Dialogue: Waka jumping not a worry if Jim delivers

By TAPU MISA

I have had enough of the Alliance spat. I really have. It's not like I haven't had enough internal squabbling of my own to contend with this past week of the school holidays.

The difference between me and the Alliance is that I'd never have let it go on this long. At our house the guilty party would have been dispatched to his or her room for some quiet reflection. Or had their television viewing rights cancelled for a week. And maybe his pocket money diverted back into the family account.

If that failed, I'd have to dispense summary justice in the form of a smacked bottom. If that didn't work, I'd threaten to leave home - or at least, to have the offender adopted.

The trouble with that strategy is that I first had to work out who was in the wrong, and that wasn't always easy because, like the Alliance squabble, everyone in my house is always completely blameless.

Out in the Alliance's South Auckland sector, which happens also to be strongly Pacific Island, they know what every mother should that in such matters there is seldom an innocent party.

Political commentators can say what they like about the highfalutin intangibles involved like integrity, loyalty and, if there is such a thing in politics, the moral high ground.

But in the grassroots, among the people a lefty party like the Alliance is supposed to be pulling for, those intangibles are somewhat irrelevant.

Out South, they're a lot more pragmatic - which is perhaps why Jim Anderton is choosing Otara to launch his public offensive tonight. If he's going to be welcomed anywhere outside his Wigram stronghold, it's here, in the heart of South Auckland.

Never mind the strategising by the high priests of the party, and the hand-wringing over their diving popularity in the polls. Those I've talked to in the Pacific faction see no reason to differentiate from a Coalition that's starting to deliver on the things that matter to them. Like jobs, low-rent houses big enough for the extended family, good schools, and access to affordable healthcare.

Frankly, they're not too bothered by the waka-jumping charges, either. The Samoan sector has decided to follow Jim, its co-ordinator Ruta Romanovsky told me, because he's taken them and their policies seriously. Because he has done what he promised to do in the Coalition: work with Labour.

But there's another reason that they and the rest of the Pacific sector will side with Jim. And that's the yawning chasm between them and the party's latte-swilling ruling class, which they've seen as arrogant and out of step with their concerns.

Alliance meetings have bristled with the kind of fear and loathing that would have been more understandable at, say, an Act Party conference. There have been racist outbursts. At one meeting, a Palagi delegate abused a Pacific Island delegate and told her she should go back to the islands.

And the South Auckland sector is still smarting over the local body elections, when attempts were made to dissuade them from putting up one Cambodian and two Pacific Island candidates for the Auckland Regional Council because it was thought the brown faces would turn off voters. With only $3000 between them to campaign with, they won 45,000 votes. Not enough to get elected, but several times more than most Palagi Alliance candidates.

And they have their own take on the main players.

Laila Harre may be the darling of liberal and even conservative highbrows, but she is not theirs. They weren't impressed by her push to talk to striking Herald workers last June, nor of what they'd seen as her dismissal of their attempts to push through a remit supporting a Pacific Island radio network (because she backed youth radio).

And neither has Matt McCarten, as engaging and media-savvy as he is, won their hearts and minds. They haven't yet forgiven him for splitting the Auckland mayoral vote and letting John Banks through. Nor for turning up to their ARC celebration only to tell them he was off to Banks' party.

The Pacific sector's stance over the debate on New Zealand's involvement in the war in Afghanistan, and Matt Robson's nomination - half of those who turned out to a meeting to support his inclusion on the party list were Pacific Island - has placed them firmly in Anderton's camp.

Tonight's Otara meeting would seem to be just a formality. Probably concerned with weighty issues like what they're going to call the new party.

Here's one tongue-in-cheek suggestion from a southie: The Jim Anderton Loving Care Faction. Needs work, though.