COMMENT
Don Brash's surprise declaration that National and New Zealand First are unlikely to join hands in coalition after next year's election should be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism.
Of course, National's leader would prefer he did not have to work with Winston Peters in Government, not least because of a level of personal antipathy between the two men not evident in Peters' relations with other senior National MPs.
Yet everyone knows that once the ballot papers have been counted on election night, Brash will be reaching for his phone to talk to Peters if the numbers in the new Parliament so dictate.
Brash's apparent unwillingness to deal with Peters should be viewed essentially as pre-election tit-for-tat tactical manoeuvring designed to limit the leverage Peters can exercise as a post-election "king-maker".
Brash's remarks about NZ First were prompted by Rodney Hide's elevation to the Act leadership and what that might mean for a National-Act coalition.
But they were not made off-the-cuff. They followed careful thought on Brash's part.
Just as he avoided committing himself to a deal with Act, Brash was careful not to rule out one with NZ First.
Instead he was saying it was Peters, through his stinging attacks on National generally and Brash particularly, who seemed to be ruling himself out of a coalition with National.
However, though his language was restrained, Brash's intent was obvious.
By claiming Peters does not see himself as a potential partner for National, Brash is saying a vote for NZ First is effectively a vote for Labour - and therefore a vote against a change of Government.
It is a potentially potent line of attack - and one Peters has opened up himself by being seen to be getting too close to Labour, something that has infuriated an increasingly confident National Party no longer afraid to confront its long-time nemesis.
Brash's target is "Winston's flock", especially the elderly, conservative-minded voters who comprise a large chunk of NZ First's support and whose bile is rising against the Labour-led Government.
Peters, who also faces a leakage of support to the new Maori Party from his other constituency, maintains NZ First, as befits a centre party, is always even-handed in its criticism of Labour and National.
But as far as National is concerned, Labour is wooing Peters - and he is reciprocating.
The evidence is everywhere - the buddy-buddy behaviour between Peters and Labour's front-bench in Parliament, his backing of the Government's foreshore and seabed legislation and his willingness to offer conditional support for Helen Clark's inquiry into the Treaty of Waitangi, which National is shunning.
As far as National is concerned, Peters has forged a working relationship with Labour that he has not mirrored on National's side of the House.
And, by going after Brash, Peters has heightened fears within National that his preference is to strike a deal with Labour after the next election.
In fact, the NZ First caucus is split over which of the major parties it should plump for. There's also a view that it should stay out of a coalition if the party has only a handful of MPs in the next Parliament.
Moreover, Peters' siding with Labour is very much in the category of "my enemy's enemy being my friend", rather than any fundamental realignment by NZ First in Labour's favour.
After all, it was Brash who sliced NZ First's support in half with his attack on preferential treatment for Maori - not Clark.
Within the next few weeks, Brash will seek to siphon off even more of NZ First's support by trying to outflank Peters on law and order.
With Brash having undercut Peters on the Treaty, National could remove two of the three planks on which NZ First fought the 2002 election. Peters' famous three-fingered salute may be reduced to a single-digit differentiation on immigration.
The quandary facing Peters is that he is competing against Brash for the same votes. But attacking Brash risks making it look as if he is in Labour's camp.
If that perception takes hold, NZ First loses one of its crucial selling points - that it is there to moderate the behaviour of both major parties, not just one.
In getting too close to Labour, Peters has handed National an opportunity to marginalise him by trying to hog-tie him to one party - thus markedly cutting the incentive to vote for him.
Peters, however, is alert to that danger. He has sought to neutralise Brash's statement on coalitions by noting that Helen Clark similarly declared she did not want a bar of NZ First before the 2002 election.
Now - surprise, surprise - she is quite happy to seek NZ First's support on legislation when she needs it.
Peters is warning Brash that he should also not burn his bridges before he has crossed them.
Even so, Peters has sensed he might also be singeing bridges. In recent weeks, he has sought to dispel the perception that he is favouring Labour by stressing NZ First will always act as a restraint on the "excesses" of both National or Labour.
He has repeated his familiar line that the voters will decide the make-up of the next Government; that NZ First will work with the party "the voters tell us to" - but that is no guarantee he will negotiate with the party that wins the most votes.
Instead, Peters is adding a new proviso. He is signalling that the choice of coalition partner may well hinge on what NZ First's supporters want, saying "that will be the real question following the next election".
By indicating he might gauge his supporters' thinking afterwards, Peters has given himself another means of ducking the inevitable question that will dog him throughout the campaign beforehand.
That shows a degree of foresight. It's a fair bet Labour and National will be running neck-and-neck and the squeeze will go on minor parties to declare their preferences as never before.
In the meantime, Brash has put Peters on notice; that jollying up to Labour before the election risks truncating NZ First's influence afterwards.
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