KEY POINTS:
When it comes to driving economic policy, no Government is going to allow itself to be usurped by the Opposition. So Labour's intention of relegating any cross-party talks on the high interest rate, high dollar imbroglio to the relative backwater of a select committee inquiry is perfectly understandable.
However, in this case, self-interest may coincide with the common interest. The select committee may be the better option even if the end result is inaction.
That was the only conclusion to draw from watching Michael Cullen and Bill English trade insults in Parliament yesterday.
The exchange between the Minister of Finance and National's finance spokesman carried an undercurrent of animosity which went way beyond the usual degree of niggle and stopped not too far short of plain nasty.
The awful personal dynamics were such to suggest that any formal cross-party talks on monetary policy conducted at a senior level and involving the two men would not last longer than five minutes, let alone achieve anything.
The plus in holding a select committee inquiry instead is that this warring pairing would be separated. Mr English may be a member of Parliament's finance and expenditure committee, which will conduct the likely inquiry. Dr Cullen, as a Cabinet minister, is most definitely not.
In Parliament yesterday, the atmosphere became fairly toxic fairly quickly when Mr English got to his feet to accuse Dr Cullen of fuelling inflation through excessive government spending.
Other MPs watched with increasing fascination to see who would emerge triumphant from the verbal arm-wrestling.
In the end, neither did. Dr Cullen would claim a points victory by noting the contradiction between Mr English's accusation of Labour's fiscal recklessness and National's likely backing of Labour's forthcoming cut in company tax rates.
But Mr English's strength is his stubbornness. He just sticks to his guns. Dr Cullen's sarcasm had as much effect on him as sheeting rain on a farmer's Swanndri in a Southland southerly.
Dr Cullen had set the tone by immediately accusing Mr English of wanting to do all the unpopular things that the OECD had recently recommended as a panacea for the New Zealand economy, such as increasing GST or lifting the age of eligibility for superannuation.
Mr English did not bother rebutting this. He merely muttered the word "stupid" in Dr Cullen's direction a couple of times.
The pair then got into an argument about who was the most bitter: Dr Cullen, who Mr English said was still fighting the 2005 election, or, Mr English, who Dr Cullen said had still not got over National's disastrous defeat in 2002 when he was party leader.
Dr Cullen claimed Mr English's bitterness was responsible for him "sabotaging" the private meeting they both attended last year with the Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard over the effectiveness of monetary policy.
Mr English questioned why Dr Cullen - "someone who was supposed to be the Minister of Finance" - was blaming the Opposition finance spokesman for the failings of monetary policy. He wanted Dr Cullen to "take the responsibility which goes with his job" and "show some judgment".
Dr Cullen responded by saying he had lost count of National press statements criticising him for running such big surpluses. He would continue to run a fiscal policy "which was one of the tightest I-N T-H-E W-O-R-L-D", those last three words uttered as if he was lecturing a primary school pupil.
The prospects for cross-party talks might have been different were John Key still National's finance spokesman. While his public exchanges with Dr Cullen were always robust, you always got the feeling the two could sit down together afterwards and have a good-natured discussion about matters economic and fiscal.
No such vibe would seem to exist between Dr Cullen and Mr English, even though they may actually agree on the direction of monetary policy far more than they disagree.
