Listen to this while reading
Some people may
have been shocked at the dirty laundry put on display last week when Jamie-Lee
Ross and Simon Bridges went head to head in the public sandpit like two junkies high on cat pee but if you have spent any time in Wellington such stories are
just the tip of the iceberg.
Take for instance
the following:
·
A prominent minister in the last National
Government was known to have such an insatiable lust for hiring pretty blonde
women to work in his office that staff started to screen applicants based on
hair colour
·
The speakers apartment, on the top of Parliament,
has been the scene of several drug fuelled orgies involving MPs, sex workers
and parliamentary staff
·
There are at least three brothels operating within
5 minutes’ walk of the Beehive; one set in a high class apartment building on
the Terrace, another in an oddly decorated house slightly further up the
terrace and one just across the road from Parliament: all have MPs as clients
·
Political lobbyists with access to parliament have
provided drugs and sexual services
to
MPs as part of their job
·
A highly paid Wellington courtesan operates under
the cover of being a “communications consultant” to MPs and has her expensive Agent Provocateur
lingerie insured as a “business expense”
·
Parliamentary services staff in the mid-2000s
noted the operation of an individual they nicknamed “the groupie” whose mission
it seemed to be to sleep with every male MP in parliament
·
An acquaintance of mine who has worked in the
offices of five MPs, from various parties, over the years noted that all of them had affairs with
their staff, all were married at the time and the offenders were both male and
female MPs
·
The wives of at least two current MPs met their
mates after working in their offices and having workplace affairs with them
Seven of the above
are confirmed true and one remains suspected but unproven, you guess which one.
The point of the
above is not to provide salacious titbits but to show that the kind of dirty
laundry exposed by the Simon Bridges/Jamie-Lee Ross spat is not anything new if
you work on or near the beltway in Wellington. Such things are, in fact,
depressingly mundane.
And while the
public may enjoy seeing MPs going at each other the reality is that it drags politics
in general further down the slippery slope it has gone in the last decade (as
Tracy Watkins has recently noted in Stuff).
It also doesn’t help
that a recent round of research has shown that MPs are increasingly divorced from the general public they seek to represent (as well as reality) and most current MPs are now the kind
of career politician that have no real life experience or basis in reality to
lead a country or represent their electorate (given that the report notes
distinct lack of MPs with any farming or trade background).
But Watkins is being
deliberately naive if she thinks that this recent round of childlike squabbling
is going to bring about a happier healthier parliament or more moral MPs (come on Tracy, at least try and be realistic on this one) by the sudden realization
that someone has gone too far.
Still, parliament remains
operational by recently having the third reading of the highly controversial and ultimately dangerous CPTTP trade deal (boo, hiss!) while also seeing a bill
that would empower the Commerce Commission to look at anti-competitive behavior,
and specifically the fuel market, also pass its third reading (Yaaay!) and thus
showing that despite all the sexual shenanigans things can and do get done
there.
Unfortunately all
of this is being undermined by parties selling out democracy, wholesale, just
so someone can buy their way into parliament (as National has recently been
exposed doing) and no bill passing its third reading is going to offset that.
Nor is having
people like National Party president Peter Goodfellow or Deputy Leader Paula
Bennett stirring the pot or obviously playing the game for their own ends, by keeping
Simon in the dark about Ross’s bad behaviour going to do National any favours
by leaving Bridges looking naked and vulnerable as leader.
Thus we get to the
most recent political poll results, done in the wake of Nationals spectacular
meltdown, and what do you know, National down, Labour up, Greens up and Judith
Collins (up several points to 5% as preferred PM) breathing down the neck of
Simon Bridges (down 3 points to 7% as preferred PM) like the villain in a
slasher movie.
Of course the
reality is that with Jacinda Ardern now sitting on 42% as preferred PM it makes
not a whit if its Judith or Simon who polls higher at this point as all
Nationals internal ruckus has done is expose further the rift in National
between the various party factions and your seven or five percent won’t be
making the nut on election night against Labours 45% and Jacinda’s 42%.
And the even
grimmer reality is with the Greens up 1 to 7% Labour and the Greens can govern
alone as Winston and NZ First went nowhere at 5%. This means that the direct
political outcome of all of Nationals infighting was to boost Labour, Jacinda and the Greens while weaken National and Bridges and set Judith’s heart
all aflutter.
