Dunne deal done softly

A senior Labour MP and a shared business acquaintance acted as go-betweens for the Prime Minister before the last election to quietly court United Future's Peter Dunne as a possible coalition partner for Labour.

The wooing of Mr Dunne, who had ruled out working with Labour at the two previous elections, seems to have begun some eight months or so before the 2002 election when it was apparent Helen Clark's then coalition partner, the Alliance, was unlikely to make it back into Parliament and Labour might have to turn to the Greens instead.

The behind-the-scenes courting of the United Future leader is revealed in his new book, In the Centre of Things, which will be launched at his party's annual conference in Auckland this weekend.

When the informal approaches were made by Labour, United Future was still registering at barely 1 per cent in the polls and had yet to benefit from the televised leaders' debate in which Mr Dunne shone and which sparked a surge in the party's support late in the election campaign.

It is not clear from his book whether Labour sounded out Mr Dunne because it anticipated the difficulty it would have working with the Greens because of the lifting of the moratorium on genetically modified organisms - or whether Labour was simply taking a precaution given that Mr Dunne might have ended up holding the balance of power, even as a single-MP party.

In the book, he says the first hint that the freeze with Labour which followed his resignation from the party over tax policy in 1994 might be slowly thawing occurred late in 2001.

National's new leader, Bill English, had predicted that his party would easily defeat Labour in Wellington Central and Mr Dunne in neighbouring Ohariu-Belmont.

Helen Clark responded by rubbishing any notion of Labour losing Wellington Central, but said nothing about Mr Dunne.

A few days later, he was taken aside at a cocktail function at the American ambassador's residence by an unnamed senior Labour MP known to be close to the Prime Minister and was told her silence on Ohariu-Belmont was "significant" and should be seen as such.

During the first half of 2002, various Labour MPs went to see Mr Dunne to "quietly, but strongly" urge United Future to reverse its stance and not rule out working with Labour.

Disturbed by the influence of the Greens on the Labour-Alliance Government, Mr Dunne was also thinking that United Future, to be a true centre party, ought to be able to work with Labour as well as National, with whom he had been siding in Parliament and who cast his proxy vote in his absence. He subsequently made a statement indicating United Future would not rule out working with Labour despite many of his party's board members being "uncomfortable" and needing some persuasion because they considered National to be the better fit.

A few days later, he was coincidentally on the same plane as the Labour MP who had spoken to him at the American Embassy function.

Mr Dunne was told the Prime Minister had noted his statement "and had suggested we keep in touch over the next few weeks. We did".

As the election neared, a mutual business acquaintance of both the Prime Minister and Mr Dunne - again not named - acted as a further informal go-between.

"By election day, we were both aware that any post-election talks would take place in a reasonably cordial atmosphere, and that there would be no real need for Labour to deal exclusively with the Greens."