National's new mongrel savages some old targets

Tau Henare, National's self-described mongrel, is off his leash when the Herald calls around.

It's hard to imagine many of National's caucus clambering out of their office windows for cigarette breaks on Parliament's roof.

Almost as unlikely as the one-time New Zealand First Cabinet minister and member of its notorious "tight five" group of Maori MPs sitting high up in the National suite.

"Where else would I go? I wouldn't have gone to Labour. They wouldn't have had me," Henare says.

After being elected New Zealand First MP for Te Tai Tokerau in 1993, Henare became Minister for Maori Affairs in the National-New Zealand First 1996 coalition.

When that political relationship soured Henare quit New Zealand First and founded the short-lived and mostly forgotten Mauri Pacific party, which was submerged when Labour swept to power in 1999.

Months later, Henare joined the National Party. He hadn't planned on standing for Parliament, but last year he was selected 25th on National's list and coasted back into Parliament.

Despite his six years away, Henare hasn't been forgotten, and his former New Zealand First colleagues frequently use question time to bait him. He doesn't back down, and the Henare bark is frequently heard over the top of an increasingly vocal National pack.

"You have to be tough in this game. You can't give **** if you're not going to take it. What I try to do is after every session of Parliament, is say that that stays there. I don't have any animosity against anybody, other than maybe one person, in the House."

Although he doesn't name him it's obvious Henare means his former leader, Winston Peters.

When Henare first came to Parliament, it was as New Zealand First's second MP. But, he says, the party was a one-man band, and little has changed.

"He always has been and always will be," he says of Peters.

"He had it in the palm of his hand when he was with the National Party. He had all the skills, he had the looks, the debonair dress, the brains, but not the aptitude to buckle down and work with a team. He's never worked with a team. He is the team."

There are two irritants when Henare and New Zealand First MPs needle each other across the chamber - history, and the raw wound of last year's New Zealand First decision to confirm Labour's return to Government.

That deal made Peters Minister for Foreign Affairs. Reverberations are still being felt from Peters' recent trip to the United States, where his surprising interruption of senior Republican Senator John McCain as he was extolling New Zealand's virtues, and the subsequent unseemly brawl with the New Zealand media overshadowed a successful meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"I think it is his last hurrah, and he's already screwed it up," Henare says. "I couldn't believe it when I saw that [the McCain incident] on the telly.

"He has an uncanny ability to believe he is in the spotlight and not the issue.

"I think he's false. He's a have, and he always has been. I honestly think he's one of the most shallow people I've ever come across."

MP and former New Zealand First president Doug Woolerton says the party has no hard feeling towards Henare.

"I think it's pretty light-hearted. I don't hold any grudges against all of those people [who joined Mauri Pacific]. I think they were naive, but any anger or anything is long gone. He [Henare] delights in taking the mickey and we respond in kind."

New Zealand First MP Ron Mark is less forgiving. While he can't help but like the rascal in Henare, he has not forgotten the hurt of the Mauri Pacific episode.

"People who know me know I place a lot of store in loyalty. One side of me says what Tau and the others did was nothing less than a betrayal, not only of the members of New Zealand First but the people who voted for New Zealand First. That's on his conscience, but a lot of water has passed under the bridge."

National have given Henare two areas of responsibility, associate spokesman for Treaty of Waitangi issues and Maori affairs, and associate spokesman for early childhood education. He might have seemed an obvious choice for a Maori affairs role, but it wasn't an area Henare hankered after.

"If you look at things on an ethnicity basis you're never going to fix them. I've come to that conclusion, and that was mainly why I wanted to get back into Parliament, because the last time I was here I sort of on purpose got railroaded into only speaking and thinking about Maori things.

"If there's a problem, just bloody fix it. It doesn't matter if they're black or white."