The BBQs are being warmed on Shearer's leadership

I warn you, what you are about to read will shock and stun you...

Hawkins: To quote a famous Labour politician, 'I've been thinking' about this constituent of yours in Mt Albert that you have used to illustrate fairness and responsibility to society, this sickness beneficiary who's up painting his roof, and I have to ask on behalf of Giovanni Tiso, who has been campaigning now bilingually to get a straight answer from you for ten days now. Did that actually happen? Is that a true anecdote from your time... [Shearer interrupts]

Shearer: Yeah, yeah, I was going around the streets before the last election, knocked on a guy's door, he walked out on the lawn with me and pointed over and said this guy supposedly - I think he said he had a bad back or a bad something or other - and the point was, I mean, wasn't actually... whether this guy was right or not I don't know, but the point is, what I was trying to make is the point about fairness and the way New Zealanders feel about fairness. They don't want... this guy in particular said look I'm working hard, I pay my taxes, I'm doing all the right things and this guy - in his opinion, and that's what I said in my thing - is ripping the system off. Now I don't care if you're a millionaire not paying his taxes or somebody on the benefit who shouldn't be getting one. The way that New Zealanders see that is that it's not fair when somebody is not doing the right thing. That's the point of what I was saying.

Hawkins: So you don't know if it's true, at no point did you go talk to the beneficiary in question?

Shearer: No, the point was Aaron - the point was how people perceive others not playing by the rules, that's all I was saying. So I mean that's a story - the account of this guy, if what he was telling me is true, but I didn't do a police investigation on somebody, but the point was how do people perceive others, and I think overwhelmingly in New Zealand we don't like people who are not playing by the rules, in a sense not adhering to what I call the social contract.

Hawkins: I don't think it's the equivalent of a police enquiry to simply fact-check an anecdote that you are going to turn into a political platform.

Shearer: It's not a political platform, the whole point of it as I keep saying to you is illustrating how people feel about others. That was all it was saying. It was somebody relating something to me and I was relating that on. It is about how people feel about others not playing by the rules. And we have a very highly developed sense for that in New Zealand, for good or for bad, and I actually think it's good. But what does happen is that if people have that perception it means that everybody who legitimately receives a benefit - and overwhelmingly New Zealanders support that as well - they actually get tarred with the same brush. It's really important that we make sure that the system works well and that people have confidence in it.

Hawkins: Isn't that what Paula Bennett was doing, using a couple of examples of people not playing by the rules and not playing fairly within the welfare system to show up its flaws?

Shearer: Well what she did was she went into the Ministry, pulled out people's private information and using her privileged position as a Minister and then put them into the news media because they happened to disagree with it. I think it's a quantifiably mega-jump more than what I was talking about.

...how much cringing can you do in one reading? The Labour Party BBQs must now be warming, no political leader can be as inarticulate as this. He is almost speaking in tongues while desperately backpedaling.

Well done Aaron Hawkins of Radio One for putting these questions to Shearer, it's a great reminder how important our Student Radio network is.

The ridiculous Pagani dog whistle inserted into Shearer's Grey Power speech that had Shearer bitching about some mythical sickness beneficiary painting the roof has imploded with the kind of rupturing of physics normally left for the large hadron collider.

The Pagani Doctrine is to chase National voters and move Labour to the right. In direct contrast to the 'growing the pie' mantra Shearer would espouse pre leadership, the Pagani Doctrine ignores the 800 000 enrolled voters who didn't bother to vote to chase the much smaller National Party voter pie.

Hence the dog whistles, hence keeping Shearer out of traditional Labour issues like Union disputes, hence roof painting sickness beneficiaries.

It all runs bitter to rank and file Labour Party members who are demanding a serious articulation of left wing solutions to a right wing juggernaut they see dismantling all that is holy.

Shearer isn't doing that. He is starting fights with the left of the Party by attacking those the Party see as the results of failed social policy, not the cause of it. He's dog whistling while his strategy duo of the Pagani's are having public fights with the country's largest left wing blog.

It's a buggers muddle of unprecedented political clumsiness topped off by Shearer's inability to communicate in basic english. Look at this for Christ's sake...

Shearer: Yeah, yeah, I was going around the streets before the last election, knocked on a guy's door, he walked out on the lawn with me and pointed over and said this guy supposedly - I think he said he had a bad back or a bad something or other - and the point was, I mean, wasn't actually... whether this guy was right or not I don't know, but the point is, what I was trying to make is the point about fairness and the way New Zealanders feel about fairness. They don't want... this guy in particular said look I'm working hard, I pay my taxes, I'm doing all the right things and this guy - in his opinion, and that's what I said in my thing - is ripping the system off. Now I don't care if you're a millionaire not paying his taxes or somebody on the benefit who shouldn't be getting one. The way that New Zealanders see that is that it's not fair when somebody is not doing the right thing. That's the point of what I was saying.

...this is 'office-esk' gibberish. No self respecting Labour Party supporter can feel secure in their leader when their leader is channeling David Brent.

Compare this to Cunliffe's articulate command of language and ideas and vision in his 20 minute TV interview on The Nation in the weekend, can anyone of us honestly imagine the carnage Shearer would have caused himself if he had done the same interview?

Shearer can't manage 10 minutes on student radio without self harming himself. You can't have a political leader under 24 hour suicide watch, it isn't good for the Poll numbers, which are stalling.

The landline polls favour National supporters, if the Pagani Doctrine was working and Labour's step to the right was attracting National voters, they would be seeing Labour's polling rise. They are not. Here are yesterday's Roy Morgan polling.

The question marks keep getting larger over Shearer as a leader, they are not diminishing. Shearer's viability as leader until the election will be tested this November at conference. If an amendment to decrease the Caucus trigger point for a leadership challenge from 67% to 51% is passed, Shearer's future will be decided over the 2012-13 BBQ season.

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