Political diary

MONDAY

The 25th anniversary of the election of the Lange Government prompts Trevor Mallard to post on the Labour MPs' blog Red Alert his memories of the year he entered Parliament, with Annette King, Jim Anderton, Peter Dunne and Lockwood Smith. "Early one morning during the first week I was wandering along the ground floor corridor in the main block with one of my preschool kids when Muldoon (still PM) came the other way. 'Daddy, Daddy, there's Piggy Muldoon,' she yelled. The old fellow was generous enough to give her one of his famous grunty chuckles and say hello." He also recalls Muldoon later asking Don McKinnon who Mr Mallard was. "That's Mallard, Prime Minister," McKinnon said. "He beat Minogue." Muldoon responded, "Ah, we had better send him a bottle of whisky then, hadn't we?" Mallard says that the bottle never arrived.

TUESDAY

The Should-A.com website reports it has received a "takedown notice" for using the Electoral Enrolment Centre's copyrighted "orange man" on its site. The site invites people to make up their parody referendum questions as a protest against the wording of the upcoming referendum on the anti-smacking law. The orange man was finally allowed to stay, but a clear indication of the copyright was added and it was made clear it was a parody site unconnected to any actual electoral agency. Blogger David Farrar notes that other countries have exceptions for use of copyrighted material for satire or parody. "Most people can work out that a question such as 'Should gingas be exterminated by 2011' is not a real referendum." Other goodies include "Should a dose of folic acid as part of good bread be a criminal offence in New Zealand?" and "Should grunting as part of good tennis be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"

WEDNESDAY

Fresh from making a faux pas on his Pacific trip by likening Fiji and Samoa to "children" and adding that one was "wayward", John Key gets embroiled in a real-life example of his own metaphor. At a Christchurch kindergarten, the PM gets caught between two squabbling siblings and ends up with a pen being rammed in his neck and a toy truck hurled at him. On the same Pacific theme, the rest of the nation (and especially his children) may wish to forget the sight of their Prime Minister dancing in Niue - but he's not going to let it go that easily. On Tuesday on TV3's Sunrise, he expressed surprise the hosts had not touched on the topic beyond a brief mention at the beginning. "I'm a hell of a mover. It's the end of the Michael Jackson era and the start of the John Key era." He raises it again unprompted at a business breakfast in Wellington, noting while he may have been brought up in a state house etc, etc, he clearly didn't have time for dancing lessons. Enough already. Let the music die.

THURSDAY

A follow-up to the curious incident of the US head spook visiting Treasury last week. Much was made of the US Embassy's apparent bid to keep the visit of Lieutenant-General Keith Alexander, head of the United States National Security Agency, under wraps. The visit was sprung after the convoy pulled up in front of the press gallery offices and he was spotted by a Newsroom reporter. The accusations of secrecy have clearly made the embassy wary - a press release arrives stating that Admiral Thad Allen, commandant of the US Coast Guard, is visiting New Zealand for "routine consultations".