Up in the House of the rising son

By AUDREY YOUNG political reporter

Get well, Jenny. Please get well.

Heart trouble has laid Opposition leader Jenny Shipley low for a few weeks.

But her relative strength was never more apparent than by its absence yesterday as her dutiful deputy, Wyatt Creech, struggled to respond to Michael Cullen's seeming effortless delivery of his first Budget.

Granted, it is not exactly easy planning a speech reviling a Budget you haven't read.

And up against the House's best speaker and quickest wit, Mr Creech had a psychological disadvantage from the outset.

He is a heck of a likeable character, but he does have one major disadvantage. There is just something about his voice that makes it difficult to project authority. He is a sort of Ewart Barnsley of the National Party.

Mr Creech's best line was straight from the radical-conservative school of inventive phraseology, this time in the form of Neil Armstrong meets Rocky Horror.

"It is a time-warp Budget," Mr Creech said. "It is one huge leap to the left for Government and one giant step back for New Zealand. Welcome to the 1970s."

For all the impact his speech had, he may just as well have ditched it and sung Wild Thing instead.

Or perhaps the Zombies' hit She's Not There, would have suited.

His biggest response came when he said the whole House would wish Mrs Shipley a speedy recovery - and the whole House wholeheartedly agreed with applause.

That should have been enough to jolt Margaret Wilson awake.

No one would have bothered about a few zzzzz's if she were some backbencher recovering after a late night at the Green Parrot cafe and was sitting in the shadows.

But this was the Attorney-General and Minister of Labour sitting behind the Minister of Finance, in the direct line of the cameras, resting her eyelids through much of his speech. (And she looks as sullen asleep as she does awake.)

It took the more junior ranked but clearly more media-wise colleague Ross Robertson to tap her on the arm and let her know she was becoming a buzz of attention for the cameras and reporters in the galleries.

Miss Wilson, who appeared to be suffering from a cold, could do no better than to take lessons in the art of enthusiastic sitting from Maori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels.

His attention to Dr Cullen's 40-minute Budget speech verged on the devoted.

All the more so because while Dr Cullen is undoubtedly the House's best speaker in full flight, he was definitely constrained yesterday by the conventions of Budget delivery.

Dr Cullen certainly looked smart enough in a new dark charcoal three-buttoned suit, steel-grey shirt and pinot noir tie - a stylish undertaker look.

He wore a red rose from the bunch of a dozen sent by his schoolteacher wife, Anne.

Unlike fussy former Treasurer Winston Peters, who wore a grey suit to brief the media then a dark blue suit to deliver the Budget, Dr Cullen kept his clothes on all day.

He was accompanied to the earlier media briefing by a security guard, in a less-stylish suit, who bore a remarkable resemblance to Associate Finance Minister Trevor Mallard.

The guard stood close to Dr Cullen like a bulldog with a menacing you-better-like-it-or-else look.

Beehive sources later suggested that the guard was, in fact, Mr Mallard.

Dr Cullen answered his questions with supreme ease and without the political palaver of the Bill Birch Budget days.

It was then back to the House to have what we must assume is his finest hour in politics.

No crowing, no acid, no lecturing, no displays of cockiness, nothing that could be a distraction from the Budget and rational debate about it.

The House's habitual smart alec was just plain smart.

Budget 2000 feature

Minister's budget statement

Budget speech