KEY POINTS:
Going commando, no matter how clingy the dress, is fraught with danger. I know it's a weird metaphor but, in pushing through the Electoral Finance Bill, the Government, too, has failed to cover its butt.
I realised my mistake this week at a Christmas party when I chose to jettison anything creating a visible panty line under the frock I found on Trade Me, described by the host's ex-wife as "a confection of a dress".
Not that I'm given to dancing on tables or falling head over kite in a drunken delirium, but I did not envisage having to cope with the hyperglycaemic attentions of an elderly, thrice-married male guest who shall remain nameless.
He is, however, the holder of high public office, elected and paid for by the public, and approached our group to take issue about disparaging things I'd written about him in this very column some months ago. If only he'd stuck to his mission of verbally abusing me.
Instead he changed tack, caught a lecherous breeze, and wittered on about my not showing enough of my breasts (his words), that all women should display more breast, and wasn't it great that at least I had bared my legs from the knee down and shod my feet in red stiletto heels.
This, I insist, was not flattering. Public figures should remember they are just that at all times. Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast was there, and she wasn't going around telling the men to show their pecs.
Seated, as I was, on a soft and low poof-stool, I could only clench my thighs together, tuck my skirt in under my body and hope like hell this fellow couldn't see too much information. No way was I able to attempt an elegant and dignified exit.
The moral of this story is always cover your butt, and make sure when the going gets rough you can retreat without making, ahem, an ass of yourself.
Come next election, if the polls continue their trend, Labour MPs - along with their running dog mates NZ First and the Alliance - will find themselves stuck in the electoral equivalent of a poof-seat, bailed up by an irate public wanting to strip them of the protective cladding of office.
According to Steven Price, spokesman for the Coalition for Open Government, the Electoral Finance Bill law is fine because it will be tested by the courts. Well, how many of us have the spare time and resources to test dodgy law by taking it before a judge?
Defending the bill's clause extending the legal definition of electioneering from three months before an election to the entire year of an election, Price said a different attitude would be taken towards advertising published in January, to advertising published one week before polling day. But the day after the bill's passing, Electoral Commission chief executive Helena Catt confirmed she would scrutinise all advertising: "The legislation is saying the election campaign starts on the first of January".
So much for Price's reassurance. On National Radio, he was beautifully exposed by John Boscawen who reduced Price to wailing, "Are you a lawyer?". Is that the benchmark for informed debate? And speaking of Boscawen, given the New Zealand Herald's admirable campaign against the bill, why did its editors not give him the New Zealander of the Year Award? Boscawen sacrificed thousands of his own dollars and used his formidable organisational skills to campaign for the right of his opponents to berate him for - shock, horror - being a member of the Business Roundtable and Act's fundraiser.
Sure, Louise Nicholas has grit and determination, and she exposed a handful of police officers, but to claim she changed the way we view justice is, by implication, saying all cops, lawyers, judges are alleged rapists and perverters of justice. Nicholas herself has never claimed that's the case.
But I digress. MPs backing the Electoral Finance Bill said money shouldn't buy political office, then in the same breath voted themselves the legality of spending up to $2.4 million of taxpayers' money on campaigns to get themselves back into Parliament next year.
On the other hand we can be grateful for three MPs whose outstanding defence and definition of freedom of speech was delivered in heartfelt debate, something Parliament has sadly lacked this year. Take a bow Rodney Hide, Hone Harawira and John Key. Meanwhile, Labour, NZ First, the Greens and Jim Anderton should ask Santa for new underpants.
