KEY POINTS:
Like the oscillating weather cycles of La Nina and El Nino, New Zealand politics in summer has its own regular patterns of La Silly Season and El Stupido. La Silly Season is typically dry but the outlook for 2008, judging by the first trickle of New Year utterances from our leaders, is that we have entered the traditionally wet period of El Stupido.
Every summer, while the rest of Cabinet daub themselves with sun-block and fire up the barbie, the care and protection of New Zealand is in the hands of a "duty minister". Should al Qaeda attack, world financial markets collapse, or someone need a cheque signed, the duty minister is called upon to act.
For three days last week the duty minister was Tainui MP Nanaia Mahuta and the maintenance, security and safety of the state rested in her hands. Warming up to her short-term role as helmsman of our great nation she issued a statement, as Minister of Youth Affairs, urging young people "to make the most of summer".
"The holidays are great for spending time with families and relaxing before they return to work or studies for another year. It's also a great time to soak up the fantastic opportunities and creativity our country has to offer," she declared.
Mahuta helpfully suggested young people might go outdoors this summer. She obviously did not spend New Year's Eve at the Mount, Whangamata or Paihia, where thousands of scantily clad lurching and bellowing young people were already outdoors, outside the bach, tent or caravan of families who would have preferred the little buggers stayed indoors somewhere else.
She also suggests her youthful constituency might like to read, write poetry, make short films or go to galleries. Here she may have more difficulty in getting their compliance, as none of those activities really lend themselves to playing the Arctic Monkeys at 9 on the Richter scale while dropping rubber from a hotted-up Mitsubishi at 1am.
In case I am sounding curmudgeonly, I have to admit that 30 or so years ago I was happily doing donuts in a battered Vauxhall at beach resorts all over the country with Led Zeppelin blasting out. The point is young people have always gone outdoors in summer, they do not need to be told to do so. They do not want to hang out in galleries and any short films they shoot are usually pictures on their mobile phones of their mates' buttocks hanging out a car window on the main drag somewhere.
This exhortation of the young rivalled Mahuta's effort on New Year's Day, when she urged dog owners to take extra care with their pets over summer, especially around children, saying "dogs and summer are a dangerous mix". Nanaia, swimming and summer are a dangerous mix, the sun and summer are a dangerous mix, breathing and summer are etc, etc.
In further evidence of the El Stupido pattern, Conservation Minister Steve Chadwick picked up on the dangers of the season theme, warning that summer was a very dry period and there was a high risk of fires. She seemed not to have noticed those large signs on the roadside with the needle pointing to the red, or believed the rest of us had missed them.
The minister's helpful advice to folk was "to take care when throwing away cigarette butts". Sigh.
The sharpest exchange of the El Stupido period was between National MP Tony Ryall and Health Minister David Cunliffe. Ryall spotted Cunliffe rejecting concerns over disability funding, with the words "claims of a funding freeze are totally inaccurate".
Cunliffe said there was no freeze it's just that as "an interim measure costs have been stabilised to mange within budget" and "cost of living adjustments have been postponed".
Um, isn't that a "freeze"? Ryall speculates Cunliffe is auditioning for a role in a new series of Yes Minister. I suspect he may be right.
The assorted babblings of featherbrained politicians have been made to seem all the more lightweight by the death on Friday of one of the last New Zealanders of genuine substance, Sir Ed Hillary.
He was the last of a generation that seemed to really understand the concept of selfless service to others. Sir Ed embodied a sense of strength, determination and humanitarian purpose that now seems sadly lacking from our national character.
Our leaders, including Mahuta, could do well to point our youth to Hillary's example of a lifetime of humanitarian concern and effort. He was not just a great New Zealander. He was a good bloke.
