5:30 AM Sunday Jun 16, 2013
Sometimes I despair at the
stupidity of some of the people who run our country.
Peter Dunne built his
reputation over three decades as someone smart and reliable. I was once told by
a wise old union boss that the only thing anyone could ever hope for was
respect from your opponents and love from your family.
The tragic self-immolation
of Dunne destroyed in a twinkle his life work's reputation. As his downfall was
triggered by a too-close relationship with a female journalist, the support of
his family may also now be at risk.
Like Act's John Banks,
Dunne is relegated to being a lone mocked creature shuffling around the
corridors of Parliament, limping through to the next election on the taxpayers'
dime before his now-sullied political career is ignobly extinguished.
All political careers end
in failure, just not as humiliating as these two. But these two aren't alone.
What was going through
Minister of Police Anne Tolley's brain this week when she defended the
front-runner to be the next police commissioner over his comments that he
believed a dead cop's integrity was beyond reproach - even though that same man
was found to have planted evidence against an innocent man?
Earlier, Tolley attacked my
union for claiming her cops took discounted meals from fast-food chains at the
same time as roughing up their employees on strike, even though television
cameras filmed the "police discount" key on the cash registers.
And don't even get me
started on Hekia Parata.
Is there anything she
touches that doesn't turn into a disaster? She spends her time parroting inane
sound bites while her personal and department senior staff seek the exit door.
Before you think I'm being
too one-eyed, what did Phil Goff, Kris Faafoi, Annette King and Clayton
Cosgrove think they were doing accepting free seats in SkyCity's VIP box at the
All Blacks' game last week?
Nice for them to get their
snouts in the trough while the people who vote for them pay for uncomfortable
seats in the cold outside.
Attacking SkyCity for using
its political influence to get itself a sweetheart deal is legitimate politics.
But the hypocrisy of cosying up on SkyCity's dime loses any advantage Labour
had over John Key's unpalatable deal-making with SkyCity. Did those MPs not
understand that SkyCity didn't invite them because it just happened to have
four spare tickets?
SkyCity knows full well
that if National loses the next election, its pokies-for-a-convention-centre
deal is at risk. Therefore it makes good sense to be nice to a few Labour MPs.
The cliché is true, there
really isn't any such a thing as a free lunch. In the situation last Saturday,
it's not too hard to imagine, after a few beers, our worthy guests winking to
their hosts not to worry about Labour's public antics as it's really only those
pesky Greens who take anti-gambling seriously.
Despite National's glee, I
give David Shearer a pass as he wasn't a guest and popped in for only a few
minutes to talk to someone present without partaking of the hospitality.
However, Goff's explanation
that he accepted the free VIP tickets only so he could meet SkyCity honchos to
tell them what he really thought about the SkyCity deal was just embarrassing.
Maybe he planned on using the halftime break to turn on his hosts?
Maybe our politicians aren't as dumb as we think. Maybe the problem is
that they think we're dumb.
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