Craig fiasco not the real scandal

Former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig and wife Helen Craig. Photo / Nick Reed

Conservative Party meltdown makes it easy to ignore major issues such as the overhaul of social services.

How splendidly convenient it is that this week, a distant political threat to the Government has found himself splashed all over the front of news bulletins.

Not that he hasn't had quite the hand in it himself, of course. When one campaigns on honesty and integrity, one cannot then pay the apparently unwilling recipient of one's infatuation a princely sum in secret, and expect for that not to turn to custard once discovered by a media hungry for intrigue.

But so far what has emerged, as unsavoury as it appears, is disproportionate to the amount of political leverage Colin Craig wields. It's a disappointment for those who believed him to be an almighty conservative messiah, but only them.

The National Party, however, is delighted. John Key - as ever - weighed in, not apparently bothered that someone might compare Mr Craig's alleged improper behaviour towards a young woman with his own ponytail-pulling antics. He surmised Conservative voters might switch their allegiances back to National in 2017, presumably seeing no better option.

I'm not so sure about that. They may, but they also hunger for a true social conservative with a successful business background and a new set of ideas; they want someone who appears to actually stand for something, anything, perhaps in the same way some disillusioned Labour voters have switched their allegiances to the Greens.

That means, of course, probably not Colin Craig, but a truly compelling leader of the Conservatives is a threat to National, a very real one. Especially if they win a seat that changes the balance of power.

Those who watch politics will note that it's the usual National Party cheerleading chorus that has been the happiest to stick the knife into Craig. It is from these people that the worst, most damaging leaks have sprung; from these people that the most strident character assassinations have emerged. The centre and the left probably see him as kooky, but not really serious, while the corporate right exercise their most potent skill in squashing him like a bug.

The better reason, though, to keep the Colin Craig shenanigans at the top of mind is that there is much to be trying to bury right now. There is a Government department's handling of the certification of swamp kauri in Northland to try to skim over (it's admitted the job wasn't done properly).

There is the Saudi sheep debacle, in which not only did taxpayer money get used to pay off a foreign businessman, not only did many animals die a horrible death in contravention of our own animal welfare laws, and not only does the whole reason for a sheep station in the middle of a desert seem horribly suspect, but we are now told that still more taxpayer money could be chucked at it. (We're also told it's all Labour's fault, but we're not going to be treated to any proof of that.)

Our entire social services sector is about to be turned upside down using foreign models of dubious quality. Social bonds are but a tip of a very scary iceberg, one dressed up to sound as though we're getting better public services, when the driving motivation is to strip millions of dollars of social spending from the books.

Nick Smith is still flailing around, trying to salvage an accurate, positive message about affordable Auckland housing and the iwi first-right-of-refusal stoush, while the refugee message gets flubbed and dairy prices plummet.

But let us remember that many of these more pertinent issues don't register with the electorate.

Even if they do - say, newborn lambs dying after a harrowing plane ride to the other side of the world - we can easily bat that away by telling people they died in a sand storm. They could even be our own free-trade martyrs. (There's just a little matter of a free-trade deal we haven't got yet.)

So much easier, really, to focus on a political novice's interpersonal foibles, especially if that novice was at risk of gaining a seat at the table and leading a movement that had the will - unlike some other right-wing political allies - to play its own game.