Unfortunately for
Judith “I stab from the front” Collins, National does not appear suicidal
enough yet to let her be leader which is a good thing because polling or
otherwise National are now teetering on the brink of the political abyss that Labour
fell into, with it nine cruddy years in opposition and endless leader swaps,
which is a good thing because letting Judith run the show would bring the party
to a place which it does not want to go.
Yes, the Judith
Collins, as the Donald Trump of NZ politics scenario has been discussed before
but not only is the NZ political landscape not polarized enough to facilitate
such antics but Collins is such a tainted figure that it would be easier to
leave Simon in charge and see what rocks he can steer the ship onto rather than
allow Collins to rally the atavistic hordes to her dubious crusade.
Hunter S Thompson
once said Richard Nixon represented the dark side of US politics and the same
could be said for Judith Collins and politics in NZ. Just as Nixon did
everything to advance his own political goals at the expense of all others so to
would Collins do anything to get her backside on the throne, and NZ would be
poorer for it if she did.
However, never say never as given how National has handled this crisis Collins might somehow exploit the chaos to grab the top job as Leader but she would never
make it to PM and once that door is opened it cannot be closed and National would soon be begging John (or even Max) Key to come back and lead them rather than sink further into the murk that Labour has only recently climbed out of because if Collins for Leader, why not Brownlee, Bennett or (shudder...) Nick Smith.*
And there is even
the rumor doing the rounds that Jamie-Lee Ross’s actions and later meltdown
were subtly engineered by Collins (who Ross was a previous supporter of) so
that the ultimate result would be to weaken Bridges and boost her own profile
(and remove potential contender Ross) all in one foul swoop.
Given how fractious National has become and with Bridges smack-down on certain MPs its clear that such a scenario could be used for personal advantage but it remains just a theory and while the path to the top job always has a few bodies to step over it would not be sound to engineer some sort of fratricidal bloodbath just to be queen. Or would it?
Given how fractious National has become and with Bridges smack-down on certain MPs its clear that such a scenario could be used for personal advantage but it remains just a theory and while the path to the top job always has a few bodies to step over it would not be sound to engineer some sort of fratricidal bloodbath just to be queen. Or would it?
I don’t know where
this will end but it’s safe to say that, after a brief hiatus in the wake of
the 2017 general election, FukYoo Politix is back with a vengeance.
Is it any wonder
that politicians are viewed in the same vein as child sex predators and lawyers?
And its a mood noted elsewhere so with that in mind rather than burn the Beehive to the ground and behead all sitting MPs, their staff and pets, here are my suggestions to a better Parliament, more open political parties, cleaner MPs and a healthier democracy:
And its a mood noted elsewhere so with that in mind rather than burn the Beehive to the ground and behead all sitting MPs, their staff and pets, here are my suggestions to a better Parliament, more open political parties, cleaner MPs and a healthier democracy:
- Term limits of being an MP (say four terms/12 years)
- No political donations to parties over 10K and all donations over $1000 must be declared in full
- Lobbyists banned from parliament and not allowed select or individual access to MPs or senior govt staff
- Pay of MPs cut to under 100K
- All MPs must have at least 15 years experience in non political/government jobs or roles related to their portfolio (ie must have been a farmer to be minister in any farming related role in government)
- Repeal the Waka jumping law
None of the above are particularly extreme and yet they would be a lot easier to deal with for MPs and parliament than allowing the ugly, angry and sometimes violent specter of populism/FukYoo politix to predominate and ultimately do the same thing.
Reader can suggest their own in the comments.
*-Amy Adams omitted because she is the obvious choice to succeed Bridges and go against Jacinda but I suspect that National male egos may not be ready for that yet (much as Labour was not able to stomach such a thought until they had scrapped the bottom of the barrel so many time that Andrew Little was leader before things got so desperate that Jacindamania happened. Also Adams may be playing the long game and lettering Judith run herself out of contention by tilting now, rather than when its less messy. Its what I would do.
Reader can suggest their own in the comments.
*-Amy Adams omitted because she is the obvious choice to succeed Bridges and go against Jacinda but I suspect that National male egos may not be ready for that yet (much as Labour was not able to stomach such a thought until they had scrapped the bottom of the barrel so many time that Andrew Little was leader before things got so desperate that Jacindamania happened. Also Adams may be playing the long game and lettering Judith run herself out of contention by tilting now, rather than when its less messy. Its what I would do.
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