KEY POINTS:
Every child knows that on Christmas Eve, if they have been good, Santa will come to their home and give them presents.
But if they have been naughty, their parents say, they will get nothing from Santa. These are my naughty politician nominees who should miss out on presents this week.
Naughtiest Left-Winger: The parliamentary left is so well-behaved these days that there is no worthy recipient here. Trevor Mallard would romp home in this category, except that he dropped his left-wing persona a long time ago. The Greens have the only traditional left-wingers, Sue Bradford and Keith Locke. But they never misbehave or stuff up, and so disqualify themselves.
My mate broadcaster Willie Jackson is runner-up for his robust defence of Clint Rickards on his radio show. Most people would have winced hearing this self-confessed gang banger of young women claim that he had done nothing wrong when he was a uniformed cop. Giving Rickards a free platform after he'd received a golden handshake from the police force had Jackson's left-wing mates choking.
The winner is my other mate, Chris Trotter, who stridently condemned the Urewera arrestees' bush camp silliness, and sided with the police. When Trotter got a stern rebuke from social justice icon, John Minto, he launched a withering counter-attack in his columns, which was unprecedented even for the warring left. Fortunately, a Christmas truce has broken out for now but Trotter is certainly seen by many as this year's naughtiest left winger. No pressie for him.
Naughtiest Christian: Of course, no one can come close to challenging former Christian Heritage leader and jailed child-molester Graham Capill, who will not get another present from Santa for the rest of his life. The runner-up recipient for this title is Gordon Copeland who, just a few days before he was to jointly lead a new mainstream Christian party, sacked his co-leader whom he deemed unworthy, thus aborting the party's birth. Now he would have us believe that God has asked him to launch another party in the new year.
The winner this year is Taito Phillip Field, who still can't get it into his head that he is paid handsomely by his constituents to help them. Getting the needy poor to work on his properties in payment for his time is theft. If, as the police claim, he got these doubly-charged constituents to lie about it, then he will have a lot of explaining to do in his upcoming court case and to his God on judgment day. Taito certainly needs a refresher on the 10 commandments. No pressies for him.
Naughtiest Playground Bully: Both of parliament's bovver boys should share this honour. National's Tau Henare has been listed by Peter Dunne, the resident goody-two-shoes snitch, as one of the most consistently badly behaved MPs in the House.
It is no surprise that Trevor Mallard resorted to a bit of biffo to show Tau Henare how manly he was. Mallard has enjoyed being resident bully for years, but this incident clearly crossed the line. Santa couldn't have missed the front-page photo of Mallard in the dock after he was charged with assault.
But Mallard wins this category in his own right because, even after this fracas, he continued his bullying behaviour by attacking a low-level contract staffer in the Environment Ministry. Even when he realised that he had made a mistake, he wouldn't apologise. Having to have the Prime Minister insist last week that he make amends doesn't excuse him for his continuous aggressive conduct. No pressies for this bad boy!
Naughtiest Cheat: There are many candidates for this category. There is perk-buster Rodney Hide, slipping Christmas cards into Epsom homes funded with taxpayers' money. His dubious defence - that other MPs do it too - makes him an obvious candidate, particularly as he has spent years attacking politicians dipping into public funds to promote themselves.
Another strong contender is National leader John Key, who would have us all believe that the current high-polling for National is due to his efforts. He has been completely invisible in the last few months and the only time he's been seen was in a National Party promotional DVD, which he had to pull off the market because they nicked the tune from Coldplay. Everyone knows that Labour's current poll deficit is because of their own stuff-ups rather than any great brilliance of the Nats.
But the runaway winner is the old master himself, Winston Peters. Who else would have the gall to misuse the same public money twice? Once to get him into parliament and again to get a photo opportunity with sick children. Even the desperate doctors, who needed the money to help the children, couldn't bring themselves to play along and gave it back. Peters can't now seem to give this tainted money away.
But that doesn't stop him looking us in the eye and telling us he hasn't done anything wrong. While these kids will have to forgo Winston's present, Santa needs to make a special trip to Starship Hospital and unload as many presents there as he can.
