John Armstrong: An absence that speaks volumes

It must have been an especially pressing appointment that required Don Brash to walk out of Parliament prior to yesterday afternoon's free-for-all general debate and return to his office.

Otherwise his absence has to be viewed as being little short of an abdication of leadership.

Despite his colleagues' efforts to erect smokescreens to hide the obvious, National MPs were left leaderless as Labour lined up speaker after speaker to rubbish Dr Brash's bungled handling of a press conference the day before.

"Where's Don?" was the cry from the Government benches. His seat looked all the emptier for the others around it being full. It is difficult to recall another party leader leaving his troops quite so in the lurch.

But having sat through the preceding question-time, Dr Brash went back to his office for a diaried appointment, the details of which remained a mystery last night.

There is an argument that it would have done National little good for Dr Brash to have to sit and listen to some of Labour's heavy artillery - Trevor Mallard, Steve Maharey and Phil Goff - rip him to shreds.

But his absence was not a good look. Tuesday's disastrous press conference had been called by Dr Brash to refute claims by Winston Peters and Mr Mallard that a leaked email written by him contradicted his categorical denials last year that National's election campaign had been bankrolled and organised out of Washington.

That press conference turned into a shambles as Dr Brash appeared not to have briefed himself on the content of the 2004 email and seemed unsure of which Americans might or might not have ended up working on National's campaign.

In Dr Brash's absence yesterday, it was left to his deputy, Gerry Brownlee, and Murray McCully and Bill English, to try to recover some dignity.

Mr McCully and Mr English sought to grab the moral high ground by suggesting Mr Peters was not fit to be Foreign Minister, given his willingness to succumb to Mr Mallard's blatant anti-Americanism on the very day a senior Bush Administration official had hinted at better defence relations with New Zealand.

They contrasted this with Dr Brash's recent visit to Washington where he had put domestic politics to one side to help Labour build better ties with the United States.

Painting Dr Brash as some political saint was no answer to the torrent of ridicule pouring over National from the other side of the House.

It was left to Mr Brownlee to fight fire with fire. Mr Brownlee had a leaked email of his own. This revealed that the only American "bagman" involved in New Zealand's last election campaign was a John Edward Foote - who just happened to have been Mr Peters' campaign manager.

Delighted National MPs roared in triumphant unison.

Mr Peters was silenced, if only temporarily. "He's been a New Zealand citizen for years," he declared finally.

Mr Brownlee was not finished. During the general debate, he entertained colleagues by revealing Mr Foote had once been a fund-raiser for the hapless former American Vice-President Dan Quayle.

Amid the laughter, one question was left hanging. Dr Brash was the one in trouble. Not Mr Brownlee. So why was the document not given to Dr Brash to enable him to recover some standing following Tuesday's debacle?

That it was left to Mr Brownlee to do the job on Mr Peters speaks volumes about National's confidence in its leader's ability to foot it in Parliament.