KEY POINTS:
The thought of spending 48 hours trapped in a remote country lodge with 94 bureaucrats "team building" and discussing property maintenance ranks alongside being severely beaten with a half-dead hedgehog when it comes to my list of the "Top 10 Things I Must Not Do Before I Die".
I found the sight of outraged MPs howling with indignation at the expense of the Housing New Zealand Tongariro Lodge conference hysterical. They are, of course, well known for avoiding taxpayer-funded junkets and refusing free air travel, and all parliamentarians are averse to staying in luxurious hotels. Yeah, right.
The hypocrisy is patent but, then, we have to realise it is election year and opposition politicians will seize on the slightest evidence of public service waste and self-indulgence. What is more pathetic is the Government's spineless response.
Housing Minister Maryan Street began bravely defending her troops, saying they had gone for the most cost-effective option, when Helen Clark waded in and castigated Housing NZ boss Lesley McTurk for extravagance. Like some bullying classroom toady, State Services Minister David Parker immediately joined the taunting, pathetically threatening to dock McTurk's pay.
Street was forced to endure Clark patronising her in the House for standing up for her department and then she was made to utter through clenched teeth that "such high-profile venues" are off the list and Housing NZ will henceforth exercise "reasonable caution in spending".
McTurk had exercised such caution, having priced Auckland's Waipuna Lodge as a venue and found it dearer than Tongariro Lodge. Never mind that, what is the betting that if there is a Housing NZ conference next year it will be somewhere low profile like Waipuna, even if it is dearer?
Still, anyone who has ever suffered seminar fatigue at the indescribably boring Waipuna Lodge would testify it is fitting punishment for McTurk and her staff for having the audacity to conduct their business like any other business.
Housing NZ is a $900-million-dollar operation. Spending $65,000 to bring together its far-flung managers to better co-ordinate how their near-billion-dollar budget should be spent is hardly an act of criminal lunacy. Indeed, you could argue that it would be administratively irresponsible not to have such meetings.
I spoke to the Institute of Management, which agreed it would be nuts for the managers of any nationwide business of such a scale not to meet regularly and discuss what they were doing.
There is no room for such logic in politics, however. Once again the Government threw a ministry to the wolves, which goes a long way to explaining why we have a timid, risk-averse public service. Once, there was a principle of ministerial responsibility and ministers defended their public servants. Now, public servants are easy and regular scapegoats when the political heat goes on.
It is hard not to get the impression of a panicked government rapidly sliding towards a chasm this election.
The latest Herald DigiPoll shows the Budget had no impression on voters and did not deliver the turn-around Clark and Cullen will have hoped for.
The poll did signal a come-back for the Greens, who were at 6.4 per cent. I suspect many disillusioned Labour voters, unable to bring themselves to vote National, will swing behind the Greens, who could poll even higher, perhaps 8-9 per cent, at the election, thanks to Labour defectors.
The poll also showed why Winston Peters will have to stand and take Tauranga. New Zealand First is languishing at less than 2 per cent of the vote, with little chance of triggering the 5 per cent threshold. If Peters wins the seat he will be able to limp back into Parliament with a couple of mates.
The poll is deceptive when it comes to the level of support for the Maori Party, which registers just 2.2 per cent. The Maori Party really does not need party vote support, it stands a good chance of taking virtually every Maori seat come election day.
The Government is rapidly running out of options and the Budget was virtually its last chance of swaying public opinion back on to its side.
People wonder why John Key is reluctant to release policy. Why should he? If he does, he risks alienating people who might otherwise vote National. Key must wish he could lock his entire caucus into the Tongariro Lodge for five months and not emerge until the day after the election.
Like Hillary Clinton in her doomed race with Barack Obama, all Helen Clark can do now is hang in there and desperately hope her opponent shoots himself in the foot.
