KEY POINTS:
Get Maurice Williamson talking about something he knows a lot about and it is difficult to get a word in edgeways.
Get the National MP talking about something he is really passionate about - like Auckland's traffic congestion and the need for toll roads - and it is well nigh impossible to interrupt him. So there is truth in Bill English's assertion that Williamson got "a bit exuberant" when the latter appeared on TVNZ's Agenda programme last Sunday.
In fact, so exuberant was Williamson that he single-handedly obliterated National's advantage on tax by indicating the party's additional tax cuts will be swallowed up by motorists having to pay $50 a week to use the toll roads that National intends building through the mechanism of public-private partnerships (PPPs).
Opportunities to ping National big-time do not come any more gift-wrapped than this. Labour had a field day highlighting Williamson's remarks on Agenda, Bill English's refuting of them, and then Williamson's admission he had let his enthusiasms go unchecked.
However, Williamson does not deserve to take all the blame for the snafu. Fault also lies in National's strategy of avoiding saying anything in terms of policy detail which might unsettle voters.
It can hardly expect to get through the election campaign by wrapping all of its policy in cotton wool. It will get pressed on detail. The hard edges of policies need to be exposed - by National. The party only plays into Labour's hands by not being open about the negatives as well as being glowing about the positives.
Williamson's lapse was an accident waiting to happen. Indeed, it has already happened. Backbencher Kate Wilkinson got into trouble when she too was challenged to cough up on policy detail and indicated that National might abolish employer contributions to KiwiSaver.
Like Williamson's toll charge estimates, that revelation also met with denials from National's hierarchy. Wilkinson was said to be outside the policy-formation loop.
This time it is more serious. Williamson is the spokesman and a frontbencher to boot. He could hardly be out of the loop. So who to believe? Williamson's assertion that National might impose tolls of $3 to $5 per trip on new motorways? Or English's estimate of $2?
The public does not know who to believe because the public has no reference points to judge where National actually stands. Labour is on hand to happily fill in the gaps.
National has long flagged its intention to make greater use of private sector in the funding and building of infrastructure projects. It may have done a lot of work behind-the-scenes. But it has offered nothing discursive by way of a discussion document or some other means which sets out its views on the advantages and disadvantages of PPPs.
Explaining to the public the pros and cons of using PPPs is the kind of groundwork that should have been done in the first and second years of the parliamentary cycle. The policy should then have been built on this framework and packaged and confidently sold to the electorate on the pluses of PPPs outweighing the minuses. If this had been done, Labour's claims of National having a secret agenda would evaporate. Instead National finds itself fighting what is now a losing battle just weeks before an election when it should have had it won months ago.
National cannot have it both ways. As the editor of the car buyers' Dog & Lemon Guide, Clive Matthew-Wilson presciently observed prior to Williamson's clanger, National had been trying to entice voters with an enhanced road-building programme without specifying the real costs of public-private partnerships. Williamson was simply being honest in doing so.
