Party time: The Jim, Laila and Richard show

By JULIE MIDDLETON

Jim Anderton didn't want to be filmed standing next to his political ex, Laila Harre.

A grumpy Richard Prebble wasn't keen to share a stage with Peter Dunne, scornful that he should share the stage with someone polling, he said, ".1 of .1 of a per cent".

Then there were disagreements about the names-out-of-a-hat approach to deciding the speaking order and thus the seating plan.

Last night's Sky Television debate involving the six small party leaders - Anderton (Progressive Coalition), Harre (Alliance), Peters (New Zealand First), Donald (Greens), Prebble (Act) and Dunne (United Future) - was the first of a string of pre-election telly debates. With a complicated gestation.

Rule one: Separate offices at Sky's Mt Wellington studios.

Rule two: One at a time in the makeup room.

But planning for "the Lailiance" and Anderton meeting was, according to a Sky insider, a doddle next to Prebble.

"He's been throwing tantrums on an hourly basis."

In one outburst he said: "I'm not going on there with Dunne, who's been polling at .1 of .1 of a per cent".

Pre-debate, a relaxed Peters was alone at the dining table of an understated Heritage Hotel suite, working his way through a packet of cigarettes and drinking coffee.

His main Auckland man, John Body, had succumbed to the flu and Peters didn't rate Sky - and its ratings - highly enough to drag him out of bed.

He puffed his way through the party manifesto - accompanied by the graunch of Hobson St traffic - and four cellphone calls.

One was the Race Relations Commissioner telling Peters that someone in Christchurch had laid a complaint about a speech. He was genial on the phone, unbothered.

The other three calls were campaign colleagues, to one of whom he offered a reminder: "You know what they say about politicians - they'll double-cross that bridge when they come to it".

The Alliance's home, a chilly, light industrial unit overlooking the Henderson rail line, was cheerful, busy and chatty. Harre - small, serious, tense - was fluffing lines about her vanishing billboards in front of TV One cameras.

"I can't do it. It's silly," she complained. "This is bloopers. This is ridiculous."

Later, in another spartan and chilly room, the spectre of Jim Anderton hovered as Matt McCarten, press secretary Sarah Martin, and campaign manager Gerard Hehir joined Harre for a war council. Pen poised over a pad, she said: "We've got to get a line on the Jim thing."

She tested a sound-bite: "What I want to get into about Jim [is that] something everybody else here tonight is asking the others is whether they should be in government. Jim's asking Helen ...

"Or shall I leave Jim out of it?"

The conversation became circular: Jim was out. They moved onto health, education, GE - then Martin mused: "Are they likely to ask [about the Jim-Alliance divorce]? Will they rehash it?"

She offered Harre a line: "Jim left because he was no longer prepared to stand by Alliance principles."

McCarten, mindful of the fly in the room, said: "We'll come back to that."

Martin: "They might say: can you manage being able to work with Jim Anderton in another Cabinet?"

The talk moved on to GE and health. Harre scribbled. Minutes later, she sighed. "What's going to be a pain with this is having Jim there."

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