Intensive care awards – Primary care

Another year has come to an end and if you believe the seriously deranged, (and who wouldn’t – look at the government our fellow citizens elected), the entire world is actually ending as I write this.

Traditionally at year’s end people look at the high achievers for the year just gone and hand out plaudits*. These are very difficult little things to wrap as they aren’t actually physical objects; more like the mean man’s present. In fact you can’t really do much with them at all, despite the fact they are relatively easy to hand out. To be precise, the only way you can offer plaudits is by hand, so I guess what I am handing out is something less substantial than a plaudit as there are no hands involved apart from the two fingers on the keyboard (and possibly pointing upwards for the benefit of some of the recipients of these – audits. That’s what we’ll call them. Audits for idiots might be more accurate.

It has been a busy year on the idiot front and thus it is impossible to rank the recipients n order of merit (?). So I will simply randomly select a few over the next couple of weeks in particular order or all over the place like a mad woman’s shit as an old mate of mine used to say. And that is probably the appropriate description because it mirrors pretty accurately how most of them performed over the last twelve months.

First cab to crash into a truck in this careless coterie would have to be HeckYeah Parata or Lady Gardiner as I think she will soon have to become again. HeckYeah’s list of cock-ups in her role as Minister of Illiteracy is far too long to list here. Suffice to say she is likely to be back at home as a Lady of leisure sometime soon because even that simpering little twat of a Prime Monster is getting tired of all the flak he’s copping because of her.

Actually it should come as no surprise to him that she has failed so monumentally. Cock-ups and controversy have followed this dozy cow about for years. The fact that the National Disgrace Party took her on as an MP and gave her a ministership to run aground tells you (a) what poor leadership can get you and (b) how much they care about education.

A quick scan of HeckYeah’s CV reveals that in 1995 she and her equally self-serving husband Sir Weary Gardiner were the subjects of an investigation by then State Services Commissioner Don Hunn over the purchase of two vehicles for Weary who was the CEO of Te Puni Kokiri at the time. Although they were both cleared of any illegal activity at the time, significantly both cars were returned to the Ministry for re-sale by auction.

In 1999 HeckYeah was under scrutiny again. This time her consultancy firm had provided ‘ongoing high quality Maori advice (which is presumably different altogether to ordinary high quality advice free of ethnic tags) to WINZ at a cost of $207,500. How ‘high quality’ it was I’ll leave you to judge apart from mentioning that the late Rod Donald raised it as a criticism in the house due to the fact that the Maori unemployment rate rose by 2% following this ‘high quality’ advice.

Then in 2003 HeckYeah raised the ire of Murray McCully after the Ministry of Economic Development had wasted, I mean spent $240,000 of taxpayers’ money on Treaty of Waitangi training courses run by (you guessed it) HeckYeah’s company again.

In another move that shows her consummate lack of judgement HeckYeah was appointed to the board of Maori Television in 2001 and resigned two months later citing a lack of funds. I’d say that was a pretty lucky escape for Maori TV, because she would have been sure to fuck it up if she’d stayed around.

HeckYeah stood for the Wellington Central electorate at the 2002 election and thankfully the capital’s citizens proved too smart to elect her. Thankfully she also missed out on her each way bet with the Nats not getting enough party votes to bring her in either. It got a bit sticky later on when MoFo Williamson got himself offside with the party hierarchy and it was only thanks to the elevation of well-known Maori basher Dong Brash to leader that HeckYeah wasn’t hauled in to replace MoFo.

Interestingly Dong nearly saved us all from this useless woman with his Orewa rotary club speech. After that Weary and HeckYeah contemplated leaving the Nats. Unfortunately for us and the teachers of this nation they did not and after a suitable period of blubbing over her 2002 disappointment HeckYeah came back in 2008 and stood for the Mana electorate. Once again the voters had more sense than the Nats and rejected her again, but this time she had secured (begged, borrowed or stolen?) a suitably high place on the list and this time her each way bet paid off and she was elected despite being roundly rejected by the electorate.  

In 2010 HeckYeah became a Cabinet Minister when another of the party faithful slipped and grazed her knees. Pansy made a Wong decision to use taxpayer money to help her husband promote his business and she was toast and HeckYeah was slipped into her portfolio.

Also in 2010 HeckYeah actually won the Mana seat in a bye-election after sitting member Winnie Laban had resigned to pursue greener pastures. It was nothing more than a lucky break as she was the only candidate for the seat with others realising there wasn’t a lot to be gained from holding a seat for just a few months before a general election. However HeckYeah with that impeccable judgement we have seen since she became a Minister went for it with the idea of securing it into the future. Fortunately the electorate turned out again in halfway decent numbers in 2011 and she lost it again, but by now she had enough clout having been a Minister albeit for about four and a half seconds and only as a subbie off the bench, to be well enough placed on the list to get in again after being rejected by the voters.

HeckYeah therefore is a worthy recipient of the inaugural and inauspicious Money & Titles Talk award because it is hard, given her history to imagine what the hell else caused her to become the Minister of Illiteracy.

*a plaudit is actually a round of applause – so I guess you could say we are giving the winners the clap. 

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!