KEY POINTS:
The National Party will be greatly cheered by the poll this week. National 60 per cent, Labour 27. National are on a romp and, from what I can see, Labour does not know how to deal with them.
In answer to Annette King's parliamentary question this week about the silly letter from the Work and Income official advising a client to make do by selling the kids' toys, Paula Bennett simply said King was right, the letter was not acceptable and she would look into it. End of story.
The Labour front bench is made up of clever, professional politicians but they are not equipped for dealing with popular political newbies. Their old ways do not stick any more and, in any case, no one is listening to Labour at the moment. Amazing how fortunes change in politics.
The Greens polled 7 per cent. However, the Greens are irrelevant and will be so for a long time. Their haughty decision, before the election, not to deal with National after the election, should National have a majority, was incredibly short-sighted.
The Greens have shown that they are more driven by the left than the green and, in making that decision, cast aside their voters' hopes that it was a party which could effect change.
This is not an anti-environmental Government, of course. It cares about the place like the rest of us. This is a Government of pragmatists. Its senior people make decisions on the evidence in front of them. It is refreshingly without dogma. The country likes this at the moment.
We do not want to be governed minutely and microscopically any more. We want to be left alone. We know there is bugger-all a New Zealand Government can do in the face of the international economic disaster. John Key is cruising effortlessly in the job. Big smile, pops up everywhere.
JENNIFER ANISTON, I see this week, is in a movie that is getting wonderful reviews. I like Jennifer Aniston. She is beautiful, far sexier that than the weird Angelina Jolie, whom I believe to be insane. I saw Angelina on the red carpet at the Oscars a few years ago. She is covered in jagged tattoos. She has large lips. Kissing her would be like wrapping your face in a wet tent. Excuse me, that remark crossed the line.
She must have something, however. Brad Pitt was with her five minutes and has never got away. Richard Burton was the same with Elizabeth Taylor. He tried to go home after Antony and Cleopatra was finished but, unfortunately, he and Elizabeth both had houses just over an hour from each other in Switzerland. Needs must as needs be.
He was an extraordinary man, Richard Burton, and could recite hours of poetry and soliloquy. He was bi-lingual, beginning his life in a Welsh-speaking household in gritty poverty. He could also write well and amusingly and, despite his tempestuous life, spent many years recording lone entries in his notebooks, entries that give an endlessly fascinating look inside his mind, his talent and his life with Taylor.
One day he wakes up and writes an angry letter to his accountant asking where, over the previous 10 years, 30 million has gone. At one point Burton was probably the highest-paid man in the world. I mention this because a couple of weeks back I picked out of my library a book (which I see that I gave my father for Christmas a couple of years before Dad died), Melvyn Bragg's Rich. The Life of Richard Burton. Another one I could not put down.
Speaking of movie stars, I read this week that John Wayne may have had the worst line written in the movies. As the centurion in The Greatest Story Ever Told, he says, "Truly, this man was the son of Gaard". There were a few takes, so it is said, and the director was not quite happy. He pulled Wayne aside and said, "Duke, Could you try and do it with awe?" Certainly, said the cheerful John Wayne and went back to his mark. "Aw, truly, this man was the son of Gaard."
THERE IS much outrage about the Corrections Department this week for its perceived failings, in nearly every case examined, with respect to convicts on parole. Barry Matthews, the chief executive, has had the nerve to stay on in the job despite the New Zealand Herald's assertion that his position is untenable and he should go.
What we have to remember with Corrections, is the people it deals with. If I were a probation officer and I could put off seeing a few of those clients, I probably would. In any case, why are probation officers dealing with people who are at risk of re-offending?
If they are "at risk", why are they not in jail? I cannot think why anyone would want to be a probation officer and we should probably be thankful that some people do the job.
I suppose every now and then, in the relentless grime of the people they counsel, they might have the pleasure of playing a hand in someone's coming right.
ON THURSDAY I was invited by my friend Michelle Boag and her husband Merv Bennett for dinner at their home on Waiheke Island. Michelle, among her many talents and enthusiasms, is a generous hostess and a wonderful chef. She made a vast and delicious salmon dish with caramelised onions, a Ruth Pretty recipe, she told us. Merv established and ran the local newspaper for five-and-a-half years, the weekly Waiheke News. Every week, for more than half a decade, he filled its pages.
Recently he sold the enterprise and is now released from the onerous responsibilities of being the newspaper Czar. We were joined by the Mayor of Waiheke, John Hawkesby and his wife Joyce. Between the four of them, not much would go unnoticed on Waiheke.
John, I know, is respected on Waiheke for his tireless generosity and availability when people want an MC for a fundraiser and a good cause. I never really knew John well in our professional years, although we always enjoyed seeing each other.
John may be the world's most charming man. He is extremely funny. I demanded to see his cellar. It is a marvel, crammed full of boxes not even opened.
Their home has one of the loveliest views on Waiheke. John has re-invented himself brilliantly as a broadcaster through his passion for wine and he communicates magically on radio these days when talking about it.
In my last few years on the NewstalkZB Breakfast, I worked with his daughter, Kate. Kate is smart, gorgeous and caring and is a broadcasting natural. Late last year, she took a lot of photographs. I would look up suddenly from my work to see Kate with her camera.
On my last day, she presented me with an album full of the photographs of those last few weeks, a gift I will always treasure.
We caught a ferry back to Auckland early next morning. It was warm and raining heavily. Everyone on board seemed to know each other. A South African woman, who said she came to came to live here seven years ago, sat across from us reading a novel called Tears of the Masai. Such is the beauty of Africa that I think if you are born there, you can never let it go.
A boy with a disability and a specially designed wheelchair, whose name everyone knew, seemed to be in charge on our deck. He travels to the city and back each day for school, Michelle told me. He rightly demanded that I lift my briefcase off the floor next to my seat so he could pass.
MY FAVOURITE magazine, The Spectator, now comes to us as the Australian edition. Its Australian pages appear to be edited by Oscar Humphries, son of Barry, inventor of Dame Edna and that great comic icon, the cultural affairs attache Sir Leslie Patterson.
Sir Leslie uttered one of the funniest lines of all time in a show I saw. After a brilliantly tasteless joke, with the audience roaring with pleasant outrage, he shook his head and said, "Christ, I'm low, ladies and gentlemen, I'm low! I'm so low I could parachute out of a snake's arse." Anyway, this week, Oscar reveals that his brother co-wrote Grand Theft Auto IV, which sold 3.6 million copies on its first day of release. There is a lot of gnashing of teeth about Grand Theft Auto IV. I figure it cannot be all bad if one of Barry Humphries' sons played such a large part in its creation.
