Tim Bale: Lousy politics puts nation's trust at risk

Sweetcorn. Can't stand the stuff myself, but my children are big fans, especially when it's sprinkled on what I like to think of as my piece de resistance, the 15-minute home-made pizza. Does this mean I have unwittingly exposed my nearest and dearest to a risk that I personally tend to think of as tiny, but would nevertheless prefer to avoid?

Many people are asking themselves the same question and might not be best pleased with the Government right now. They trusted it - not necessarily to ban all genetically modified foods outright, but at least to give them the chance to choose whether they bought them or not.

It now seems as if they were wrong. The Government, having discovered the stuff was in the ground, had to choose between pulling it up or, rightly or wrongly, hushing it up. It opted for hush. It might well have been good science but it was pretty lousy politics.

It certainly puts Paintergate into perspective. While few of us care in the slightest about art, all of us care about where our next meal is coming from. Faking the odd painting for charity is one thing. Appearing to fake it on something as tangible, as vital, as unavoidable as food is something else altogether.

Quite how this will affect the election remains to be seen. Certainly it will take a while for any impact to show up in the opinion polls. Inevitably, that impact will depend partly on how the media operations of the major and minor parties play it.

Labour will emphasise the scientific technicalities, the fact that the allegations come from a supposedly biased source and its responsibility not to needlessly alarm the public or harm the nation's economy.

National will put the emphasis on Helen Clark's personal credibility. Pointing to a so-called pattern of behaviour may be effective - the Prime Minister is not just the face of the Government's campaign, she is the Government's campaign. But any benefit to National is bound to be qualified because of its otherwise painfully obvious enthusiasm for all things GM.

Those clearly standing to gain electorally from the whole thing include Winton Peters, for whom cover-ups and conspiracies are always meat and drink and who, interestingly, has been careful not to be too gung-ho on GM.

Then there are the Greens. No one should doubt that they will be genuinely distressed about a potential release of GM crops into the environment - their opposition to such things can hardly be called religious by their enemies one minute and then opportunistic the next. But they can hardly be blamed if they also turn it ruthlessly to their advantage.

They certainly have a clear precedent to follow. Fond of pointing to overseas experience, the Greens here will be fully aware of the impact a similar - though arguably rather more serious - scandal had on the 1999 election in Belgium.

There, too, it appeared that a centre-left Government (though one led by the centre rather than the left) was cruising to victory. There, too, the Greens were expected to do reasonably, but not phenomenally well. There, too, evidence emerged in the middle of an election campaign that the Government had known about a threat to food safety but decided not to warn the public in the hope that it could deal with the crisis behind closed doors.

Once those doors were blown open even ministerial resignations proved too little too late to save the Government from the voters. It lost what had looked like a secure majority.

Among the beneficiaries were the Greens, who doubled their vote to almost 15 per cent. This boost allowed the Greens to bargain themselves into a coalition and bag themselves portfolios which the Greens here would dearly love - consumer affairs, health and environment, mobility and transport, development co-operation (overseas aid), and energy and sustainable development.

That was three years ago - almost to the day. And although they might not have achieved everything they set out to do, they are still there and, according to opinion polls anyway, still just as popular, proof that Green parties don't necessarily wilt when they go into Government.

Labour will argue, rightly, that the Belgian food scare was far more serious than the one we have on our hands. Rather than a few hectares of potentially dodgy sweetcorn, the Belgians were faced with the possibility that their entire poultry and egg supply - plus all the foods made using such products - had been contaminated by chemicals that even the most sceptical scientists agreed could cause cancer.

Labour can also take heart from the fact that its sister party in Britain remained largely untouched by revelations in May 2000 that multinationals had accidentally supplied farmers with GM seed.

In the British case it appeared that the Government had known about the cock-up for about a month before it became public. But attempts to suggest that this amounted to a cover-up fell flat for want of evidence that the Government had tried to keep things quiet.

The Blair Government also helped itself by speedily recommending that the crops be destroyed before they made it into the food chain and by encouraging farmers to seek compensation from the importers concerned.

Unfortunately for Labour here, its reaction seems to have been neither so open nor so precautionary. Obeying first instincts and ripping up the crop might have proved scientifically unnecessary and politically embarrassing, but only temporarily.

Voters can be forgiving, especially if everything else seems to be going well. But while they don't mind the odd mistake, they don't like the idea that you have something to hide, particularly - as the BSE scandal in Britain also showed - where food safety is concerned.

Some will argue that this is what happened, and many may be more prepared to listen than they were before the sweetcorn hit the fan. Just how many, and whether it will erode their trust in Helen Clark, Labour and even the political system itself we will see very soon.

* Dr Tim Bale lectures in political science at Victoria University.

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