Peter Carr
The weekend that has just passed by marks the start of the six-month run up to the nation’s next chance to populate the green leather seats next door to the aptly named Beehive.
During that half year period the wheels of government will grind on for only four months. The remaining two will see the nation spin out into blathering rhetoric aimed at wooing the wider electorate. Aka the Great Shut Down.
Peter Carr
So, imagine a large rugby ground where the players who should be grinding their way to one end or the other are running around in about six different shirts completely unable to carry the ball in one (of two) simple directions.
And baying at their heels will be the poorly corralled media where a soundbite of any weird nature will get the writer a moment of glory but little true return. Just last week we witnessed the sad retreat of a well-spoken senior TV journalist who was hung out to dry by the ever-baying collegiate that is the parliamentary press gallery dragging out a (12 months ago) verbal slip. She labelled a fellow journalist as behaving in a manner contrary to her own possible social beliefs then rightly apologised at the time. That she attempted to corral some fast-running junior minister into a forbidden corner of the parliamentary buildings recently was the final straw for the ever-correct Speaker. And was his ruling in any way possibly political?
The mayor of Auckland very recently set out his usually forthright view – in this case suggesting that New Zealand ceases to have the ridiculous triennial tit-for-tat reversal of legislation and administration that is dragging this fine country down to a level so low that we are becoming a cross between Zimbabwe and Myanmar. He postulates that a two party (the only two real parties with any real clout) coalition should hold hands in a joint governance of our country. Some will see this as crazy, but what have we got to lose?
And what of the local (Cambridge) scene? How do we perceive how the parliamentary seat we share with far-off Taupō will settle this time around? Here we have a hard-working very busy (too busy?) multi-portfolio Minister as our long-standing representative in the House. It has been my experience that too many portfolios at a high-level cause angst back in the member’s seat.
So, six months out, we have coming in to challenge our current MP a well prepared and equally well-honed and educated member of his party that should see him relatively high on the yet-to-be-published party list. Should the current incumbent retain her seat there is every chance that our district will have two members in the House to represent our wishes.
Is that a bad thing? I think not – but it is an even better die to cast should the country take the route that is successful in Ireland where the two major parties are in the parliamentary bed together?
