Editorial: Beware the enemy in the ranks

Opinion

What are we supposed to make of the weekend revelation that Don Brash received unsolicited advice from former finance ministers Sir Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson, the Act Party and the Business Roundtable when he took over the leadership of the National Party two years ago? It surely has not surprised anyone that those people had high hopes of him. And it is hardly shocking that they should send him their thoughts on how he should lead National. Sir Roger, Ruth Richardson and Act made their enthusiasm for him publicly obvious at the time. Act had him to address its annual conference not long before he became National's leader.

Political leaders of all stripes receive streams of advice, most of it unsolicited, from individuals and organisations sympathetic to them. Helen Clark and her ministers will be forever getting missives from unions, university staff, state service advocacy groups and social workers of all sorts. Those self-appointed advisers are no less anxious than the Business Roundtable to see a party in power that might advance the national interest as they see it.

The most interesting feature of the email and fax messages shown to Sunday newspapers was that by all accounts the disclosures originated within the National Party. If so, it suggests someone, or some faction, within the party does not want it to win this election. That impression is reinforced by the party's refusal to come to the rescue of its only certain ally in Parliament, Act. National's campaign is concentrating on maximising its own vote, to the exclusion, if necessary, of Act. That is a strategy that makes sense only for a major party that entertains no real hope of winning this election and aims to emerge in the strongest possible position for the next one.

That is clearly not Dr Brash's aim; if he loses this election he might not lead the party at the next. But whoever leaked these messages has no loyalty to Dr Brash. Though the messages are unremarkable in themselves, they play directly into the hand of Labour's campaign strategy, which is to scare voters with the suggestion that the National leader has a hidden agenda.

If he has one it probably owes little to Act or the Business Roundtable. Act has been disappointed with the response to its gestures of support for Dr Brash's takeover of National. Under him National has been no more inclined than before to help Act survive. It will not give the smaller party an uncontested conservative electorate such as Epsom and Dr Brash has not so far deigned even to appear in public with Act's leader in the way the Prime Minister did with the Greens when that party threatened to sink below the MMP threshold.

The Roundtable had hoped that National under Dr Brash would be bolder than it has proven to be. In November 2003 the Roundtable executive director, Roger Kerr, wrote to him: "The country won't be on the right track until it is comfortable with your views and us. We both need to get on the front foot ... " Mr Kerr went on to suggest some lines for Dr Brash to spout. Among them: "Of course I listen to the views of the Business Roundtable - its members are the cream of New Zealand business ... " Another leaked message, from vice-chairwoman Diane Foreman, advised Dr Brash to warn the party its "coffers will dry up" if it did not elect him leader.

The disclosure of these tracts deserves to embarrass the Roundtable - and put paid to its longstanding claim that it is not a lobbying organisation - more than the National leader. As Mr Kerr said in another disclosed message, "I'm always giving Don unsolicited advice ... " Only Dr Brash knows how much notice he takes of it. But there is no harm in receiving it.