Editorial: Moment of truth for candid MP

Opinion

Candour from a politician about his own party is all too rare in public. It is common in private; everyone from the Prime Minister down is capable of criticising colleagues as candidly as Labour MP John Tamihere has done, if not in quite the same terms. But mostly they do it when they are confident the conversation will not be recorded. Mr Tamihere has been careless in the extreme if, as his interviewer insists, a tape recorder was on the table and turning in front of him. But he has been honest, too. That is the reason he is being punished. If his observations did not ring true, his colleagues would be laughing them off.

Leaving aside the labels he gave them - labels that can roll off the tongue too easily in "a long liquid lunch", as the Prime Minister's describes the offending interview - some of Mr Tamihere's comments are quite valuable contributions to public information. The fact that he finds Helen Clark as "no good with emotions. She goes to pieces. She'll fold on the emotional side and walk away or not turn up ... " is the kind of thing that can assist public understanding of an important figure. Mr Tamihere's testimony will probably be cited in time by serious commentators to explain the Prime Minister's behaviour in some circumstances. And he calls her chief of staff "dangerous". Whatever he meant (and if he was not asked he was not being honestly interviewed) any insight to the little-known and reputedly highly influential Heather Simpson can only be welcomed.

Mr Tamihere also said Labour's most powerful force was its "wimmins' division" with an "anti-men agenda". There was much else, all of it highly opinionated but not entirely off the wall. They are the sort of views that are sometimes reported without attribution to convey the tensions within the governing party.

Helen Clark sounds less than candid when she wonders aloud how Mr Tamihere could be so disloyal. "The Labour Party has stuck with John through very difficult times and serious allegations and they feel that sort of loyalty should be reciprocated," she says. The truth is she did not "stick with John" when the allegations surfaced about the Waipareira Trust, she suspended him from the Cabinet pending a fraud investigation. Then a few weeks ago, when the Serious Fraud Office found no case for him to answer, she declined to reinstate him. If anyone is to lecture Mr Tamihere on loyalty it should not be Helen Clark. He indeed might remind her of the loyalty she enjoyed when a police investigator did find a prima facie case to answer about a certain painting.

But recriminations aside, what should Mr Tamihere do now? Helen Clark wants an apology to his colleagues and a full retraction. He is expected to recant his candour, pretend he did not really mean what he said, deny his honesty, discredit himself. This is a moment of truth for Labour's most promising Maori leader. He needs to decide whether in fact he needs the party as much as the party needs him. Labour is facing a fight to retain the Maori seats this year. Mr Tamihere's looks a better bet than the others, although he has expended quite a bit of personal political capital defending the Government's foreshore and seabed solution in Maori forums. He must now decide whether he has - or wants - a future in Helen Clark's Government.

His real offence in her eyes was to deny he was getting a golden handshake from the Waipareira Trust at the very time she was campaigning against that sort of thing. He remains unrepentant for a payment he says, quite rightly, he richly deserved and would accept in the same circumstances again. That attitude alone probably imperilled his return to a Clark Cabinet even before his latest bout of candour. Now not even a grovelling apology might revive his Cabinet prospects, although it would certainly carry a cost to his prospects of a political career elsewhere.

All things considered, Mr Tamihere ought to leave Labour now with his pride intact and go to the election as the individual he is.