The Perfect Sting

The Smiling Assassin: Pete Hodgson's mastery of the dark arts of politics goes back a long way, but his latest scalp - Pansy Wong's - was taken in a 'sting' operation that came pretty close to perfection.

IN RETROSPECT, the year I spent editing the Otago student newspaper, Critic, probably did me no good. In terms of journalism, I started at the top and have been working my way down ever since. In terms of sheer fun and excitement, however, being the editor of Critic in the tumultuous year of 1981 was hard to beat.

As a sort of insurance policy against what I suspected would be a strong on-campus reaction to the mass protests planned for the Springboks Rugby tour in July-September 1981, I agreed to give a young, right-wing history tutor, Michael Laws, his own weekly column – "Dragonfly". Things were going to get ugly, and I wanted the students of Otago to know that their newspaper was open to all shades of political opinion.

After Critic I left varsity and got a job at the University Book Shop. Years passed. And while I was making my way up the ranks of the trade union movement in Dunedin, Michael was working in the National Party Research Unit in Parliament. His highly successful association with Winston Peters marked him out as "one to watch". Certainly, I had little doubt that he would enter Parliament within a very few years.

Another man on his way towards a parliamentary career in the 1980s was Pete Hodgson. When I first met Pete he was selling vegetables out of a barrow on the student union lawn, where "The Ancient & Royal Anti-Scurvy League" had become something of a fixture in the 1970s. In the 1980s, however, Pete had left the barrow behind and was rapidly winning himself a reputation for formidable political craftsmanship as the Labour Party’s Otago Regional Organiser. Following the Labour victory of 1984, Pete’s talents were re-directed towards protecting Labour’s marginal seats.

What this meant only became clear to me one day in the mid-80s when Pete sauntered into the University Book Shop and asked me if I still had copies of Michael Laws’ "Dragonfly" columns from 1981. A little alarm-bell started ringing somewhere far off in the back of my mind, but as a loyal Labour Party member, I dutifully photocopied a complete set of Michael’s 1981 columns and handed them over to Pete.

In the 1987 General Election Michael Laws ran as the National Party candidate against Labour’s Bill Sutton in the highly marginal electorate of Hawke’s Bay. He lost, but only narrowly. Just 859 votes separated to two leading candidates.

When I asked him about it, many years later, Michael told me it had been a dirty campaign. Labour, he said, had dug up all sorts of embarrassing material from his past.

Ahh, but it’s a dirty business altogether, is politics – just ask Pansy Wong.

Pete Hodgson’s talents as a plotter, schemer and highly skilled political manipulator have seldom been better displayed than in the downfall of the Minister of Women’s and Ethnic Affairs.

The first act of the drama was to accuse Ms Wong of improperly using her ministerial title to support a private business contract involving her husband, Sammy Wong. An indignant Ms Wong denied doing any such thing. She’d simply added her signature to a Deed of Variation and given her occupation – quite correctly – as "Minister of NZ Government" and her address as "Parliament Buildings, Wellington, NZ".

At first it appeared as if Pete Hodgson’s rocket had misfired. The Cabinet Office absolved Ms Wong of any impropriety, and her husband rallied to her defence by publicly admitting that, with hindsight, he was foolish to embroil his wife in a private business deal.

Pete Hodgson was beginning to look like an utter (and seriously incompetent) cad.

But Pete’s rocket hadn’t misfired. In releasing the information about the Minister’s signature on the Deed of Variation, he had merely put a match to his rocket’s blue touch-paper.

Perhaps Pete began the final act of the drama by quietly prompting one or two friendly Press Gallery journalists to start asking questions about exactly who paid for the flight to China back in April 2008 (when the Deed was signed).

Or, maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe the final act began with him waiting for the spousal international travel rules ‘penny’ to drop of its own accord. Either way, his rocket was always bound to score a direct hit.

The moment anyone – journalist, Prime Ministerial aide, fellow Cabinet Minister, anyone – asked Pansy Wong if her husband’s travel costs had been subsidised on their April ‘08 "holiday" to China, her political career was over.

Allowing one’s spouse to do business on the taxpayer’s tab is a resignation offence.

All-in-all, it was pretty close to being the perfect ‘sting’ operation. Certainly, poor Pansy never saw it coming.

But perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised at Pete Hodgson claiming yet another political scalp.

After all, he’s had plenty of practice.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 16 November 2010.

Are you being served?

Edmund Burke: His "Address to the Electors of Bristol", delivered on 3 November 1774, still stands as one of the greatest statements of the Member of Parliament's civic, and moral, responsibilities.

