John Roughan: At last a leader fights back

Well done, Rob Fyfe. How refreshing that for once a leader in any sphere, corporate, political or public service has not waved a white flag at the first whiff of controversy.

On Monday night TV3 reported that four Air New Zealand staff, one of them a pilot, had been caught drink-driving, the pilot four times. Worse, the head of Waitemata road police, in an email to the national road policing manager, suspected the airline had "a culture which accepts alcohol consumption prior to working".

When the reporter phoned the company's public relations people for a response on Monday their consternation can be imagined. Word would have been quickly sent to the top floor, staff assigned to gather all internal information, meetings convened to prepare a statement.

The first draft would have acknowledged the known cases, pointed out they were very few, stressed the company did not condone drinking before working hours, denied there was any such culture in the airline and assured the police and public that steps would be taken to remind all staff of ... blah blah blah.

That's the standard response of today's white-flag public relations: concede as much as you can, be nice, get on the side of concern, avoid an argument at all costs. Controversy, white flaggers believe, has no winners.

Air New Zealand's chief executive was not listening to that sort of advice this time. Instead of issuing a statement, Fyfe dispatched a stern letter to Police Commissioner Howard Broad and made that public.

He demanded the commissioner clarify memos he called unsubstantiated and ill-considered. "I believe," he wrote, "Air NZ and the New Zealand public deserve and should reasonably expect a much higher standard of fact and substance before senior police officers release comments in the public domain which serve to undermine confidence in Air NZ and our commitment to the safety of staff and passengers."

There has been no response from the commissioner. Hopefully he was quietly impressed by aggressive defence and might even emulate it next time his staff need it.

A generation ago police could count on their commissioners to issue a forthright reminder of the difficulties and dangers of police work any time constables were criticised but those days are long gone.

The modern culture of apology and concession has reached a point that is quite unhealthy for balanced public discussion and fair, sensible decisions. Did a minister really need to resign this week for careless use of an expenses card?

Phil Heatley, housing minister until Thursday, used his card to buy two bottles of wine at the National Party conference dinner. The Prime Minister thought he should stand aside while the full resources of the Auditor-General were thrown at his $70 bill.

If that was ridiculous it was nothing to Heatley's chest-beating decision that he had to resign because he had listed one of the items on his card as food and beverage when in truth it was just beverage. The world has gone mad.

It is natural for news media to make the most of any faults they discover and it is healthy that they do, so long as responsible leaders have the strength to put things in perspective. When heads roll needlessly the critics can look as silly as the system. The final embarrassment in the Heatley episode fell on commentators who strained to explain why it was important. Have they never fudged a petty expenses claim? You bet they have.

The longest and most unnecessary apology of the age came from Tiger Woods last weekend and did him little good. The media, always priggish when it wants to salivate over someone's sex life, is aggrieved that he did not expose himself to its questions.

What questions? An editorial in the Sunday Star-Times last weekend betrayed the hypocrisy of those who pretend more than a prurient interest. The paper's questions were just rhetorical devices to berate him a bit more for behaviour at odds with a wholesome image.

We've read this often. Is it fair? Did Woods ever present himself as anything more than what he was, a freak of excellence at his game? Woods' public apology was a commercial imperative for him, that is all.

The same might be said of Fyfe's apology for Erebus last year, 40 years after the event.

Flying a few of the victims' families to Antarctica for the anniversary looked like a public relations exercise, especially when the company damned an independent charter flight that might have given more families a glimpse of the site.

I took him then to be just another sensitive, new-age white flagger. It is good to be wrong.