Anderton smiling all the way to bank

By JOHN ARMSTRONG political editor

Jim Anderton couldn't quite wipe the smile off his face yesterday as he tried his best to look humble in victory.

It was not merely the satisfaction of gaining the grudging approval of the Labour caucus for his long-cherished state-owned People's Bank. That was a formality.

Yesterday the Alliance leader could say he had finally come in from the cold.

Personal redemption came shortly after one o'clock when he strode across the threshold into Labour's caucus room in Parliament Buildings.

They say a week is a long time in politics. It has been 650 or so long weeks since Mr Anderton cast himself into pariah status in the same room in the winter of 1988 by abstaining on a Labour measure to sell the Bank of New Zealand, owned by the state.

That abstention - then a lone voice against the gale force that was Rogernomics - triggered his exit from the Labour Party less than a year later.

In the intervening years, he has galvanised, frustrated, enthused, annoyed, bullied and (once) nearly deserted the disciples who followed him into the political wilderness. But one thing he never lost - his patience.

Anderton's skill in screwing a new state-run bank out of fiscally prudent Labour is an object lesson in how a highly-political tortoise can outrun more populist hares.

But the Kiwi Bank is also a lesson in how enemies in politics can become allies.

The bank would not be a goer but for the advocacy of Mr Anderton and Ross Armstrong, the chairman of New Zealand Post, which wanted a banking arm to diversify its business.

A former National Party official, the avuncular Dr Armstrong plotted with Helen Clark to stop the Alliance winning the Tamaki byelection in 1992 - the year Mr Anderton's party reached its zenith and was seeking to supplant Labour.

"Today, the climate is a little warmer," Mr Anderton observed yesterday after quoting from his abstention speech of July 1988.

He reread the bit about how, at the tender age of seven, he had been impressed by Labour's nationalisation of the privately owned BNZ in 1945.

He recalled that Walter Nash, Labour's Finance Minister, had not been wildly enthusiastic about the idea. Mr Anderton didn't need to say, "for Walter Nash then, read Michael Cullen now."

Indeed, Labour MPs leaving yesterday's joint caucus meeting with the Alliance were hardly dancing in the corridors.

Dr Cullen and Mark Burton, the State Owned Enterprises Minister, resembled a couple of undertakers as they formally announced the go-ahead for the bank an hour later.

In protocol which looked like pettiness, the pair made the announcement because, as NZ Post's two shareholding ministers, they - not Mr Anderton - were technically responsible. He was shut out of the press conference and had to hold his own one afterwards.

Still, it was good sport watching Dr Cullen and Mr Burton defending something they would not normally have touched with a bargepole. They referred to "exit strategies" should the bank fail to attract customers and warned there would be no more cash should the $80 million capital injection prove insufficient.

And, at the end of the day, they emphasised that the bank was NZ Post's baby. "It is most important to emphasise that," Dr Cullen said.

Labour has done its best to distance itself from the bank, but Mr Anderton has pulled it in donkey-deep.

His worry now must be that, no sooner does the bank get up and running than a re-elected National Government sells it.

That would be history going full circle.