We took his advice and I think that it was probably proven right by the various announcements National Party people made during this past January.
These sank without a trace almost immediately.
Though I'm sure there were more, I recall National's MP for Whangārei, who belongs to the medical profession, claiming that there was a shortage of some vaccine only to demonstrate on his GP database that there wasn't. Then there was Todd McLay, National's spokesman on overseas trade, apparently "demanding" to know what would happen to New Zealand's trade with Britain after it departed the European Union.
This is a question that no one could possibly answer as it requires the gift of foresight, so it was ignored.
The best and most memorable National Party twitch during the holidays was the "promotion" of deputy leader Paula Bennett to some sort of position as special spokeswoman for drug reform.
I can only guess that National Party leader Simon Bridges had decided to seek some party-political advantage out of the 2020 referendum on the legalisation of marijuana, even though he concedes that quite a few of his MPs will vote in favour of the measure.
Newly promoted Paula immediately announced that she'd indulged in marijuana during her teenage years and tried to launch what quickly became a risible scare campaign, with visions of marijuana favoured ice-blocks (or something like that) to get kids hooked on the dreaded weed at a young age.
This performance risks her getting dubbed "pothead Paula" and might justifiably cause speculation that her marijuana use in her teens had adversely affected her adolescent brain development, one of the best arguments against legalisation.
Though leader of the Opposition is a miserable job under any circumstances and Simon Bridges has the added disadvantage of following genuinely talented National Party leaders, not even his worst enemy would wish the Jamie-Lee Ross business on him.
Ross re-emerged last week and probably managed to destroy another political career besides his own by contriving to get the name of a fellow National MP with whom he had an affair into the media.
He'd attempted to do this before and although the mainstream media had refused to take his bait and name the woman involved, the fact that there is now a police investigation into a text message originating from a phone number associated with the fellow MP means that her name can be made public.
Parliament is the same as any other workplace – with its inmates having affairs, their marriages breaking up and all of the normal other dramas.
Matthew Hooton, with whom I appear on National Radio, worked at Parliament and once described the place as "like a coeducational boarding school with alcohol".
During my long stint as Labour Party president I was grateful for late night Auckland flights which meant that I could attend evening meetings at Parliament but still get home.
I didn't therefore see much of the parliamentary social scene.
There are, however, some important lessons in this sad sequence of events one of which is that all public figures should be aware that text messages once sent have a life of their own.
Part of my warnings to new MPs was that a line that "if it's put on paper, it can be in the paper", and with the headlong development of electronic communication, the danger of having your most private musings becoming public is magnified.
I read the offending text which had been forwarded to the cellphone of a friend who has a job at Parliament and the whole lot is much richer than the fragment made public.
Playwright William Congreve nailed it three hundred years ago when he wrote:
Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.
Could be a fun year!
- Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.
