Winner or loser?

Paula Bennett. Photo / Doug Sherring

She breaks up a brawl with her bare hands and then puts a bruiser in the Families Commission. She's blindsided the Prime Minister three times, but is still seen as a Key favourite.

And on Wednesday, Paula Bennett gave social agencies the last thing they expected: a $40 million boost to see them through the recession.

She delivered her glad tidings in the outfit of a woman galvanising herself: orange dress with a diagonal hemline over a black top and kick-arse silver T-Bar pumps. As the Social Development Minister took the podium, Ros Rice, head of the Council of Social Services, called out to her, "I'm here for you!"

Here was Bennett the compassionate conservative: sternly loving, lovingly stern. She spoke of "we" and "us", of listening to those at the coalface, of being heartened by what she heard; but made it clear she was also about efficiency, self-sufficiency, and of course value for taxpayers' money.

"People underestimate our sector all the time," she ad ad-libbed. "They don't know how innovative we are ... You have those fancy formulas, eh, but the reality is I don't think you can even start to measure the work and the good that you guys do."

A woman in the audience asked a question that few could hear. "She said how wonderful I was," quipped the Cabinet minister. "I was paraphrasing a bit."

Afterwards, Darryl Evans of Budgeting and Family Support Services Mangere reflected the mood. "I was expecting the worst - possibly funding cuts," he said. "It's certainly given us relief for the next 12 months."

BENNETT'S SUPPORTERS love her for her Westie chutzpah and outrageous sense of humour - when Labour MP Annette King berated her for giving Grey Power the brush-off, leaving them with an impression that "a loud laugh will solve all the questions put to her", Bennett emitted a loud laugh.

Says Waitakere Mayor and former Labour Party president Bob Harvey: "The West has taken a shine to her. They like her style; she's brown and fun and she understands the job. I think they're prepared to forgive if a person is genuine and good."

David Hallett, a retired engineer and chair of a residents' group whose cause Bennett champions, says she convinced him to switch his voting allegiance. "She's got a very engaging personality, direct, forceful, and I think she cares about people."

In January, Bennett impressed bystanders by pushing into a crowd of about 30 young people to break up brawling teenage girls outside WestCity mall in Henderson, Auckland.

"Fists flying, blood, it was full-on," she told the NZ Herald. "So I leaped in, as you do, because it was starting to get really, really aggressive. There I was, wagging that finger in faces and telling them to back off ... Someone was going to get hurt. So I was fiery - there's no two ways about it."

The next day, she gave interviews about the affray to pretty much every media outlet in the country.

But what washes out West may not go down so well in Wellington. Says political columnist Bill Ralston: "There are aspects of her personality that may not necessarily work for her in the corridors of power. If she has one fault, I'm not sure she takes advice terribly well. She tends to press on with what she believes, which can be good, but it can also inhibit you in that Wellington bureaucratic environment."

The warm reception on Wednesday contrasts with the hammering Bennett received over her boot camp plans for serious youth offenders (among the most noteworthy critics: Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft, Unicef, and Chief Families Commissioner Jan Pryor).

And then there's the ongoing fallout from Bennett's cat-among-the-pigeons appointment of Christine Rankin to the Families Commission. It got really messy when Rankin's own family infighting hit the headlines.

Rankin married her current (fourth) husband, Kim MacIntyre, a few months after his previous wife, real estate agent Margo McAuley, committed suicide. McAuley's sister accused Rankin of having an affair with MacIntyre while McAuley was still alive, which Rankin denied on current affairs show Sunday.

The Prime Minister's office cranked into damage control, with Key publicly endorsing both Rankin and Bennett, and Rankin going uncharacteristically quiet - after the horse had bolted.

Significantly, it was the third time Prime Minister John Key was blindsided by something Bennett knew but didn't think to tell him. The first two times both concerned Bennett's own family. Her daughter's boyfriend, Viliami Halaholo, currently serving a sentence for causing grievous bodily harm, was bailed to Bennett's home for almost 10 months up to July 2007. The Herald on Sunday's questions in January to Bennett and Key's office, about potential security risks from a minister having close ties to a criminal, were the first Key knew of the connection.

Then, when he asked Bennett if there was any other involvement that was "pertinent" for him to know, she failed to mention the two letters she'd sent to a judge and the parole board pleading Halaholo's case, written while she was an opposition MP.

Her show of family loyalty in supporting Halaholo - who had had a baby with her daughter - won her some sympathy, and sat well with the "gutsy solo mum and in-touch Westie chick" personal storyline from which National has made political hay. How much more compassionate can conservatism get?

But that's separate from her handling of the story, which has been criticised as showing poor judgment.

Judgment was at the core of the original story, although Bennett acts as if it were an attack on her family. When the Herald on Sunday was interviewing the head of a community group after this week's announcement, Bennett walked over and interjected: "They write nasty things about me and my family, so I've refused to speak to them. What you do is up to you."

Earlier, she had called this paper "the gutter press". Yet Key himself has said he was " disappointed" at Bennett's lack of disclosure.

Paul Henry, who regularly interviewed Bennett on TV One's Breakfast show, says: "She must have come very close to losing that portfolio during the expose over the boyfriend ... You can't talk, talk, talk and then all of a sudden think 'I've said too much,' and stop talking. You've got to front something like that."

Kiwiblog's David Farrar agrees the Halaholo omission was a lapse of judgment, but argues the Rankin omission was valid and even tactical. "It's probably best not to tell the Prime Minister stuff like that: it's not relevant, and it also protects him if he's asked 'Did he know?'."

The Rankin appointment may yet score points for Bennett: thousands of New Zealanders agree with her that parents should be able to physically discipline their children unimpeded.

Bennett's rough edges? The jury's still out. Voters like a bit of biffo as long as the substance is there. But Bennett will have to get used to the scrutiny and need for prudence that comes with a Cabinet seat.