Here we go with Judith & John or the ABC of NZ politics part 2

Last week I brought you the first half of a leaked document that is being used to train our new MPs. Of course since then there have been denials from the Government that this document is genuine and even suggestions (heaven forbid) that I made the whole thing up.

Clearly this is another case of brain fade from the ruling party and to prove that I publish for you this week part two of the MP’s primer.

Last week we learned the letters from A for amnesia (or had you forgotten that already – John certainly has), to M for mess which is what Judith and John will have to clean up this week after Smaug lashed out over the weekend. Trying to turn Wellywood in Middle Earth wasn’t such a good idea after all, was it Johnny?

N is for noes which is what you pick when you want to vote against a particular bill (in accordance with the party line of course). Lately it has also come to mean Novopay; a pay system developed to ensure teachers don’t get too powerful (or paid). It was teed up by the last Labour Government and its failings are therefore not the fault of the present Government despite being signed off by them in the face of advice from almost every quarter not to do so.

O is for obfuscation, which is an art you will be trained in for important occasions such as answering direct and confrontational questions from the press. (Does anyone in the Press Gallery still do this?). Simply put, it is a technique that involves using at least five words where one would have done. Your speech is delivered in a circular pattern that leads one inevitably back to the start without divulging anything that even vaguely resembles a direct answer. It has been unkindly suggested that “O” also stands for old-boys’ network, a club where your membership entitles you to preferential career advancement and wealth beyond your wildest dreams, but this is merely an ugly rumour perpetuated by the opposition. There is no such thing as an old boys’ network anymore. The name was first changed to old persons’ network and subsequently to ‘senior citizens’ network’, which as everybody knows is another name for Grey Power and nothing sinister at all.  

P is for posturing and populist. These two are a package deal. Posturing is the art of appearing to take a stand on the issue du jour. But the stand you take when posturing is the one in which the most votes lie so this makes it populist. There is no point in taking a stand on an issue that is likely to cost you votes and by implication, your place on the party list. It is important to remember when playing the posturing card to do so via an obfuscating speech (see under “O” above) to ensure you don’t say anything you might later be held accountable for. 

Q is for quisling. A quisling is not a small goose although the parallels with a bird brain are obvious. It is somebody who displays treachery and fails to recite the party mantra and sides with anything that emanates from the opposition benches. It also applies to coalition parties that join up with the opposition to form a government instead of helping the true party rule as they are born to.

R is for redacted. This is the process whereby dangerous information is removed from official documents to protect the press, the public and others from harm From time to time opposition members and media sources will unreasonably demand official documents and sometimes these will contain information that could compromise National’s security. Usually these are in the form of errors where it is incorrectly stated that a Government Minister knew about a certain person or series of events which that Minister has already repeatedly told Parliament they have no recollection of. To avoid humiliation for the compilers of these documents owing to their lack of accuracy the Government removes these damning pieces of evidence before releasing the documents and this is called redacting.

S is for SkyCity.  SkyCity is a philanthropic organisation that has the best interests of the ordinary New Zealander at heart. They are here to help the Government out by building a world class convention centre that will drag our economy out of the red that the Labour Party took it into and into the black of prosperity. The generosity of this great benefactor is so huge that it has agreed to fork out $402M of its own hard earned money to boost our economy by over $90M per year until the end of time. Furthermore they agreed to do this with no strings attached other than asking the Government to (quite reasonably) extend their gambling licence for a mere 35 years and allow a trifling 230 extra pokie machines and 40 extra gambling tables.

T is for taxation. This is the way Government funds all those free lunches free air travel for you and your family and expenses claims that you will have during your term in Parliament. It is collected by a fair process in which everyone except big business, which is the lifeblood of the country, pays their fair share. It is important to remember that big business has big expenses so it must be given big tax breaks to enable it to employ big numbers of people who can in turn pay big slices of their income in taxation to support us all (in Parliament that is).  

U is for unions a.k.a. the Anti-Christ. Unions are devious cults hell-bent on destroying the country. They are doing this in cahoots with the Labour Party and various other Pinkos. They seem to think that everyone is entitled to have a say in their workplace, the right to a fair wage and various other namby pamby rights such as holidays and sick leave.

V is for vertical integration. This is not only a flash term you can wave about like a big willy and confuse the public, but it is also the secret to business efficiency. Big companies get the opportunity to grow even bigger and to move into more diverse business fields through the medium of vertical integration. To understand it better you could think of it as ‘keeping it all in the family’ which after all makes sense since the family that plays together stays together. For example if you were to start a business where you developed seeds for farmers to plant, then it makes sense that you would also develop chemicals to fight off the diseases and pests they might encounter. Then you would start developing drugs to fight off the diseases people will get when they eat the food grown from those seeds and using those chemicals. It’s only logical to have all those businesses under one banner so you can help everyone at the same time as helping yourself.

