Who remembers every detail of boring old politics eh?
Diary of the last twenty nine hours
7.10am
Let’s begin the day with a poll of the room.
Hands up if you remember this dude.
How about that? Most of you!
Okay, keep your hand up if the reason you remember him is that he wore a bowtie.
Well, that sure is a lot.
And now keep your hand up if you remember him for being the Election Worm-Whisperer.
Yep, still quite a few.
Okay, keep your hand up if you remember him for his long walk to electoral freedom: into the Labour Party and out again; on to the United Party; then to the Jesus Loves A Pig Shooter Party and finally to offer faithful service to Spectator Prime Minister Key.
Not so many hands still in the air now. But fair enough. Who remembers every detail of boring old politics eh?
Actually, quite a few of us do. And if you acquire even a little bit of an interest in politics you tend to make yourself familiar with the history that came before as well.
How odd, then, that Peter Dunne would go on the radio yesterday morning to look askance at the PM saying “Thirty years. That's how long it has taken to get benefits back to the rates they were before the Mother of all Budgets.”
Breathing fresh life into ye olde Alanis Morissette teachable English moment he said he thought it was a bit ironic, the Prime Minister recalling her recollections of the 1991 Budget as an 11-year-old.
I think most of us would struggle to recall our recollections of significant political events at the age of 11.
Cue just about all of local political Twitter saying:
LOLWUT let me give you a list of the big political shit I remember going on when I was still in short pants/pigtails/wearing nomads.
Boy did we get a roll call. The Tour, the Rainbow Warrior, Rogernomics, Ruthenasia, the death of Norman Kirk and you bet I took my chance to reminisce about watching Vern Cracknell on the black and white TV taking the first seat for Social Credit in 1966.
Good grief Peter Dunne, what have you been smoking, brother? Do you imagine for a moment you're going to get anything other from political tragics like us when you question the observational acumen of children?
Maybe it was just an offhand unthinking remark, God knows it's not hard to make them when you're doing a dreary pointless radio panel.
But if he meant it in earnest, well, let’s get real. Anyone who got themselves involved in Labour party politics at any point in the last thirty years would have not got further than 24 hours along without hearing the words Mother of all Budgets and benefit cuts. This has been the longest time coming; a political date with destiny.
If the PM had been just one year old that year, it would still be astonishing if she had not reached office just as familiar with the 1991 budget as with Michael Joseph Savage helping to carry in the furniture.
7.25am
Watching what's happening in Samoa and thinking whatever you write now could be wrong by the afternoon. There is tension, there is manoeuvering. There is also every reason not to write very much at all if you're not in Apia and a lot better-informed.
Mostly, at this hour, I’m thinking how reassuring it is that there is no Samoan military force to turn to for anyone who might think Frank Bainimarama had the right idea.
Hey, hands up if you were aged 11 in 1984! Do you remember how Labour swept Muldoon out of office but, because he decided he knew best, he declined to respect constitutional convention in the transfer of power and caused a currency crisis?
It's a constant in politics that people in office believe they know best and should stay there and it feels like that's playing out in Samoa. It also feels as though the momentum and the future and the right to assume power is with the FAST party (or as I somehow managed to call them repeatedly on the radio three weeks ago the FAME party - this is why I really hesitate to offer much opinion about it) and that in a somewhat fitful but peaceful way, that's where they’ll land. Hope so.
I’ll bet there are plenty of II year-olds in Apia who will remember this day for a long time.
10.45am
Speaking of anyone who might think Frank Bainimarama had the right idea, get a load of the murderous political criminality carried out at 30,000 feet in the airspace above Belarus.
You want to get your political opponent into your hands and into a cell? Issue a bomb threat while he’s above you on a flight from Greece to Lithuania.
Later Ryanair will issue a statement mildly saying: Our FR4978 flight has landed safely in Vilnius. Someone will comment archly:
Ryanair’s statement fails to mention that 6 people didn’t continue on to Vilnius: Roman Protasevich, the Belarusian opposition journalist and his girlfriend who were detained, and four mysterious Russians who decided to end their trip on Minsk.
This is not an observation about political thuggery in Minsk so much as a more general one: I’m finding to harder to remain positive about the state of the world when so much is wrong and bad.
People are being so evil, lazy, selfish, wrongheaded, belligerent and just plain wrong, I feel discouraged and dismayed.
Just by way of illustration:
Possibly things have always been this way; possibly it has grown worse.
My hopeful working thesis for now is that after three months I’m just sorely lacking my usual hit of endless endorphins. Let’s see what happens when I finally start running again next week. Cannot come soon enough.
11.55am
Getting my mind off negative things by thinking back to a vivid point in my memory aged 10. Oh hi again BowTie Guy!
There was an Expo 70 in Japan and boy was the film about this little nation of ours - This Is New Zealand, by the National Film Unit - a great big hit.
Here's a nice interview with its young maker, Hugh Macdonald in which he describes how with no colour processing facility in Miramar it had to be sent to a lab in London, all this amazing footage of our amazing landscape
and they changed them all to English colours - milky and hazy. In the end I had to take clips from the original and say Look, that's the green we have, not the green you’ve got.
I grew up looking at biscuit tins with those English colors: milky hazy. It took a long time for me to understand what the hell was going, on. The green we have, not the green you’ve got.
12.05pm
One final bit of time capsule. I just loved this paragraph in the Phillida Bunkle review of the new Sue Kedgley memoir.
By 1971-2, the Time of Boomer Rapture had passed in the US but descended with tumultuous energy upon New Zealand. It was heralded by the ascension of the formidable figures of Norman Kirk and Germaine Greer. Kedgley deftly managed Greer’s presence and quickly grasped the power of the media to reshape "attitudes and beliefs". She learnt skills organising made-for-media demonstrations which played directly to the single channel national TV audience. These brilliantly conceived protests predictably provoked outraged males into publicly affirming the stereotype of men as angry, posturing bullies. Young men hurried to dissociate themselves from boring fathers by growing big hair, straggly beards and an anxious insistence on ‘free’ sex; even while upholding the male traditions of another beer and magical thinking about the origin of clean socks.
Time of Boomer Rapture! Magical thinking about the origin of clean socks! Just beautiful.
4.00pm
Lew makes a strong point:
4.20pm
Dunne probably doesn't have any memories from when he was eleven because 1965 was the most boring and uneventful year in New Zealand history.
Does not relieve him of responsibility for the deaths caused by his completely incompetent mishandling of the synthetic cannabis (licencing & control) issue and its subsequent, predicted, black market resurgence.
Self-righteous fop.
My memory of the pathetic waka jumper was getting the Ohariu nomination when the incumbent Ken Gray passed. Now there was a man.