Bismarck firing a full salvo at you, something brilliant happened. Bennett stood and denied vehemently that there was "coat and dagger" going on. She meant cloak and dagger going on. People like that, at the moment.

They like normality at the moment, they like that someone can get a word mixed up like that. The moment she made that slip, the fierce brilliance of King could not touch her. People like people who make little slips. Slips humanise us. We know Bennett is new and people like her for it.

When Bennett revealed to the Herald the amounts of "free" money the women receive every week, the country exploded. Natasha Fuller, three children, including an 18-month-old baby, gets $715 a week and Jennifer Johnston, three children, gets $554 a week.

This is money hard-earned by taxpayers. The radio talkback shows and the New Zealand Herald website were flooded with calls and postings of support for what Paula Bennett had done. Condemnation of her was equally emphatic from the parties of the left.

Annette King compared her actions to the way Muldoon stifled opposition. Sue Bradford spoke angrily of a serious privacy breach.

I joined the throng for Paula Bennett. I still think that what she did was right. The money sounded to many people to be more than generous, especially the weekly $715 for Natasha Fuller, who has been on and off the DPB for years.

I have never taken a dollar from the taxpayer. It would not occur to me and it never occurred to me no matter how broke and down at heel I have been and believe me, I have been broke and I remember what being broke is like. In fact, I am proud to have been broke and it has been useful in my work over the years helping me understand the misery and frustrations of people in desperate situations. It has enhanced my compassion. Having no money ain't flash.

I have also paid a fortune in tax over the years. No matter what struggles have come along in what has been, I think, quite a turbulent life, I got up very early in the morning and did my job professionally. It was a matter of honour to me. No matter what was going on, I was there every night on the telly. I make no claims of heroism in telling you this. It was just the way I considered life to be. No matter what ghastly times marred my journey, the work had to be done, the show had to go on. You pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. You smile though your heart is breaking, and all that. But most people, I know, do not get the opportunities that presented to me.

But $554 a week and then moaning about a small Training Incentive Allowance (TIA) of $28 a week got even my goat up. Then, on Wednesday morning on Newstalk ZB, I interviewed Jennifer Johnston on the phone from Invercargill. I found her delightful, intelligent and thoroughly reasonable. She is 39. Her marriage broke up just over two years ago. She has three young children, one of whom is mildly autistic. Her youngest is 6. She had a great sense of humour and seemed thoroughly honest. The first year of separation she sat at home, no doubt stunned, wondering how to proceed. The next year she decided she would set out to qualify as a nurse. She did some initial papers at the Southland Institute of Technology (SIT) and has averaged A grades.

The curious thing about her that sticks in my mind was that while she was so buoyant and so eloquent and so obviously intelligent, she had only ever done menial factory jobs. This tells me, although I am only surmising, that her childhood might have been a little difficult. She went straight out to factory work although she is obviously tertiary material. Some people simply mature late, in their own time, I guess. Some people have impediments thrust in the way of their maturing. Some people have demons following them round for a long time that hold them back.

There is little doubt, by the way, that Labour used her. She found herself inadvertently dragged into this by Labour's campaign to embarrass Paula Bennett. She said, however, she was neither pleased nor displeased by its happening. The issue was the issue. She has no intention of complaining to the Privacy Commissioner. She liked Paula Bennett, too, from what she has seen of her on television.

Jennifer had worked out that with the cancellation of the TIA, she will have a shortfall of some $400 in her first year at SIT. She is entirely happy to cover it with a student loan, but she cannot draw down enough in her first year in order to cover the shortfall.

She said she had no idea what her shortfall might be in subsequent years of study. She is happy to build a debt so she can qualify as a nurse and then repay what she called her debt to society. This woman is no bludger. I had no doubt, after speaking with her, that she sincerely wants to get out of where she is at on the DPB.

Having said all of that, Paula Bennett has made a graphic point. In releasing those simple numbers she painted a vivid picture of the cost of welfare to this country.

We marvelled in horror at how those numbers could multiply, what a mountain they could build. New Zealand faces a massive welfare payout every week of every year. And welfare, once you let it out like a trouser belt round a fattening stomach, is terribly hard to pull in again.

But the thing about this story was that you could like both Jennifer Johnston and you could still like Paula Bennett. Bennett, at the height of the story, still spoke fairly and compassionately about women on the DPB. She was after all, one herself. She knew how hard it was, she told Larry Williams on Newstalk ZB. She is not a rabid one, this welfare minister. Her phone call to Jennifer Johnston was a brilliant touch. It was, well, normal. Jennifer got the attention she needed and she got her chance to explain.

In releasing those figures, Paula Bennett simply headed off a looming encirclement she was not going to tolerate. You cannot help liking her for her maturing antennae and for what appears to be some tempered metal beneath the velvet voice. It is a voice that speaks our language.

We learnt this week that Paula Bennett is not one to take on lightly.