Sex, lies and Judith Collins

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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?

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:

• 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.