Dialogue: Let's hope today's Budget isn't all green and minty

By WILLY TROLOVE

Yes, it's Budget time again - time to rub your hands together in expectation, time to dust off the old chequebook and dream of easy wealth, time to think back to your youth, your real youth, your primary school days.

The highlight of all primary school events was the lolly-scramble. After the prizes were awarded on Sports Day, or after the pet lambs ran amok and decimated the headmaster's vegetable garden on Pet Day, one of the staff would appear (usually the headmaster, woefully clutching his savaged cabbages) riding on a fire engine or a tractor or a donkey (or maybe that was Palm Sunday), and dispensing lollies to a crowd of children.

There would be a scramble. There always was. Otherwise, it would have been known as a "lolly-finding exercise of most orderly proportions." Children would lose buttons, bracelets and teeth. But they would gain lollies. And if they were big and pushy, they would gain lots of lollies.

There was a lesson here. Speed, strength and cunning were rewarded. Long before we learned about Darwin, we knew all about the survival of the fittest. The slow, the weak and the dim-witted complained that they didn't get enough, but nobody took any notice.

State primary schools were, however, progressive. Political correctness and equality of the sexes may have been dreams of the distant future but already we had gender-separate lolly-scrambles. It was just as well. The girls would have torn us apart.

The lollies were always Mackintoshes and after the scramble they were traded. Harrogates were swapped for egg and creams or coconuts. But nobody liked the green ones. The dreaded mint-flavoured Mackintoshes were left in the grass. Three months later, you found them on the sprigs of your football boots.

One Pet Day an enterprising farmer suggested that it would make an interesting variation if the lollies were dispensed from a low-flying aeroplane. The headmaster, keen to survey the extent of his garden's devastation from the air, prime minister-style, agreed.

Late in the day, skimming over the shelterbelt of pine trees and buffeted by the norwester, the farmer's plane appeared through a cloud of agitated starlings.

Braced in the open doorway was the headmaster, his jam-stained brown tie flailing in the wind. One arm held a giant bag of Mackintoshes while the other clung to the doorframe. He wore a look halfway between steely determination and sheer terror.

The plane dipped over the shelterbelt, jinked to avoid an unexpected goalpost, and levelled out. The children scattered like impala before a leopard. But no lollies came.

The plane disappeared over the opposite shelterbelt and popped up far in the distance in a spectacular climbing turn, before vanishing again. Half a minute later, the plane was back over the shelter belt, orphaning a family of magpies. This run was smoother but still the lollies did not come.

On the third pass, the headmaster plucked up the courage to take his hand from the doorframe and reached into the bag. He only got a handful of sweets away before he lost his balance and had to reach out for something to hold on to. By grabbing the doorframe with both hands, he saved himself from pitching out of the aircraft but lost the giant bag of Mackintoshes. Like the Dambusters' bouncing bomb, it dropped on to the field and exploded in a shower of lollies.

Casualties from the bombing were light, but the area of sweet distribution was too small and the number of children too large. Collateral damage was inevitable. The gender-separate philosophy was abandoned. In the mad rush for sweets, clothes were torn, ankles sprained and noses bloodied.

After that, the headmaster kept to fire engines.

Dr Cullen's lolly-scramble will be less spectacular. He will wear a look halfway between steely determination and mild smugness. His tie will not be brown (strictly Labour red, probably with diagonal stripes), but there is still a chance it will be jam-stained.

He will dispense his bag of sweets and those who don't get enough will complain loudly. But unlike the lolly scrambles of their youth, someone will take notice.

Television will seek out the slow, the weak and the dim-witted and record their complaints. It will interview the disaffected lobby groups, the downtrodden beneficiaries, the oppressed racial spokespeople and the underpaid health professionals.

It will painstakingly record every "we aren't getting enough" and every "we want more money" and beam it into every home in the country.

In the lolly-scrambles of youth, the green, mint-flavoured Mackintoshes were scorned. But the children have grown up and now green is their favourite colour.

Green - with envy.

* Willy Trolove is an Auckland freelance writer.