National's back-room boy shows he has learned how to behave

Gerry Brownlee fancies "as influential a position" as possible in politics. Picture / Mark Mitchell

Jacket on or off? muses the deputy leader of the National Party. This is a rhetorical question. Jacket on, he decides. Of course. This is an election year and Gerry Brownlee wants to look like, perhaps, the next Deputy Prime Minister?

I thought this would be a question that didn't require an answer. When we decided we'd go to see Brownlee it was because ... well, because we wondered where he'd gone. He has seemed all but invisible.

This week he's popped back up over the nuclear issue. Which means that leader Don Brash does not have to pop up over the nuclear issue.

This is typical of an election year. It is the job of the deputy to make the leader look good. Brownlee, I'd have thought, was not a natural in the role which, during an election campaign, is, he says, "Ah, probably slightly back-of-house making sure the train stays on track".

He's been to the mall with Brash. Walking behind him? "Of course." Ten paces behind? "Of course."

Nobody wants to see the deputy, do they? "Not particularly."

We've booked an hour with him, not a delightful prospect: I've heard him on the radio and he can sound bad-tempered and bullying. After the interview, in the lift with Brownlee and the photographer, I say about the MP: "I've heard him on the radio ... but he behaved quite well, didn't he?"

Brownlee snorts, but mildly. Even before we got into the lift he'd given a good impression of a man stuck in one with me.

At one point, when I'm asking about the leadership coup that, by a convoluted and unpleasant route, delivered him the deputy leadership, he says: "How much of this are you going to go over? Because it's sort of like ploughing old ground. It's not necessarily good."

He means that it is not necessarily good in an election year. So I say: "I'm asking the questions; you're answering them. Carry on."

This was bossy, but too bad. I thought he might get testy but, at some stage during the process, he obviously decided to be amused instead.

At some stage. Because when I arrive, he appears distinctly unimpressed by the very idea of doing an interview. Goodness, doesn't he know it's an election year and that nobody at the malls wants to talk to the deputy leader of the Nats?

He says he can only give me half an hour. I say 45 minutes. He says half an hour. I try for half an hour now, and another half-hour later in the day, perhaps? He says he'll see how it goes. And what is it I'm hoping to do, actually? Talk to you, Gerry.

So if we only have half an hour - and honestly, how odd in an election year to have an MP who hasn't been briefed on what sort of interview he's been booked for - I tell him this will be a speed interview. As I say this, it strikes me as a very good technique. When politicians start droning about policy - and oh how they drone on, mistaking an interview for a leaflet drop - you can just say: "No time for any of that. This is a speed interview."

During a policy-drone moment I try the "This is a speed interview" line. He says: "Let me finish and you might get your hour."

Later in the lift, I accuse him of not having another appointment.

"You just wanted to see how it went."

He denies this, of course.

HE is certainly in good humour at the moment, no doubt because he is "very, very confident" that National will be forming a government. So confident he won't entertain my notion of what happens within National should it lose.

I suggest we have a bet on it, but he declines. "Well, I tell you I'm embarrassed to take bets because, see that box there?"

That box there is a crate of good wine from the bet he took with a bloke "that Leon MacDonald would be the run-on fullback for the All Blacks in the first test against the Lions ... and he paid last week. Ha. So how much against the odds was that?"

Right, so when National is the Government, Brownlee will be Deputy PM. Surely that's what he wants.

"Oh, look. What I want is to be in Cabinet."

In which case Winston could be deputy, and Brownlee would be happy. "Whatever the voters throw up to us will determine that and we wouldn't have a right to start stamping our feet."

He knows it has been said he has an ambition to be a Prime Minister, but "I can tell you I've never, ever, articulated that anywhere".

It is, surely, an observation of perceived ambition, I say. And he says: "If you're going to put up with this lifestyle ... and you're going to accept everything that goes with it, why wouldn't you want to be in as influential a position as you possibly could be."

Right, so he does want to be PM. "No, I wouldn't say that." I think he just did, but he's an MP. I'll take his word for it.

Here's another line of inquiry politicians don't much enjoy in an election year: silly things they've done in the past.

I'm sternly told that retelling the story about Brownlee man-handling a protester at National's campaign opening in 1999 "doesn't help".

Oh, all right. See, Gerry, I hardly mentioned it. But this one is irresistible: "What about almost calling John Tamihere a black fella?" "No, I didn't," he says. "That's been most inappropriately reported." Which doesn't stop him producing a framed Garrick Tremain cartoon which depicts a young Gerry learning the piano. The caption reads: "In musical terms ... we call these notes sharps and flats, not the black fella."

And he feels compelled to retell the tale himself. About how Tamihere was calling him a "big fella" and how it was "late afternoon" and how "I sent an email apologising to John Tamihere literally within minutes of that happening".

So he just couldn't help himself. "Yeah, it was one of those moments." Just being a smart-arse, was he? "Possibly. For once in my life."

He has been referred to as the bouncer in the Brash-Brownlee relationship. He's wearing his jacket today. I think he might have learned to be more controlled.

"Umm, well, I'm not sure. I think I am." I think he is because when I ask if he has a bad temper he says, very precisely, "No, I haven't got a bad temper." He gives me a measured look and says, "I'm pretty slow to anger, in fact."

And it is probably not his fault that, for only the second time in his life, he sees an opportunity for a smart quip. I'm going to see Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen next. I ask Brownlee if he has a message for Cullen and he says to tell him: "Just make sure you clean out the desk before you go."