W is for whitewash. This is another name for an enquiry into scurrilous allegations from the other side of the house. It gained the name because it is a nice clean way of airing your washing and showing that it is all Persil white and not mucky as alleged by the stone throwing hypocrites on the opposition benches.

X is for Xmas. This is the time of the year when Parliament closes down and you get to mumble some meaningless platitudes before taking off for your holiday home in Hawaii while the voters fight over the last tin of baked beans at the City Mission’s Festive spread.  

Y is for Young Turks. This term does not refer to youths from the Dardanelles, although Turkey was at one time ruled by a party of that name. In this context it used to mean a young movement within the National Party that was named after a similar group in the American Republican Party during the 1960s. This term has now fallen out of use as the modern party is just that; i.e. modern. It doesn’t need stroppy little upstarts trying to change party policy which has been very carefully developed with maximum input from the voters – or at least the ones who make the biggest donations to the election fund.

Z is for Zilland as in New Zilland. This is the correct way to pronounce the name of our fine country as demonstrated by our fine leader who has been setting the bar extremely high in the development of New Zilland Inglush.

So there you have it; the unabridged version of the new MP’s training manual. No expense has been expended on this invaluable resource and as you will have noticed, it is bringing obvious returns with the standard of representation we now have.

But maybe with returns like that we should bolt the gates and not let the buggers back in.

Collapsing banks

It’s a slippery slope when you sup with the devil. The road to hell is paved with good donations. Pride comes before a rockfall. You are judged by the company you are funded by. Don’t air your dirty dealings in public.

How many more mixed metaphors can you think of to describe the shambles that is the current Coalition Government?

The SS National Disgrace has sprung more than a couple of leaks in her hull since that farce we called an election. But what is worse is that closer inspection shows the timbers are rotten to the core.

The election was built on a massive collection of lies, half-truths, deceptions and gagging orders so it should come as no surprise when those who were ‘robbed’ by it uncover more dirty deeds on an almost daily basis. You can’t steal an election using all sorts of dirty tricks and not expect payback.

Who can forget the hissy fit Banksia and Jianqi got into when their carefully staged PR exercise got out of their control?  Police were dragged away from important policing to harass a freelance photographer and apply subtle pressure to the media in general over an inadvertent recording of a discussion in public between two public figures. The court wrapped everything up tightly until. after the election and the police issued a heavy warning in support of the two little gnomes, despite the fact most of this was legally dubious at best and downright inaccurate at worst.

Let’s not forget the figures none of us were allowed to see that would have either justified (yeah right) or disproved the logic being Jianqi’s planned asset sales. ‘Trust me”, little Jianqi seems to be saying. But why would you? He’s been caught out that many times in the last 12 months; you might think the Teflon must be getting at least a bit tarnished.

I never thought I’d say it, but Whinny has been a very valuable member of this current Parliament. He has not given the National Disgrace so much as a centimetre of wriggle room. He has called for Banksia to be stood down until all his alleged sins of omission and commission have been dealt with. He points out that Jianqi insisted Helen Cluck do the same with him when he was a Minister and there was a matter of some donations to NZ First that were alleged to be outside the rules. At that time Key had said that was what he would do if he had a Minister in that position. Interesting how quickly things can change when the boot is in another mouth, eh?  

Jianqi says Banksia has told him directly he has done no wrong and that’s good enough for him. That might be all very well in certain circumstances but when there is evidence to suggest Banksia has had an amazing case of amnesia over so much stuff, you’d think the PM might be a tad more cautious.

However arrogance is a style Jianqi has always carried off well. He somehow manages to adopt a ‘what me?’ face and an ability to act incredibly disingenuously and give the impression he is an innocent in a strange world instead of the puppet-master he really is.

As Whinny so cleverly quipped, “Mr Key has certain principles, if you don't like them than he's got others.”

The Banksia/Dotcom/SkyCity affair is increasingly looking like the loaded gun that will have Jianqi’s eye out. It is clear Banksia has been economical with the truth over his dealings with the large, apparently genial and definitely memorable Kim Dotcom. As Whinny said, it is rather hard to forget the megasized boss of Megaupload and it would appear Banksia might have the first stages of dementia if he can’t remember meeting the man mountain at least four times over the last 18 months or so, especially when at least two of those meeting lasted for over two hours. Even Banksia’s old mate Mofo Williamson this week confirmed Banksia had approached him seeking approvals for Herr Dotcom with the OIO.

