KEY POINTS:
I'm the king of the castle and you're the dirty rascal." A kid up a tree in Tory St chanted this old favourite at his mates walking below, but it could have been the male MPs in Parliament, whom earlier I'd given up watching in disgust.
Welcome to
the subtle art of New Zealand politics - gang up on someone who stumbles, spend your energy finding ways to destroy him, ignore the issues affecting the New Zealand people you represent, then back-slap your Koru-lounge colleagues waiting for a taxpayer-funded flight home on Thursday night.
Yes, I did it, too. We all did in Act, spurred on by those masters of political point-scoring, Richard Prebble and Rodney Hide, the latter truly adept at delivering the coup de grace, putting the boot in for the final kill. John Tamihere and allegations of rape, David Benson-Pope and tennis balls, David Parker and something so unimportant to the nation I can't remember what it was.
Hide now knows how it feels. On Tuesday, looking very camp in a karitane-yellow jacket matching the Prime Minister's, he complained to the Speaker about feeling "bullied" and "threatened".
I'm accused of going soft, but I recall the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines".
And perhaps politicians' survival depends on their nastiness. Hide's reinvention as Mr Nice didn't work.
The gallery gives him credit only when he's back on his "perk-busting" crusades, hence, I suspect, his reporting of Winston Peters to the Serious Fraud Office. The best Hide can hope for are headlines.
Accusing the Prime Minister of hypocrisy for dumping Dover Samuels over "swirls" of illegality but holding on to Peters won't rattle New Zealand's iron lady. Clark's not for burning.
Not that I feel sorry for Peters, who revels in being ganged up on. He's fond of quoting Creighton Williams Abrams, the famous US General from World War II and Vietnam.
Up proverbial faeces creek in Vietnam and asked how things were going, Abrams responded: "They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards". If the media really wanted to give Peters the pip, they'd ignore him completely, but who in the press gallery pack has the cojones to go it alone?
I can imagine the puzzled face of Condoleezza Rice when told this country's biggest scandal concerned the spending of a $25,000 donation. Those of us fond of Sir Robert Jones and Winston Peters watched their public spat, which could have been avoided with a phone call, and take bets on how long until they both calm down, share a drink, fried locusts and fish head soup.
This futility of our destructive political environment dawned on me at Te Wananga o Aotearoa, which Act had accused of corruption. How could the biggest university in New Zealand be run by and for Maori? Surely some mistake? So off we travelled - Rodney, Ken Shirley and I - to the Te Awamutu campus and raised our eyebrows at the lavish furnishings in the vice-chancellor's office.
How could Maori have these flash things if not ripping off taxpayers?
But taiho, I thought. I'd sat in the office of the Vice-Chancellor of Auckland University amid more plush and expensive objects without questioning who paid. Why should a Maori university be any different?
And as we were welcomed (albeit hostilely) on to the campus, it became clear to me we were blighting people's lives just to boost our political reputation. Obviously, I didn't hide my discomfort, because Pita Sharples in the audience (before he became an MP) told me later I looked very sad - not a good look for an MP in a tough party.
I caught up with Sharples last week at AUT. I was a fellow panellist discussing the relevance of te reo Maori - me a student of the language, the token whitey among Sharples, Professor Tania Ka'ai, Julian Wilcox from MTS, and TV3's Mike McRoberts.
Of course it's relevant, I agreed, though I dislike anything precious about things Maori.
Arguably, being fluent in te reo already has economic benefits for employees here and abroad (think Olympics, fashion shows, music and art exhibitions), but learning te reo, I said, makes you a rounder person, hopefully a kinder person, and doesn't that, ipso facto, make you a more desirable employee?
Those who disagree probably swan off to Tuscany boasting about their "una cappuccino per favor" and "gracie".
What a perfect country we must have - no one waiting for cancer treatment, no child abuse or neglect, school leavers all with first-class reading skills.
Or so you'd believe if you watched Parliament at work, otherwise why would so many politicians - curiously all male - waste hours of time playing I'm the king of the castle.
