Such a stance would have been interpreted as telling New Zealanders that we'd rather keep Israel happy, than tell our own citizens if we caught spies in the country. You don't need to have a vivid imagination to imagine the next question time in the House of Representatives as being a blood bath, if the Government was continuing a stance of refusing to comment as it was not in the national interest.
So why did the Prime Minister come out with a response that was not sustainable, and just inflamed suspicions? Part of the reason may be he was travelling overseas. If he was in the office where security officials could brief him within minutes, he may well have avoided this situation. In situations involving security issues you do not want to be relying on memory, but want to make sure what the facts are, and decide what you can and can't say.
The other factor may have been that the security services are very good at creating a culture of maximum security around their activities. As an example I recall when I worked in the Prime Minister's Office of Jenny Shipley and a SIS staffer came over with a press release for the PM, effectively just announcing the SIS Annual Report to Parliament. The press release was handed over on a floppy disk, and both the disk and the file were encrypted and password protected. I was amused that a press release designed to be seen by as many people as possible, was still treated as top secret information.
Now to be fair to the security services, they are more open and transparent than they were a few years ago, but nevertheless there is still a culture of the first instinct on a security issue being to refuse comment as it is not in the national interest.
So the Prime Minister did stuff up with his initial response. If the issue was that he didn't have access to all the information he needed to comment, he could have said that he would make a fuller statement in a couple of hours, rather than cite the not in the national interest card.
But as I said, this week has seen both a weakness and a strength by John Key, and his strength is his willingness to change course quickly when he does go down the wrong path. Most former Prime Ministers hate backing down, and would cling to their position for days or weeks before changing track. They see a back down or compromise as a sign of weakness.
Less than six hours later, John Key changed tune and said yes we noticed this suspicious behaviour and yes we thought it might be Mossad but after a full investigation there is no proof the group of four Israelis were anything but backpackers tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This pretty much put the issue to bed, even though there are still a couple of issues in dispute such as the number of passports found.
Key's change of stance came within one news cycle. This meant that the TV bulletins that night were not full of outrage about the PM refusing to tell New Zealanders what happened, but instead just had his initial refusal as a minor part of the story.
I've written before that Key's commercial background, rather than political background, is why I think he is so much more likely to agree to a compromise, or agree to change track. In the commercial world a compromise is not a bad thing - it is how you get agreement on things. In the political world though, politicians often see compromises or a change of stance as a sign of weakness, and they will avoid it all costs.
I doubt we will ever get a Prime Minister who never stuffs up. Until such a day eventuates, I'll settle for Prime Ministers who correct their stuff ups promptly, and without blame or rancour.
* David Farrar is a centre-right blogger and affiliated with the National Party. A disclosure statement on his political views can be found here.
