Audrey Young: Unmuzzling Hide is the way to save Act

COMMENT

Poor Rodney Hide. The fledgling Act leader flew in from Spain yesterday morning reinvigorated after a reunion with his old friend Alan Gibbs, ready to drag his party back into contention.

Instead, it was being dragged through the mud.

He was greeted by titillating reports that MP Deborah Coddington had rejected the unwanted attentions of Business Roundtable chief executive Roger Kerr.

The official response has been to down play it as much as possible. Whatever the truth of Coddington vs Kerr, the party is despairing at its accumulating ill-fortunes.

Each new one disconnects the party from credible politics and makes the clawback harder.

Worse still, it comes in the same week in which the party rated a piffling 1 per cent in the Herald-DigiPoll survey, down from 2 per cent in June.

And it is the same week its campaign manager, Brian Nicolle, was forced to bow out of the Auckland mayoral campaign.

Next week the party will attract further negative publicity when it becomes the first Supreme Court case to be heard, challenging a lower court ruling preventing it from expelling ex-Act MP Donna Awatere Huata from Parliament.

The party limped into the parliamentary recess, ended two weeks ago, clearly not a happy camp. MP Stephen Franks, known for putting honesty ahead of political nous, caused a sensation by telling the Herald that if things got really bad for Act before the next election, he might consider joining National.

Franks had been Hide's main rival in the leadership vote in June. Not just his own backers, but others in the party felt a sense of betrayal at his admission.

In the four months that Hide has been elected, he has made little impact. Much of that was not down to him. He was crippled by the leadership contest, concocted as a two-month primary by the party's board as an attempt to give Franks more time to campaign against Hide.

With support from party president Catherine Judd, Franks came close. Hide been forced to spend time mending internal fences in a fragile party and building confidence in his own leadership.

He also acquiesced to concerns about his style and has stopped the street-fighting politics with which he made his name. That has not worked. The party would be foolish not to unleash Hide and let him be himself. With the election less that a year away, it would be suicide to change leaders again now.

The Coddington episode should be a sober reminder of how low they have sunk, how close they are to oblivion and how little time they have left.

Act's bad year

November, 2003

Confidential papers written by Act MPs reveal frustrations about a lack of impact on voters as well as uncomplimentary opinions about National.
The Serious Fraud Office lays fraud charges against suspended Act MP Donna Awatere Huata. Court action in December stops Act expelling her from Parliament using party-hopping law.

April, 2004

Richard Prebble stuns the party by announcing his resignation as leader, prompting a bruising US-style primary that sees Rodney Hide take over in June.

July

The Court of Appeal rules Act cannot use party-hopping laws to throw Donna Awatere Huata out of Parliament.

August

Act MP Stephen Franks thinks aloud about jumping ship to National.

This week Act reaches a new low of just 1 per cent in a Herald-DigiPoll survey.

Brian Nicolle, Act campaign manager for the past three elections, resigns as head of John Banks' re-election campaign after circulation of an NBR article..