Herald on Sunday editorial: Key counts cost of evasiveness

Photo / Dean Purcell

Opinion

If a week is a long time in politics, it's an eternity in the Sunday-newspaper business. Since we revealed that we had been given a recording of the "cup of tea" conversation between Prime Minister John Key and Act's Epsom candidate John Banks, the PM has devoted much of his energy to denigrating this newspaper and refused to engage with the significant political issues the conversation raises.

Ludicrously, he sought to compare the recording with the News of the World phone-hacking - a comparison rightly dismissed as a "cheap shot" by the London barrister representing the victims of that outrage.

Even more ill-judged was the fantasy of "a Sunday newspaper" recording a conversation between two parents fretting about their child's suicidal tendency, and sparking a suicide by publishing a transcript. This extraordinary utterance earned the condemnation of those bereaved by suicide, appalled that he was exploiting their grief for political ends.

Plainly the PM is being very poorly advised.

We believe that the recording of the meeting was neither secret nor deliberate. The freelance cameraman who made it was working for nzherald.co.nz - part of the same company as this newspaper but an entirely separate business unit. No one from the Herald on Sunday had any dealings with the cameraman about the "cup of tea" meeting until he told us that he had a recording.

The code of ethics to which we subscribe rejects the use of information obtained by "illegal or deceitful" means. Again, we considered neither of those descriptions had been met in the way it was recorded and given to us, but we considered that the ethical thing to do was to seek the participants' permission which was, of course, withheld. (John Banks' mystifying logic was that Key should decide because he had paid for the tea; the PM, meanwhile, sought to depict himself as the last bulwark between the vulnerable citizenry and the ravening hordes of the tabloid press).

It hasn't worked. By attempting to shift attention from the issue, Key has made himself look evasive. The genial what-you-see-is-what-you-get gladhander has looked shifty and uncomfortable and his decision to cancel scheduled interviews with us and withhold his daily itineraries from our staff has smacked of punitive petulance ill befitting a leader.

The irony of it all is that if Key had come clean early on, he might have defused the political impact of the revelations the recording contains; by hedging and fudging he has stoked the fire of public curiosity, and for the penultimate week of the campaign, it has been the only story in town.

The conversation, as the polls show, is potentially of enormous electoral significance. National's dominance over Labour seems complete but Act's travails and NZ First's resurgence muddy the picture. If Key said anything about either of those parties it is, whether he likes it or not, a matter of profound public interest.

The wily Peters has profitably nibbled on the recording's contents even though they have not been released. And if NZ First makes it back into Parliament, and Banks and Peter Dunne fail at electorate level, the scenario of a friendless National Party v all the rest looks possible.

We take no pleasure in the discomfort Key has felt this week, though we are not unhappy that someone who has deliberately set out to harm us is being held to account for his evasiveness.

All of this is the Prime Minister's doing. His views on possible coalition partners are a legitimate story with strong public-interest - particularly in the middle of an election campaign that is, on the fringes, finely balanced. How they were gained prevent their publication this time, though the PM's claim of a right to privacy at a stage-managed photo opportunity is weak indeed.