Tapu Misa: What is it about Tamihere that inspires such loyalty?

COMMENT

You could tell he was shell-shocked. Usually ebullient, cheeky, he was noticeably subdued in an interview on Radio Waatea with his long-time friend and urban Maori ally, Willie Jackson.

The interview was recorded just after John Tamihere announced he was "seeking leave" - not being forced to stand down, he insisted - from his ministerial job, fighting back tears and holding his son like a shield so that the photos of the press conference would remind us that he was a father as well as a politician.

He told Jackson he was teary because as he made his announcement he could see on the wall behind the reporters photographs of all the elders who had worked so hard to set up the Waipareira Trust and had since passed on. It was the room where they had dreamed impossible dreams and then made them happen.

Tamihere had plenty to say to Jackson about the shortcomings of the trust leadership, whom he sees as being responsible for his troubles. He'd pushed for the Deloittes audit that was now, ironically, threatening to bite him in the bum.

He still reckoned that Waipareira's leadership had not been accountable and transparent, that they didn't have the skills to run an organisation the size of Waipareira, that they would need brain transplants to make them fit for the job.

Yet he was strangely silent about the so-called $195,000 golden handshake. He flatly refused to go there, even with a trusted mate like Jackson, who helpfully suggested it might have been for work done, rather than a parting gift.

"I'm not even interested in that at this stage," he told Jackson.

Tamihere is a politician who clearly enjoys the fray. You get the feeling that if trouble doesn't find him, sooner or later he goes looking for it. Indeed, few politicians have been given as much leeway as J.T. Four drink-drive convictions before he became an MP hardly dented his reputation. His impugning of three prominent Maori under parliamentary privilege as "known thieves and drug addicts" (for which he later apologised) and the breaching of Government policy by preaching privatisation of welfare and telling Social Development Minister Steve Maharey "to get away from statism and bullshitting" only confirmed his status as an outspoken livewire. As for those six speeding tickets in his ministerial self-drive car, that only added to his allure, his image as a down-to-earth, laddish kind of bloke.

Even now, when he stands accused of taking a golden handshake after saying he wouldn't, from a community trust which won millions in Government funds to deliver social services to Maori, his supporters seem as staunch as ever.

What is it about Tamihere that inspires such loyalty, such grace, such unbending admiration, even from people not usually given to proffering it to Maori?

There's no doubt the man is hugely likeable. He is charming, good-looking, energetic, funny, unpredictable.

Though allegations of financial mismanagement have swirled around him since he left his Waipareira Trust job in 1999, it's generally accepted he did a good job, achieved much.

Sure, he was inclined to cut corners, but there was no denying that Waipareira thrived under this stewardship. Whatever his faults, it was Tamihere's dynamism that invigorated the place, his personality that breathed life into it. Without him, it has seemed to lack purpose.

Since Tamihere was first anointed (by conservative Pakeha mostly) as the One Who Would Lead Maori Out of the Wilderness, away from tribalism and victimhood and state dependency, he has been virtually impervious.

He was named New Zealander of the Year by North & South magazine a few years ago, and picked as the first Maori prime minister by more than a few Right-leaning commentators, who particularly admire his pronouncements on Maori and welfarism because they tally so precisely with their own views - that all Maori really need to do to improve their lot is to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

This is a deeply attractive proposition for those with little patience for Treaty of Waitangi grievances or beneficiaries.

For sure, Tamihere offers a moderate face and voice. It is the voice of urban working-class Maori, but for all that it is at times a culturally dissonant voice, with still some way to go to reconcile and unite the aspirations of young, urban Maori with Maoridom's necessary strides towards resolution of past wrongs.

It would be a shame to lose the services of talented individuals just because they're flawed - who isn't? Where we draw the line is another question. In the greater scheme of things, speeding tickets are of no great moment. It's harder to do your job as a minister, calling others to account and insisting on transparency and accountability, if you're found similarly wanting.

There's something faintly insulting, too, about the idea that Maoridom is so bereft of talented, driven individuals that we must bend over backwards to accommodate one.

I hope the inquiry acquits Tamihere, but if the more serious allegations are found to be true, what then?

Some Maori have complained in the past, with justification, that they are often held to higher standards of behaviour than the rest of the population. Would holding John Tamihere to a lower standard be any better for anyone?