I don’t know much about Manukau mayor and Auckland Supercity mayoral candidate Len Brown, but this I do know: the guy has fire in his belly, and is prepared to stand and be judged by the authorities and his constituents.

This speech (audio, or edited video here if you can get it to work) is old-fashioned public-sphere politics — both rhetorical and substantive — done properly. He admits misusing his council credit card, calls in the highest authority in the land to investigate it, and says let the cards fall as they may.

This is an object lesson on accountability and due process for Chris Carter. Two senior progressive politicians, both fighting for their political lives over the same issue, and two radically different approaches. Where Carter has recoiled from public scrutiny and repeately refused to take any responsibility for his wrongdoing, Brown has done the opposite, calling for the highest standard of oversight and demonstrating that he will accept its outcome. He has both appealed to the values and culture of liberal democracy in asking that assessments be made on the substance of the allegations against him, and appealed to liberal democracy’s civic institutions to provide the best possible basis for that judgement.

Win or lose the election, Brown has acted with integrity and demonstrated his commitment to democracy, and as far as that goes, he’s already beaten Carter hands-down. But even in terms of electoral advantage, he has played a huge liability into a potential — depending on what the A-G’s investigation shows up — advantage. While such heartfelt contrition is a poor substitute for not having done wrong in the first place, the electorate likes a candidate who is prepared to stand up and be counted like this, and moreover, it tends to like a candidate whose commitment to the job is as strong as Brown’s clearly is. So this mayoral race just got interesting.

L