Paul Little: Election time and the ideas just keep coming

Another busy week in politics. Photo / Mark Mitchell

What a week in politics. Everyone has really lifted their game. Ideas are popping up like Nazi sympathisers in the Oval office.

Labour announced a great life skills in schools policy - teaching kids the basics, like driving and budgeting - that their parents, working long hours just to feed them, no longer have time to teach them.

I seem to remember advocating in this space something very similar not so long ago. Good to know someone's cutting these out every week and keeping them.

National floated the idea of a young offenders' boot camp - sorry, Junior Training Academy - policy that could work with a few tweaks (which we all know wouldn't happen, but it was a nice thought).

No word on how people running Junior Training Academies for non-offending youngsters would deal with the potential misunderstandings.

Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox finally acknowledged her party's alliance with National was a con - a cynical collection of empty promises made by - mainly - powerful white men who never had any intention of doing anything to promote Maori interests or wellbeing - in the time-honoured New Zealand tradition.

Gareth Morgan almost certainly turned up somewhere and said something with data to back it up.

The Greens relaunched their campaign with transparency that should show their more fickle followers they are still the same party with the same priorities and principles.

David Seymour signed some books.

And Winston Peters, seeing a nettle begging to be grasped, became the first politician to take a stand against the looming threat society faces from Sikh ceremonial knives.

***

Dear Ma,

I can't believe how far I've come since

I got sent here to Waiouru Junior

Training Academy.

I have learned so much I can't tell you.

But I've learned some things I can tell you too. It's funny to look back and realise that just a few weeks ago I didn't know what a shiv was let alone how to make one.

And some of us have got together and organised our own cooking classes. You know how Tom always said making P was really hard. Well, is he in for a surprise

when I get home.

This is a really nice place but, boy, is it cold. Sometimes I look out the window and see snow covering everything. But even when it's really cold here, it's still warmer at night than it used to be sleeping in the car.

By the way, I hope you're not having too much trouble paying those fines for when I broke curfew and got caught out after midnight looking for my little sister.

Has she turned up yet?

Some of the things we do here are a bit weird. Like, we have three meals every day and everyone acts like that's just normal so I don't say anything. I wouldn't want to get into any trouble.

Miss you, Ma. Lots of love.

***

There was surprise expressed by some that convicted money launderer William Yan won't lose the New Zealand citizenship he was granted - against the advice of Internal Affairs - in 2008.

But the relevant offending took place between 2012 and -2014.

How was Shane Jones, who overrode the department, to know what would happen several years later?

But we can hardly be surprised if the privilege of citizenship is extended to someone who engages in a little financial jiggery pokery, when an Australian politician, such as deputy Prime Minister and lost Charles Dickens novel Barnaby Joyce, can qualify.