Spare Room Be our guest…

By Kirk MacGibbon

Is the silly season starting early?

Funny how a commentary on my dislike of Rodney Hide in my last epistle ends up segueing nicely into an opening paragraph about his new mission on behalf of our faithful canine brothers. Apparently, they’ve got it a bit tough. While I think Rodney has well and truly gone barking over this one, I guess he must be given credit for inadvertently giving us an answer to that age-old question as to ‘Who let the dogs out?’ Rodney did, folks. What a git.

Mind you, it hasn’t been a great week for politicians whose names aren’t John Key. Poor old Taito Phillip Field gets six years in the big (tiled?) house for taking stuff from a people who are used to giving stuff to get things done in their own country. Samoans also have a cultural tradition that recognises the advisability of partnering requests with payments, to grease the squeaky wheel. ‘Gee, graft, meet corruption.’

I liked Phillip Field. So did David Lange. It’s good that the big man did not live to see the day his protégé went down. We all know that the member for Mangere (Field, not Lange) did not do these things with a corrupt heart. But he must have known it was a bit dodgy, otherwise he wouldn’t have made such a clumsy and ill-fated attempt to stone-wall the investigations. That’s the part that I think condemns him the most.

I don’t think six years is excessive either – given he’ll only serve two and probably most of those at home. He was a member of the most powerful institution in the land and he used that position to get things done for free. The wrong way. It’s not as if we’re not aware that politicians don’t actually have to dip into their own pockets for much at all – e.g. Mrs English’s request for another $20 for another hour of housecleaning per week. And we generally don’t begrudge them what they do get. But there’s a way of doing things legitimately. Field’s crime was that he got his Thai tilers to do it on the back hand, when all he had to do was submit their invoices to Parliamentary Services. He’d have still paid nothing and the workers would have got paid into the bargain.

Dumb, really.

Then we’ve been treated to Part 2 of the adventures of the Scarecrow and Mrs King, aka the Hon Chris Carter and Peter Kaiser Flying Circus. This was brilliant theatre. The last time Carter was questioned about his excessive tendency to be elsewhere, he squealed that he was being persecuted for being gay.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We finally have incontrovertible proof that if you want to really par-tay, there is no really no better option than to go hang out with the homos. Many of us have known this for ages of course – take a bow Darkie, Clint, Mark, Johnny and Dario – and have many a hazy memory as a consequence. $10,000 for a two day trip to Sydney? I’m not so much outraged as totally bummed (no pun intended) that I never got an invite.

Carter joins Jonathan Hunt’s Muriwai taxi bill and Tuku Morgans $89 underpants as symbols of Parliamentary profligacy. And it all serves as a bit of a sad footnote to the final excesses of the Labour Party in Government. Rather ironic given they swept to power on a theme of ending extravagance and excess. There is perhaps no better argument for term limits on Prime Ministers (8 consecutive years is my suggestion) than the arrogance of any political party after three terms in power. Having to go into that third election with a new leader might stop the rot, perhaps. But I doubt it.

In other political machinations, Finance Minister Bill English finally choked and decided to pay $32,000 to keep his leadership aspirations alive, rather than tough out continual harrassment by the Labour Opposition. He has after all, got better things to do.

But good on TV3’s Duncan Garner for softening us up a bit for the silly season to come. I want more of it, and I encourage everyone to send in ideas for new things that ‘Big Dunc’ could put in Official Information Requests about. Here are my suggestions: How many MPs spouses have paid for their trips with spouses on official business since the Prime Minister’s new guidelines were issued, compared with the same time last year? I bet some of those National MPs are beginning to wonder at the wisdom of installing a multi-squillionaire as their Leader. I mean, he can easily pay for his wife and kids to come along on one of his overseas jaunts, and half New Zealand if he wanted to.

How many times has Lockwood Smith used the Parliamentary pool, since assuming the role of Speaker?

How big is the Green Party’s ‘Superannuation Fund’? How much of taxpayers’ money has been paid into houses owned by the fund via Accommodation Allowances paid by Parliamentary Services, and how much do retired MPs get?

How much money have National MPs spent on media training and image consultants since they came to power?

Because when I saw a picture of Prime Minister John Key in Samoa staring sombrely into the distance in front of a large boat sitting in the middle of the road, I wasn’t sure whether I was seeing our own dear Leader, or Noddy visiting Toytown. I guess that now that he’s been made a Samoan chiefly type, he was thinking about…. tiles.