BILL ENGLISH may have decided to pay back the extra $12,000 he arranged for himself to be paid since becoming the Minister of Finance, but who, in all honesty, can blame him for extracting every possible advantage from the arcane system of calculating ministerial allowances? He is still a relatively young man, has a large family, and is in a volatile and uncertain occupation. An opportunity presented itself. He took it. Wouldn’t we all?

And doesn’t the same apply – mutatis mutandis – to every other Member of Parliament?

Throughout this furore over parliamentary and ministerial allowances, haven’t we all been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong things? Instead of encouraging us to focus on MPs with their "snouts in the trough", why wasn’t the news media demanding to know: "Is being a Member of Parliament a ‘job’ (with all the benefits and allowances associated with a modern employment "package") or is it, a ‘civic vocation’ – undertaken not for the money, but for the people.

If politics is a vocation, then the expression "political career" should only be used in retrospect – after a politician has retired. On the other hand, if a "political career" is something ambitious citizens can aspire to; prepare for; and, having acquired the requisite skills, join as a fully-qualified practitioner, then being an MP is just a job – no different from medicine, law or accountancy.

But, if that’s true, then we should simply shut-up about the rights and wrongs of the various allowances available to parliamentarians. They are no more our business than the allowances and per diems employers pay other workers for out-of-town work.

And, before you object that "we" are the politicians’ employers, I’d advise you to think again. Because the venerable notion that an MP is beholden to his or her constituents is one which belongs alongside the equally old-fashioned idea that representing one’s fellow citizens is a not "just a job"– but a civic vocation.

The idea of representation being an honourable calling dates back to the time when the purpose of a parliament, or, as the French wrote it, parlement – a place where people talk – was to convey the thoughts (and usually the money) of the people to the King. When it pleased His Majesty to consult his subjects, the cities and towns of the realm elected an accomplished and articulate citizen to speak on their behalf. (Under no circumstances should these representatives of the "commons" be confused with the King’s "peers", his fellow aristocrats, who, much like our own Business Roundtable, enjoyed more direct access to the King’s ear.)

Representing one’s fellow citizens was a solemn civic responsibility – not to be undertaken lightly. In his justly celebrated "Address to the Electors of Bristol", the 18th Century English political philosopher and parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, set forth the duties of a parliamentary representative with considerable eloquence:

"Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

What resemblance (if any) does the contemporary New Zealand MP bear to this splendid Georgian character?

The most obvious similarity is their equal eagerness to give reassurance that the electors’ interests are in a safe pair of hands. The most obvious difference goes directly to the heart of the current controversy. Burke, unlike his Kiwi equivalent, clearly conceives of himself as a free agent – one whose "unbiassed opinion", "mature judgement" and "enlightened conscience" will never be sacrificed to that all-powerful "set of men" – the political party.

It is the political party – that restless "spirit of faction" so derided by the political thinkers of the 18th Century – that has insinuated itself between the contemporary New Zealand MP and his constituents. And it is to the political party – the body which selects him as its candidate, positions him on its List, and at whose "pleasure" he rises or falls – that the New Zealand MP gives his true allegiance. The party’s interests, "above all, ever, and in all cases", will be preferred to his own, and except on those rare occasions when a "conscience vote" is permitted, his judgement will be sacrificed unhesitatingly to his party’s opinion.

The original justification for the formation of political parties: the need to advance, roll back, or protect some great and fundamental revision of society’s rules; no longer strictly applies to the dominant parties of the 21st Century English-speaking world.

The original party stand-off: Whigs versus Tories, traced its origins to the political divisions thrown up during the English Revolution of the 17th Century.

In the 19th and 20th Centuries the stand-off between the promoters of socialism and the defenders of capitalism laid the foundations of (in our case) the Labour and National parties.

But, in the 21st Century, at Francis Fukuyama’s "end of history", our party system has been reduced to facilitating, in the rather deflating words of Wellington political scientist, Jon Johansson: "the peaceful circulation of elites".

In other words: "just a job".

Sir Geoffrey Palmer set the scene for this transformation back in the 1980s when, as Justice Minister, he transformed the tradition-encrusted Member of Parliament into a thoroughly up-to-date and hard-working "legislator". MPs were provided with state-funded electorate-offices and secretarial staff. The sitting times of Parliament were regularised. Party Whips became the Chamber’s effective and efficient "middle managers".

Not only had the job of "legislator" become a viable career choice, it was now an increasingly well-remunerated one.

The big question to be asked of today’s democratic polity, therefore, is not: "What do our representatives get?" but "Who do they serve?"

This essay was originally published in The Independent of Thursday, 13 August 2009.