Rudman's City: Some pitfalls for those who aspire to be Jafas

By BRIAN RUDMAN

Making friends with the natives is one of the basic skills required of any successful modern politician. Former National Party leader Jenny Shipley tried to do it by uprooting herself from Ashburton and going bush in a Princes Wharf apartment.

Little good did this attempt to win Aucklanders' hearts and minds do for her. Two colleagues from her adopted city - Wayne Mapp and Murray McCully - helped to mastermind her demise.

For most politicians, a snatch of the local lingo is about as far as their bonding attempts go. The results can be spectacular. Who of the Cold War generation can forget the impact of President John F. Kennedy, standing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall in June 1963 and declaring he was a Berliner.

His "Ich bin ein Berliner" was a public relations coup both there and around the world. Much of its success can be put down to the solid homework the President put in to ensure he sounded like a native.

His cue card with the phrase phonetically spelled out - "Ich bin ein Bear lee ner", with the "lee" heavily underlined to indicate where to put the emphasis - now rests in the US national archives.

It's a shame that assorted Waitangi-bound governors-general and prime ministers haven't tried the same little trick in the ensuing years.

The awkward mangling and muttering of the Maori tongue that occurs each February 6 surely wins few hearts or minds or, more to the point, votes.

Now on to the local scene lopes Bill English, National's new leader. A former Treasury boffin and farmer from deepest Southland, Mr English is on a desperate mission to convince us that Ich bin ein Aucklander as well. Indeed, his spin doctors would have us believe he's been here so often lately that it's like a second home.

He's so in touch that he even felt moved to pen a letter of congratulation to Auckland city councillor Penny Sefuiva following her return to office.

"Dear Penny," he writes, in the modern form of greeting that abandons the old politenesses of honorifics and family names when writing to a stranger for the first time.

"I am writing to congratulate you on your appointment as the Pacific Island councillor for the Western Bays ward of the Auckland City Council. I am pleased to see Pacific Island representatives succeeding and I intend to take particular interest in Pacific Island issues.

Yours sincerely,

Hon Bill English MP,

Leader of the Opposition.

After Mrs Shipley's gaffe last year about Polynesians needing more Government help because "they climb in the windows of other New Zealanders at night ... it's not just Maori", you could see Mr English's approach as positive. Ms Sefuiva did not.

She was rather put out to read that she'd been "appointed" and not "elected" to the city council. She was also rather flummoxed at the suggestion that she was the "Pacific Island councillor" for her ward when no such racially based position exists.

"It makes me sound like a second-class citizen, a Pacific Island candidate rather than an elected one."

But what really got the third term and well-known councillor's goat is that Mr English assumed she was Polynesian. In fact, she is of sturdy provincial Pakeha stock, born in Taranaki and raised in Hawkes Bay. Anyone with their finger on the Auckland pulse would have known that.

Makes you wonder what sort of letter former Auckland regional councillor Mike Lee would have received if he'd been re-elected. A letter in Chinese, perhaps, outlining how supportive Mr English had been in favour of the rights of market gardeners.

You think I jest. Well, believe me, it could happen. Mr English's conservative counterpart in Australia, John Howard, did something very similar just a few days ago.

On the eve of last Saturday's election, Mr Howard wrote a personalised vote-for-me letter to Ms Alex Burke, a constituent in his Bennelong electorate. In it he played the boat-people card, trumpeting his Government's resolve to "decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come".

Her husband's letter from Mr Howard was very different. It left out the bit about the new surveillance aircraft and Navy boats the Government planned to buy to keep the refugee invaders out. It added a bit about how delighted Mr Howard had been to meet "local residents of Chinese background" at the local shops, and went on to note that from 1975 onward the party he led had accepted thousands of Indo-Chinese refugees, including many ethnic Chinese.

Why, asked Sydney Morning Herald columnist Spike, did Ms Burke's letter concentrate on keeping people out and the one her husband received concentrate on bringing people in? The explanation lay in her husband's surname. It was Chai. Mr Howard tossed in a Chinese-text translation as well.

It was useless for Australian-born and English-speaking Mr Chai. His second language is German.