Trevor Mallard – From Dead Duck to Albatross
3rd November 2007

I have never thrown a punch in anger and have only been on the receiving end once. That was when I eleven and had been a smart arse to Bruce Brown at school.

He said he’d sort me out and at the end of the day he invited me, this is true, around the back of the bike shed. I followed him around the back, a bit bemused by it all, and copped his fist full in the face.

I sat down in consternation and started crying. So did Bruce – he’d connected with my cheekbone and I think it hurt him more than me. There we sat, looking at each other, tears streaming down our faces. After a while we got to our feet and went off to our respective homes. We were so embarrassed neither of us ever said a word about it to anybody else.

Oh, how Trevor Mallard must be wishing he’d chosen a quiet bike shed or a bit of long grass where he and Tau could indulge their tie-grappling and face punching.

Like most stupid behaviour, it is not the action itself that does the damage. Trevor, I imagine, quietly replays that left hook to Tau’s head with a degree of satisfaction. No, it is being caught that brings shame. Even accepting that adrenalin triumphed over reason in those few critical moments in the parliamentary lobby it is still inconceivable that Mallard would do something quite so stupid in the least private place in New Zealand.

He could hardly deny it and, to his credit I suppose, he hasn’t tried to deny or even defend the act. A week ago he must have thought, as we did, that he was a dead duck, his political career finished. If you punch somebody at work you get the sack, right? There was no way Helen Clark could keep him in cabinet, and possibly even in caucus. Surely she would send him down the road in the footsteps of David Benson-Pope, Taito Philip Field and John Tamihere. She would reason that Mallard’s presence would open Labour to ongoing ridicule and do untold harm to her government’s remaining credibility.

But we were wrong. This week Mallard is resurrected. The cabinet is reshuffled, the deck is dealt and, crikey! there are the same old cards and, grinning up like the joker, is Mallard himself, down from seventh place to tenth but still in the game.

The opposition must be delighted. Mallard’s continued presence in the cabinet, where they can take potshots at him to their heart’s content, simply adds strength to their bow ahead of next year’s election.

The move to keep Mallard is so bizarre I wonder if a more subtle strategy is at work here. I was in England in 2001 when the deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, thumped a young detractor during an election campaign. The media gasped, Tony Blair’s government held its breath and – their ratings went through the roof. Does Helen think Trevor’s tiff will give her government the same bounce? It’s hard to imagine.

Or is there a dark logic in Helen’s choice of portfolios for Trevor in the cabinet reshuffle? Does she think the Environment, Broadcasting and Labour ministries need a pugilistic rev up? Will we see Trevor descend, fists flailing, into the greenie protest movement? He’d probably win a few votes as long as he doesn’t deck a giant snail or tuatara. Broadcasting of course cries out for biffo. Trevor will be itching to take on the journos after recent events and we have a fine tradition of politicians thumping reporters – remember Bob Jones?

But these are frivolous thoughts. In reality, the Prime Minister will rue her decision to stick with Mallard.

In Samuel Coleridge’s great poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sailor who kills an albatross brings a curse upon his ship and its crew. He is doomed to watch his crewmates die, tormented by thirst and demons. They in turn condemn him to hell on earth by hanging the dead albatross around his neck.

Helen Clark may find she has resurrected her dead duck only to discover she has an albatross hanging around the neck of the Labour government from here to the election.