Phil Goff insists he is not playing the race card. And, on
the face of it, he would seem justified in saying that.
You'd be hard-pressed to find any statement in the
controversial speech delivered on Thursday by the Labour
leader which taken alone blatantly warrants the race-card
accusation.
The key words are "taken alone".
Put all the statements together and it is patently clear Mr
Goff, at the very least, has grasped the race card and is
flashing it, if not playing it for all he is worth.
He is not as yet strip-mining this potentially vote-rich
conservative terrain to the same extent Winston Peters and
Don Brash did.
But it is only a matter of degree.
By Labour standards, the tone and language of Mr Goff's
carefully-crafted address signify a dramatic lurch in the
direction of the stance on race taken by those other two
political luminaries.
It is impossible to conceive Helen Clark delivering such a
speech. Or David Lange. Or Sir Geoffrey Palmer.
Mike Moore, the last Labour leader to pitch so overtly to
Labour's evaporating conservative male support, had a strong
antipathy to those exploiting divisions over race.
He also knew being tribal Labour meant he could not do it.
Mr Goff's sudden repositioning of himself to the right on
race matters runs counter to that tradition.
It may be only a temporary manifestation, however.
Along with Mr Goff's repositioning of Labour on other matters
such as monetary policy, it has one simple objective -
lifting both Labour's and his own parlous ratings in pending
pre-Christmas opinion polls.
National's befriending of the Maori Party has left a vacuum
on the centre-right which Mr Goff is trying to fill.
Normally, however, such a gap would be filled by a party on
National's right, rather than its left.
That is an important distinction.
This is a huge gamble by Mr Goff.
If the strategy fails to deliver, he will be subject to
widespread scorn and derision.
His leadership may be well and truly crippled.
Yet, such a positioning grates against everything people
think Labour stands for.
For it to work, people have to believe Mr Goff believes what
he is saying.
Yet, in his 25 years in Parliament, Mr Goff has never
traversed this territory.
In fact, quite the contrary.
Unable to shrug off his own and party's value system, Mr Goff
is having to work within far tighter limits than Mr Brash
did.
Thursday's speech was consequently not on a par with the
former National leader's infamous Orewa missive.
Mr Goff instead relied on Mr Peters' technique of leaving his
listeners to make the leap to the conclusion he wanted them
to reach, while ensuring he retained the crucial commodity of
deniability when the accusations of race-based politicking
started flying.
Perhaps the most telling phraseology was Mr Goff's repeating
of Shane Jones' castigation of the Maori Party's agreement on
legislation setting up a new emissions trading scheme (ETS)
as not so much being pork-barrel politics as "pork-bone
politics".
In the next sentence, Mr Goff referred to unspecified
"corporates" as having seen the chance for a handout "and
naturally they have taken it".
Mr Goff did not say "Maori" corporates.
But they are clearly the ones he was referring to.
Mr Goff then said he was not blaming them for doing what any
other business would.
He then declared suggestions he was playing the race card to
be a red herring and it was the paying of subsidies to big
corporations under National's ETS which he was talking about,
"and I am not going to shy away from saying so".
The denials are the giveaway, however.
He would not be issuing them if he were not indulging in such
obvious "dog-whistle politics", where the message is
delivered silently but picked up by the audience with the
right ears to hear it.
The other giveaway is that it can hardly be coincidence that
his speech followed his sparring with Hone Harawira.
After months in the shadows, Mr Goff suddenly found himself
in the spotlight.
The Maori Party's deal with National on its ETS enabled him
to keep the spotlight on him.
Mr Goff is dangerously vulnerable to opportunism in order to
remain in the media focus.
Unlike the Richard Worth affair, however, this time
opportunism is being diluted by a strong dose of caution.
Thursday's speech was run past a number of MPs in Mr Goff's
caucus, including senior Maori members like Mr Jones and
Parekura Horomia.
Mr Goff's office made a point of issuing copies of the
Hansard transcription of Mr Jones' rich oratory in Parliament
the day before during the lengthy and prolonged debate on the
ETS legislation.
The intention was to show Mr Goff was echoing one of Labour's
Maori MPs and therefore could not be accused of playing the
race card.
The difference was Mr Jones' target was the Maori Party,
while Mr Goff's was National, their dual attack attempting to
drive a wedge between the governing party and its support
partner.
National, however, is not going to make Mr Harawira's mistake
of giving Mr Goff the attention he craves by accusing him of
being a racist.
John Key instead portrayed Mr Goff's speech as the work of a
struggling politician desperately in search of a headline.
By not engaging with him, National is seeking to deprive Mr
Goff of oxygen, thereby forcing him to take even more extreme
positions.
National does not believe Mr Goff can sustain such a heavily
conservative line of attack for very long without Labour's
MPs, party members and activists, and its liberal-minded
supporters, especially the female component, becoming very
uncomfortable.
Notably, two left-leaning political blogs, No Right Turn and
The Standard, have panned Mr Goff's speech, the latter saying
it was "stupid and wrong" on many levels.
"We deserve better than this," declared an anonymous
contributor.
The feeling within National is Mr Goff has clambered aboard a
runaway train which he will find very difficult to get off.
If he does, everyone will ask what the point of the exercise
was.
The longer he stays on it, the more he risks wrecking
Labour's efforts to win back Maori, It is trying to do so by
persuading Maori voters that the Maori Party is simply not
delivering the goods.
This week Labour seemed hell-bent on destroying the Maori
Party.
Again, this is high risk.
If the Maori Party survives as a parliamentary force after
the next election, Labour may well need its backing to
govern.
Mr Goff's tactics are instead driving the Maori Party even
closer to National.
Mr Goff's sudden opposition to the repeal of Labour's
foreshore and seabed law will only strengthen that bond.
Again, the logic of that move is questionable.
The priority for Mr Goff, however, is to get traction in the
polls.
An upwards spike in Labour's support would make all the
difference to Labour's state of mind when it kicks off the
new year.
The status quo is not an option. Mr Goff has to take risks.
If the strategy works, John Key will have much to think
about. If it doesn't, the Labour caucus will.
John Armstrong is The New Zealand Herald political
correspondent.
