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Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics is a weekly column that appears on listener.co.nz on Friday mornings. If you enjoy a “serious laugh” - and complaining about politics and politicians - you’ll enjoy reading Greg’s latest grievances.
If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call?
Well, if that something strange is a bothersome pothole, you might like to get ahold of the coalition government’s imaginative, vaguely dubious new use for taxpayers’ money.
Minister for Potholes Simeon Brown has announced a novel scheme to help wipe out what he seems to think is our struggling little country’s most pressing problem, introducing what sounds like a pothole flying squad tasked with search-and-targeting missions.
His “Consistent Condition Data Collection” strategy will apparently consist of five vans that will roll out around the country. They will inspect our highways and byways so that Pothole Brown and his minions will have a better understanding of “the condition of our road network to prevent holes from forming in the first place”.
Which sounds like just a giant sinkhole to pour money into, which might be better spent elsewhere. Mind you, when you have been given $4 billion to play with by the Finance Minister, you might as well have fun with it, eh Simeon?
First question: will the new vans look like the Ectomobile from Ghostbusters? Let’s hope so, because it will a giant missed opportunity if they aren’t.
Second question: can these tireless fighters against the almost supernatural menace of potholes please be called the “Pothole Busters”?
It would also be grand if an enterprising TV production company chose to make a reality TV show following these valiant Pothole Busters as they go about their exciting and important scientific work of finding and taking down these ghost potholes.
If it happens, Another Kind Of Politics has already come up with the show’s theme song, sung — and how could it not be? — to the tune of Ray Parker Jr’s Ghostbusters. All together now …
If there’s something strange
In your local road
Who you gonna call?
Pothole busters!
If there’s a giant crack
And it’s swallowed your cat
Who you gonna call?
Pothole busters!
If there are enormous orifices
Bigger than the ones in offices
Who you gonna call?
Pothole busters!
If the government’s humanity
Is a yawning cavity
Who you gonna call?
Pothole busters!
If your minister’s rash
Loves wasting cash,
Who you gonna call?
Pothole busters!
What’s in a name?
Missing the Polkinghorne case? Don’t. It might be over, but we still have the country’s second-longest running mystery to keep us occupied: Whether the Greens are going to finally succeed in getting Darleen Tana to bugger off.
The now ex-Green MP managed to forestall any decision on this by going to the High Court last month to challenge the party’s protocols and decision-making around its move to begin the process of using the so-called party-hopping law to have her chucked out of Parliament. Instead the court chucked out Tana’s challenge.
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has announced this week that the party will now meet on October 17 to vote on whether to invoke the waka-jumping law. At least 75% of delegates need to vote “yes” to make getting rid of Tana Speaker Gerry Brownlee’s problem.
Coincidently, it was also revealed this week that the party is moving to dump the monicker “The Greens” and make its only official name “The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand”.
There is no truth to the rumour that, if they succeed in getting rid of you-know-who, the party leaders will seek to change the party’s name again, this time to “The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, now 100% Darleen Tana-free”.
Costello digs hole, falls in
Whatever else Associate Health Minister Casey Costello is lacking — the ability to find the mystery author of the infamous memo claiming “nicotine is as harmful as caffeine”, for example — it is not courage.
The controversial MP’s decision to front angry public health experts at a forum organised by Health Coalition Aotearoa this week was pretty ballsy. Especially given that, in the space of 10 months, Costello has halted the world-first smokefree legislation Labour was planning, and then cut excise tax on heated tobacco products. The latter, a move lobbied for by the tobacco industry, has fuelled suspicion that the NZ First MP is taking advice from Big Tobacco, an allegation she hotly denied on Tuesday.
By all accounts, Costello held her ground during the forum despite a politely hostile reception from the roomful of experts, though things went awry when the South Auckland MP said her approach was about preventing growth in black market tobacco.
She claimed that she “could take you [the experts] to the shops that provide illicit tobacco”. However when pressed for more information on this by a journalist — had she reported it to police, could she name the shop? — Costello proved less fleet-footed without her speech notes.
It turned out she had not reported the shop to police — weird for an ex-cop, wouldn’t you say? — and was unable to name the shop, which had, somewhat conveniently, now disappeared.
Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
However if Tuesday’s feisty forum proved anything, it is that when it comes to the new minister in-charge of tobacco policy, public health experts don’t want to smoke a peace pipe with her.
Political Quiz of the Week
What song is National’s Paul Goldsmith singing in this picture?
A/ “Pothole busters!”
B/ The English version of “Pōkarekare Ana”
C/ “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Bit of Coastline for Māori”
D/ “There’s Lots Of Depression In New Zealand”
