KEY POINTS:
After the Press Gallery Christmas Party in 2000 which I had helped to organise, I received an invoice from the piano player we had hired for the evening and it said something like $20 for piano services, $180 for having to be in the same room as Rodney Hide.
The piano player was Don Franks, a great Wellington identity of the Left, a cleaner, activist, writer, musician and socialist.
I doubt if Don's attitude to Rodney has changed since then. But I bet Rodney's has to him and his like.
Hide has had a relative publicity blitz about Act's new relationship with Labour, based on a policy by policy basis.
I dropped into the part's Wellington conference yesterday to see how it was going down the members.
There were about 70 there and only one member openly expressed any concern about it after his speech.
"But we're not going to be Labour's allies are we?" he asked.
(No, just very, very, very close friends, Hide might have replied.)
Another member stepped in and said "why not?"
It's an odd thing but with the new configuration in Parliament after two MPs quit their parties, Act is more relevant and relevant now with two MPs than it was last term with nine.
Hide seems to have pretty strong support for the new friendship with Labour.
Act has every reason to be optimistic about the election next year.
With a reasonable expectation that he will hold Epsom, and not have to reach five per cent, there will no sense that a vote for Act might be a wasted vote. Every vote will count.
And John Key's move to the centre has created room again on the right that Don Brash had closed up.
Act was the first of the small parties to begin the cross-party collaboration (why does that still sound like a dirty word) that has put a new complexion on the Parliament.
There does seem to be genuine respect for each other.
They haven't quite got to the point of having parties together yet.
Though the Greens do have a great old piano in their caucus room There's a thought.
