'Event' management and the public perception

As British prime minister, Harold Macmillan was once asked what was the most likely thing to blow a government off course. "Events, dear boy, events," he famously replied.

John Key and Steven Joyce, his Transport minister, would not argue with that maxim.

When it comes to election campaigns - and this year's has effectively, if unofficially begun with the leaders already traipsing around the country - expect the unexpected. Like a 40,000-tonne cargo ship inexplicably wedging itself on a well-charted reef and disgorging tonnes of heavy, fuel oil and shedding scores of containers.

Or - as happened in 2002 - accusations of a cover-up by the Government of imports of genetically-modified corn seeds.

That "event" came out of the blue and threw Labour's campaign well off course.

It was arguably a major factor in thwarting Helen Clark's hopes of Labour governing alone after that election.

National eschews such talk, even though the polls suggest it may be better placed to pull off such a coup.

Once again, however, the vulnerability of incumbency has been exposed. The unfolding ecological disaster in the Bay of Plenty illustrates how quickly the advantage National enjoys as the governing party heading into next month's campaign proper could melt away.

National's problem is that the margins between governing alone, governing with allies and not governing at all are not that large.

The MV Rena has been the only salvage operation in town.

It has taken a lot of talking in a lot of media by Mr Key, Mr Joyce and latterly Environment Minister Nick Smith - three of National's best communicators - to stop the stranding of the Rena becoming National's equivalent of Corngate.

National found itself charged in the court of public opinion with failing to respond quickly to something which was obvious to everyone else - that the ill-fated ship was going to break up and cause New Zealand's worst marine environmental catastrophe. Obvious in hindsight, that is.

The exception was Gareth Hughes, the Greens' marine spokesman, who agreed earlier than most with Mr Joyce the ship could break up. Mr Hughes was quick to put Mr Joyce on notice for the supposed slow reaction of Maritime New Zealand.

But not as quick as the Greens would like people to believe.

The fate of the Rena was such a pressing priority for the Greens that they did not see fit to set down a parliamentary question to Mr Joyce on the Thursday before last even though the Rena had struck the Astrolabe reef some 36 hours earlier. Mr Hughes was instead on the case of another navigation-challenged wanderer of the high seas, quizzing Fisheries Minister Phil Heatley as to whether the Emperor penguin Happy Feet had come to an unhappy end as by-catch in the net of a sub-Antarctic trawler.

While Hughes was otherwise engaged, the preliminary stages of what will be an intensely complex salvage operation were already well under way in part because Mr Joyce had given the ship's owners the hurry up.

The recent cross-party negotiations which resulted in much-improved emergency legislation restoring the police's ability to use video surveillance was MMP politics at its best.

The grounding of the Rena has spawned a bout of MMP politics at its worst, with opposition parties trying to chip away at National's reputation for competence in disaster management.