KEY POINTS:
We humans can be a contrary lot. Give a kid a fancy toy and he prefers to play hide-and-seek in the box. Call a general election and all the political establishment can concentrate on is the sideshow - the Winston Peters' bear-baiting.
Admittedly, the drawn-out evisceration of Mr Peters couldn't have happened to a more deserving chap. And it's certainly more fun than frying one's brain trying to decide which party's carbon credit trading scheme is more likely to save the planet.
That said, when the tumbril finally rumbles off with the New Zealand First leader aboard and the guffawing ends, is it too much to hope that some thought will be given to the real issue, which is improving the way we fund our political parties?
After all, Mr Peters, or his proxy, is not the only political leader who has to scrabble around in disguise seeking charity from the rich, and not necessarily savoury, in order to do his basic job. He's just the unlucky sucker, when the music stopped, who all the other culprits fell upon.
Surely we should all feel embarrassed and uneasy that our democracy, to function, depends on political parties of all hues traipsing from one millionaire's door to the next, or energy company or bank or shipping mogul, cap in hand seeking cash.
The politicians try to distance themselves from the process by claiming someone else does the dirty work and they have no idea who the big givers are. In other words, they want us to believe that when the party fundraisers tell them the money comes from Santa Claus, they believe it.
They expect us to believe the knighthoods that once followed came from Mr Claus as well. Or direct from that strange constitutional oddity, the Queen.
Mr Peters' big crime is that the book-keeping skills of his party workers was inept. Ironically, on that score, he has much in common with one of those now baying loudest for his blood, property investor and politician manque Sir Robert Jones.
Back in the early 1980s Mr Jones, as he was then, was rich enough to both form a party in his own image and underwrite it as well. Though, as the 1986 Royal Commission into the electoral system found, trying to discover just where Mr Jones' New Zealand Party's funds came from, and how much it spent, turned out to be as big a mystery as the inner workings of Peters' party 25 years on.
Looking at party funding, the commissioners, led by Justice John Wallace, probed the financial structures of the main parties of the time. Their report managed to analyse and summarise the fundraising practices and 1984 election spending of Labour, National, Democrats, Mana Motuhake and Values.
They had to admit defeat, though, as far as Mr Jones' party was concerned.
"Information about the financial position of the New Zealand Party was difficult to obtain because of a lack of detailed records and considerable organisational changes within the party."
Working from party guesswork, the commissioners reported that "at national level the New Zealand Party estimated it spent $700,000 on the 1984 election campaign. This was more than was spent by any other party". On top of that was a further $500,000 spent setting up the party and additional funds spent by each candidate.
Established as an anti-Muldoon Party, the New Zealand Party picked up 12.2 per cent of the vote (though no seats) and guaranteed Labour a landslide victory. Yet its books and organisation, said the royal commission, were in much the same state as New Zealand First's are today. Perhaps Sir Robert has forgotten this.
The commissioners supported state funding.
While paying tribute to existing parties for having cultivated large membership bases from which most of their funds came, they concluded: "The extent to which ordinary party members and supporters can meet the sophisticated and costly requirements of parties in a modern democracy such as New Zealand is severely limited. Our parties should be able to operate not just as electoral machines, but also as vehicles through which ideas may be discussed and sound policies developed."
They said everyone stands to suffer if governments come to office with "poorly researched" programmes. Noting that the NZ Party's ability to mount a sophisticated campaign the year after its formation was largely thanks to the efforts and funding of Mr Jones, the commissioners cautioned that "it would be undesirable if new parties without access to donors of substantial wealth and generosity were effectively excluded from the political process".
Since this report was written, the mass membership funding bases of both major parties have collapsed. It's not just the small newcomer parties that now need sugar daddies. The commissioners concluded that "political parties are too important to be left to starve".
I would add that they're too important to be beholden to the sugar daddies, too, be they Owen Glenn, the Vela brothers, the Talleys, the racing industry, Peter Shirtcliffe or Doug Myers.
