Chester Borrows: Take a tough skin to politics but government is no game

WE USED to gauge how old we were getting by how young police officers looked.

Charged with awesome responsibility, their apparent age seemed in some way an indicator of ability, but this was never really the case.

I have just passed the assembled All Black team and was struck again by their obvious youth.

Even the old hands look young, though I have been marvelling at their skills and talent for 10 years or more.

But again the weight of a nation's expectation rests heavily on their shoulders, despite the fact that they would acknowledge, more than the rest of us, that rugby is only a game.

Far weightier are the expectations on those charged with looking after the most vulnerable in society and last week came revelations of the inadequacies of care of those young folk who are in most need of support.

Acknowledging the disappointment and gravity of the statistics are those working at the coalface of care and protection and they are the first to say that this is definitely not a game.

The same applies to those working in prisons, the health sector, education and other social sector areas - people who work incredibly hard despite the challenges of their roles and yet are still maligned by the spectators who see issues in two dimensions at the most.

This year marks 40 years since I started work in the police and 16 years since I left it. For many people, this work history defines me, yet I think this is far from the truth.

The question often pops up, though, as to whether I miss "the job" and my answer is frequently that I do miss many aspects, like the camaraderie, but mostly the ability to fix stuff quickly.

There were challenges in matching resources to need, as in every government department, but generally we knew who the baddies were, and when the proof was evident results quickly followed.

With politics, the expectations are ever-present and often it is that Government will stuff it up, so the cynicism is overt, and criticism trowelled on by experts on the sidelines.

Half the population are happy at least half of the time - the rest never will be - and politicians grow a pretty thick skin as a means of self-preservation. But this is not a game, either.

Stepping up to the challenges of the economy in light of world trade, to social deprivation in light of the freedom of choice, to the cost of dependency, to the challenge of limiting carbon emissions and climate change with greater expectations of First World transport and industry, are all about hard work.

Defending the nation against various threats - from biosecurity to people's own stupidity - and protecting the environment from people's greed, and their sovereignty despite of the attraction of exploitation, are not simple nuts to crack.

We all live with challenges and the prospect of failure, but we have the responsibility to strive to succeed. When we have to do it publicly, we become the butt of the critic and the cynic. That's the gig. But for most of us, it is not a game.