Garth George writes that the real reason to wish Act good riddance is its stupidity in managing its hypocritical MPs.
The thing that gets me about the latest Act Party debacle is not the hypocrisy of it but the utter stupidity of it.
Party leader Rodney Hide and others have known for years that David Garrett had faced court for identity fraud, and may well have known of his assault conviction, yet they put him in charge of their law and order policy. If that isn't stupidity, what is?
I have little patience with all the emotional claptrap surrounding what is inaccurately called "identity theft".
The child's identity was not stolen 26 years ago, it was simply borrowed, and that harmed neither the child nor his parents, particularly since the false passport was never used.
It appears, too, that the assault in Tonga eight years ago was trivial.
However, as with most things political, perception is all. Even if Mr Garrett is a fully reformed character - and some people do change as they get older - it was still the height of stupidity to put him in charge of a law and order policy noted for its uncompromising severity and total lack of compassion.
And if Mr Garrett decides to stay in Parliament, he will simply confirm that he has learned nothing from this witless contretemps.
Mind you, the latest Act brainlessness should come as no surprise. Any political party that would choose near the top of its list Sir Roger Douglas, a man despised and reviled by all but the farthest-right of laissez faire capitalists, has to be out of its mind.
Then there was Rodney Hide's $25,000 overseas trip at taxpayer expense with his girlfriend, acquired during his mid-life crisis - he called it his "year of living dangerously" - from tubby, balding "perkbuster" to lean, mean, shaven-headed destroyer of Auckland's democratic local government.
So often in recent years, when politicians, businessmen and others have been found wanting, I am reminded of Jesus' words in the Bible when he said: "Anyone who can be trusted in little matters can also be trusted in important matters. But anyone who is dishonest in little matters will be dishonest in important matters."
The upside of all of Act's asinine errors of judgment, however, is that there is now a good chance that the party will, at next year's election, disappear from Parliament permanently, and that can only be good for the country.
The other act of astonishing witlessness in the past week was Air New Zealand's advertisement containing the words "whoop whoop". It has been said that those who made that decision were probably unaware of the Erebus disaster and the traumas of the investigations and court cases that followed.
What worries me is that this indicates that a generation is reaching positions of influence and decision-making who are woefully ignorant of history and, because they don't know where they came from, don't really know where they are and have little idea of where they're going.
This applies, too, to the people at TVNZ and TV3, where it is now obvious that a generation is taking control who have little or no concept of morals, ethics or values, the teaching of which disappeared from our homes and schools decades ago.
It is, perhaps, surprising that the Broadcasting Standards Authority has ruled that a "raunchy and sexually charged" scene on prime-time soap opera Home and Away, and a graphic scene depicting oral sex in comedy-drama series Hung, breached broadcasting standards.
But what is astonishing is that television executives don't accept that this is so and consider the BSA's ruling to be surprising.
The facts: an episode of Home and Away was broadcast at 5.30pm and carried a general classification. In it, two adult characters began kissing; the male removed the female's bathrobe, leaving her in a bra and pyjama pants, then laid her back on a table while she straddled him as they continued to kiss until interrupted. And to this, TV3 submitted that the programme had screened at a time not considered to be predominately children's viewing time on the channel and that child viewers would not be alarmed or distressed by such scenes. You have to wonder, then, how many mums and dads have it off on the kitchen table in front of the kids.
Commenting on the decision, TV3's lawyer, Clare Bradley, said: "Our appraisers looked at it, the standards committee looked at it, we considered it in-house pretty carefully and formed a view that it was fine."
The TVNZ programme, screened at 9.50pm with an Adults Only rating, featured a scene of a man giving oral sex to a woman.
TVNZ submitted that the scene had been relatively brief, not detailed, obviously acted and important in the context of the series. The BSA, however, said it was "prolonged, explicit and gratuitous, leaving nothing to the imagination" and designed solely to shock and titillate the audience.
So much for the moral code of today's generation of television executives. And so much for self-regulation.
garth.george@hotmail.com
