Spare Room Be our guest…

By Kirk MacGibbon

I’ve been reading.

“[He] talks about the nature of the New Zealand electorate. He asserts that it is basically conservative. Whenever Labour has been elected Government, it’s been because people wanted to conserve the little they had left; not because they desired any great socialist reforms. People vote Labour, only when it seems there’s no other way of stopping the rot.”

Those words were spoken by Norman Kirk when he was Leader of the Opposition in January 1972. He’d taken the leadership of the Labour Party back in 1965 — and lost the two subsequent elections. I can’t think of another leader who pulled a double loss and survived. Mike Moore lost twice (although the second defeat was by the smallest of margins and can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of Chris Laidlaw — who managed to lose Wellington Central because he thought he couldn’t — and one Heather Simpson, who lost Heretaunga (Upper Hutt) because she preferred not to campaign in RSAs, working men’s clubs and other establishments frequented by, well, men. Bless her.)

Kirk’s assessment has stood the test of each subsequent election — bar 1987 of course. The New Zealand electorate is still fundamentally conservative. And Gen Y are only going to exacerbate the thing. Helen Clark may have gone a smack too far in the social policy pen, but on pretty much everything else she was her Waikato farming parents. And Cullen, well, Tory hating is entrenched. Didn’t someone once say that the problem with conservatism is that its just too easy? Hunter?

Anyway, I’ll come to my point: Phil Goff needs to find another act if he wants to seriously put the wobbles on National. They are seasoned operators and have settled in to their seats pretty well. I’m still not entirely convinced they’re actually doing much. True, Paula Bennett has so far proved herself an able canceller of parties and a formidable fight breaker-upper. Oh how solo mothers have changed from my day. I think the late 80s were the glory days of the DPB. With the stock market tanked and no-one doing much, the solo mother sustained things in a way that Treasury could never understand. But still no actual, tangible, debatable policy though.

The chairman of the Otago Health Board is expecting to be sacked, but Tony Ryall will only admit to “considering” it. I dunno about you, but all this has the threatening ring of the wooden spoon draw being opened. What’s wrong with a good old sacking anyway? Someone nicks not just a few grand, but tens of millions of dollars to fund a lifestyle that anyone but a Dunedinite would find just a little unusual and someone shouldn’t be “pursuing other interests”? Its gotta have been on someone’s watch…

I find it particularly galling that this “lavish” (isn’t that a great word? Haven’t yet experienced it myself, but I fully intend to. This year.) lifestyle was actually wasted on an IT manager and his mate. The horror!

I’d have asked a few questions, of that you can be sure. But then I’m an Aucklander. We always ask questions. Just not often the right ones.

By the way, have we definitively agreed the period of the 100 days yet? I still don’t think we’re any the wiser, despite the NZ Herald article echoing my call for clarification. It’s a conspiracy, I’m sure. Then again, the metaphors have changed and we’re now talking about “rolling mauls” which, if they are to really gain territory have to be full of feints, dummies and well, outright deception. And then the try. OK so now the game becomes who is doing the work?

Not Phil Goff I don’t think. While he accuses the Government of doing nothing, he’s not exactly shaking the world himself. Didn’t Labour have a mini-budget all lined up to go if they won? Well, where’s their plan as to what needs to be done? Let’s hear it. We haven’t really heard too much from David Cunliffe, who should be looking to put the early slipper into English, to let him know that there’s still someone else who can do the job.

Key makes for a hard target for someone like Goff. Goff knows too much. Key doesn’t. And when pragmatism rules, intelligence becomes a moot point. Goff is also a thoroughly decent individual who is going to have stop dancing around the ring and start coming up with some solid, punishing jabs. In other words, he’s going to have to start playing the man. Is he going to be up to the task of taking on someone as ephemeral as John Key?

And so, having probably employed the services of way too many metaphors, I think I’ll leave the final words to Big Norm: “Look, this country hasn’t moved forward since 1949. We’ve been going round and round and round on a plateau, always just avoiding falling over the edge.”

Read more posts by The Outlaw:
Humpty Dumpty and putting things back together again
Where’s Our Government?
Of Honeymoons and Little Men