Of course Dotcom is not the only very animated skeleton in Banksia’s electoral piggy closet; there is the matter of SkyCity who very generously gave $15,000 each to Banksia and Lemon Brown, though only the Lemon seemed to remember it....or declare it.

The Oppos need work together and keep digging around Banksia as I believe they will find a lot more skeletons. If he goes down it will be a significant rockfall for the coalition who will then have a zero vote majority unless they can fool the Maori Party, which given its current leadership shouldn’t be too hard. But being able to buy the occasional vote on the occasional issue would not be a sustainable situation for them and the good old Vote of No Confidence could probably be rolled out quite successfully at that stage.

I would suggest the best place to start is to closely scrutinise all his electoral donations both for Mayor and for Parliament. According to Granny Herald his electoral return (for the mayoralty) contained 45 other allegedly anonymous donations and five of those were for $25,000. Given Banksia's reluctance to own up to the two Dotcom cheques and the SkyCity one, who knows who else might have their finger up his bum working him? People like Jianqi like to tell us everything is about transparency but from where most of us are sitting it would appear there is a lot of gunk on the windshield of our ship of state.

I reckon a couple more good shots across the bow could sink this tub. Action stations!

What if they held a party and nobody stood?

I wasn’t going to do another election blog before the end of the RWC (kerchang – sound of copyright lawyers tallying my sins), but events have driven me to it. I mean the idea of Don and Rog sharing a toke or two and sniggering about how JB just ain’t hip, was too tempting to leave.

I can’t help but wonder if Don HAS actually been at the weed, and consuming far more than is good for him, because to pull an idea like that out without first sorting things out with the one horse they are backing who might just get over the finish line seems, well pretty out of it, actually.

Without it ever being one of their poster campaigns, ACT has always been in favour of decriminalisation of dope, albeit more because of their views around personal freedom, but to chuck it out front at this stage of an election year does sound a tad desperate. It is all the more bizarre when espoused by somebody as unlikely as old Dong.

But then I guess the ACT Party has become a bizarre animal that just keeps getting weirder by the day. I don’t know how many of you have visited their website lately, but it is fronted by two grinning geriatrics and a younger male who appears to be gurning. Either that or he is from Dannevirke or Tasmania or Barnsley or...(fill in your own local inbred capital here).

First stop should be the ‘People’ tab which reveals ‘ACT’s People’. The only trouble here is that this includes Rodders who has basically been fired, Bosco who has allegedly just quit, Hevva who was also shown the door, Hills who has also been rather unceremoniously dumped and the aged incumbent Rog who has also signalled his retirement from Parliament.

And if that isn’t bizarre enough; take a look at their 2011 Party List. Now here we have a really funny situation. When you click on any of the three links in the top of the site to meet the team you encounter a most unusual ‘list’.

Grinning inanely back at you from the top is Dong and sitting in number two spot is one of the more shadowy members of the ACT of Stupidity Party, and number three slot is also occupied by a similar dark silhouette of a man. To save you looking it would seem that candidates two and three on the AoS Party list are top secret and we not only may not see their faces; neither are we allowed to know their names. Just fills you with confidence, doesn't it voters?

In other words the ACT list currently has nobody at numbers two or three. This seems bizarre enough on its own, but how do the others sitting at positions four to ten feel about that? I can imagine Dong having to explain how they are all worthy of their respective positions, but it’s just that none of them are good enough to fill places two or three. Dong apparently doesn’t want any of his current batch getting too close to him and presumably has a couple of tame patsies lined up to fill those spots nearer the date when it is too late for any of the others to make a fuss.

That seems the most logical explanation to me. Either that or the AoS Party simply doesn’t want anyone to notice they can’t even muster a list of ten candidates for the election. Perhaps Dong thought the voters were too stupid to notice he had not named anyone for slots two or three?

On the other hand, with this talk of decriminalising the old electric puha, maybe Dong has an even more bizarre agenda. What if he intends to actually run that list as is at the election, and he was simply too stoned when he put it together to noticed his omissions? And what if the electoral commission accepted said list? And what if the ACT of Stupidity Party actually pulled enough votes to land more than one of their space cadets in Parliament? – I know it’s a pretty wild concept, that last paragraph, but bear with me. What then would happen? Would they have to allocate an empty seat in the chamber for the invisible ACT list member?

I know this sounds nonsensical; but let’s not forget a certain John Hadfield who was able to jump parties mid-term, and win a bye-election on the ticket of an unregistered party. Furthermore he now draws a larger draught from the public trough on the grounds he is the leader of a Parliamentary Party that wasn’t even registered to contest the election that put him in as its leader.

Maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss wild speculation where our political system is involved?