KEY POINTS:
Last night I dreamed I went to Parliament again with the Act caucus. Then I woke up (with a hangover) and it wasn't a dream.
Some 200 of us paid $90 each to celebrate Sir Roger Douglas' 70th birthday in the Beehive's banquet hall.
The food was inedible - overcooked soap masquerading as salmon followed by well-done mutton-dressed-as-lamb racks, and providing just two bottles of wine for each table of 10 was stingy. Luckily, we'd started the evening with a few glasses of wine at the office of another Knight of the Realm, Sir Robert Jones, then we bullied Stephen Franks, the only one at our table with sense to bring cash, into purchasing more wine.
I had a good time, partly because I've shed my post-Parliament bitterness and, having zilch ambition to return to politics, don't have to suck up to party apparatchiks or funders to ensure a high list placing. Politics attracts sad-sacks, but I no longer have to endure boring discussions about climate change or legalised prostitution.
Sir Robert used to call it the "fat student at university syndrome". In other words, some dull, know-it-all, overweight loser wanders into a room where other busybodies are forming a committee and suddenly finds for the first time in his or her life what it's like to be wanted. "Come in, welcome," say the fellow students. "You can be secretary and take the minutes."
Politics also attracts thrill-seekers, and it's such a funny business. I won't name names, but we know that A hates B, who hates C, who in turn hates A, but there they all are up at the podium, praising each other to hero status. A cynic might call this hypocritical, but I'd call it maturity.
As I've stated before in this column, you don't have to like someone to admire them, but instead of some of the more worthy speeches last night, which went on far too long, it would have been better if someone had let Richard Prebble off his leash to get up and tell war stories. I've seen The Preb reduce a roomful to tears of mirth, and there are many tales he could tell out of the school of 84.
Ian Kortlang, Sydney-based public relations guru, who has run Act's election campaigns for several years, said us old caucus members were getting on better together now we were no longer in Parliament. Yes, I agreed, it's a bit like a school reunion; sufficient time has passed so you're pleased to see someone who you formerly considered to be a tosser.
It's also like family, albeit in Act's case (and I suspect other political parties are the same) a severely dysfunctional one, something former president Catherine Judd referred to in her speech, diagnosing us as suffering from ADD syndrome and - not looking at anyone in particular - lamenting there always seemed to be someone in Act with their hand poised above the detonate button.
But, like a family, you get over it. Muriel Newman and Owen Jennings were missed, Derek Quigley flew in from Canberra but avoided our noisy table, Rodney Hide's lost so much weight I didn't recognise him, Gerry Eckhoff and I talked rural drought matters and The Preb looked distinguished with his mop of white hair but scarpered when I said I'd write his unauthorised biography.
Penny Webster's now Her Worship of Rodney (the place not the MP), Ken Shirley - like me - was still being growled at by the ex-President for I forget what, Heather Roy's saving Wellingtonians from death by hospital, and Stephen Franks is gearing up to win the National Party nomination to contest Wellington Central.
But Thursday night was Sir Roger's, a reluctant star who nonetheless changed this country for the better. Not all the policies of the 1980s have culminated in success, but it's telling the current government has peeled back not one major Douglas economic reform which removed the hands of the state from much of our lives.
We may moan about Telecom, the railways, house prices, living on credit, and the state of television, but we forget the zero choice available to consumers before Douglas got his hands on the Budget.
The tragedy is he could never turn his scalpel to social issues, so the problems dogging our lives today remain the services over which government maintains its state monopoly - health, education, and welfare. Patients die needlessly in public hospitals, parents can't send their kids to their school of choice, half the country's got a bad back and the other half's paying, but still we call for "independent commissioners", stricter school zoning, or more rights for welfare bludgers. No one is bold enough to state the obvious - government is not the answer, it's the bloody problem.
But I suspect my generation, sadly, will not see another politician with Sir Roger's moral fortitude. Happy Birthday mate.
