The American primary system, where parties choose their candidate, is far more open and transparent and more people are involved, 20% of the voters in some places, than in the NZ party system where very few people choose who will be the party candidates.  This is especially true now we have list MP’s who are chosen by the party bosses and cannot be voted on by ordinary voters.  Can you name any Party President or Secretary?  They will decide who many of your candidates and MP’s will be.  Such is MMP.  America and most other democracies have government funding of parties.  We do not, and should, but parties in return must be more democratic and transparent.  We fund our parties in a back-door way through MPs’ offices.  When this was done to provide a better service to constituents, no-one thought these budgets would be hi-jacked to erect hoardings during election time.  Who let this dog in?  We all did, each government pushes the envelope a bit further.    Government publicity campaigns would make Goebbels blush.  When Labour leader, I said I would ensure all government publicity campaigns would be independently audited and certified.  The jaded media yawned and didn’t believe me because we had done it too.  Although, as a Minister, I stopped some publicity campaigns that would make me look good because I thought them inappropriate.  Kevin Rudd, now Australia’s Prime Minister, promised this after the Conservative Government spent hundreds of millions of dollars on dubious publicity campaigns, including a fridge magnet to warn people about terrorism.  Let’s hope John Key “me, too’s” on this specific.  It’s not who started it that’s important, but who will stop it.

It’s these publicity campaigns, the erosion of some conventions, alongside the dreadful Electoral Finance Act, that cause so much anxiety about our governance.   Disclosure is everything, unions should have to consult members, businesses should advise shareholders, people have a right to spend their money as they see fit, but we have a right to know who’s funding who.  We should also have disclosure of the interests of lobbyists, commentators and journalists, some of whom flit with sleazy ease from the Parliamentary Press Gallery to Minister’s offices, and to consultancies - how can they be expected to judge events fairly when they are covering their future employers?  Many have kissed the backsides and licked the boots of those they are paid to scrutinise for so long they have lost their sense of taste, firmly embedded, as they are, in the buttocks of the powerful.    A few commentators also get paid to give media advice and lectures to Government agencies.  How can they then report on those they advise?  This includes top reporters for major outlets, surely this is wrong.  Do their employers know?  You have a right to know the person reporting is also being paid by the people they are commenting on.  Is it coincidence that these individuals were the most faithful in parroting the lines given to them by the Beehive when I offended the powerful in an article I wrote comparing the Electoral Finance Act to the excesses of Muldoon?

Thirty years after chemotherapy, some smells still bring back unhappy memories.  A wave of nostalgic nausea hit me when I recently published an article suggesting a process for New Zealand to consider our constitutional arrangements.  We have had ad hoc incremental changes with the abolition of appeal to the Privy Council, abolition of the old Honours System, MMP and the refusal to have another referendum, and all sorts of conventions eroded.  Imagine my weary, sad resignation when some media reported I called for a republic, I did not.  One TV channel even said I was worried we would fall behind Australia.  I had written the opposite.  I was concerned that when Australia finally moves, we will follow their fashion.  We need a process that’s predictable, that stretches beyond temporary politicians. 

During one election campaign, I advised the media I was going to disappear for a few hours to make a private visit to some old friends from my days as a social worker for the criminally insane.  A TV journalist pleaded with me to come along and wait outside and not report on my visit.  So I walked into Oakley Hospital.  At some point, I must have scratched my head.  On TV that night, there was me tap, tap, tapping my head with an ‘Oakley Mental Institution’ sign in the background.  But the best was a photo shoot before a Leaders’ debate.  Jim Bolger and I stood while dozens of cameras flashed.  At some point, I must have licked my lips, so the photo that appeared in a major paper a few days before the election had me poking my tongue out at Jim.   One newspaper cruelly did the same by publishing a strange, unfair photo of Helen Clark and Peter Davis.   The editor of that paper went on to work for the National Party.  A waste, I thought, he was so much more effective for National running a major paper.  It’s suicidal even to question the media, some are very sensitive, precious and bloated with self-importance, and they have the last word.  Politicians have to be careful in their courtship of the media because it’s a bit like sharing a banana with a monkey who is just as likely to eat a bit, then throw his faeces at you.  I can think of nothing governments can do about this that wouldn’t make it worse.  Most improvements do.  This is sweeping, there are many good journalists but I won’t name her out of fear for her reputation.

The media have failed, in the past, to nail down the politicians and scrutinise the details of possible coalition deals.  Because it’s not who wins an election, under MMP, it’s who forms the government. what are the leaders’ bottom lines?  Here’s a hint, there are no bottom lines … whatever it takes.  For Winston, it’s whoever offers the most.  Why not make him Prime Minister for 6 months?  That would break my breath-taking record.  It’s a deal-maker!  The Greens do believe in things, so let’s ban plastic rubbish bags.  Sue Bradford’s rumoured Bill to ban men leaving toilet seats up, erect, because it’s a phallic symbol of male domination, could be a goer.  Won’t work, but that has never stopped us before.  The Maori Party is not scrutinised in Parliament because they will have the balance of power and neither National nor Labour can criticise them.    But at least they believe in something and are committed in their advocacy of what would become a state within a state.  Hone Harawira made an excellent speech against the Anti-Terrorism Act, but I wish someone would teach him how to do a tie knot.  I’m originally from the far North, so I understand these flash fashions.  When I worked at Affco Freezing Works, we thought it was cool to turn down the top of our gumboots before going out on the town. 

National looks strong at the moment, but as veteran National strategist, Murray McCully, advised before the last three losing elections when, for a while, National looked good, “Don’t panic, we will weather this storm of approval get back to being hated well before election day.”

I will miss Winston Peters and Rodney Hide if they lose, at least they laugh, have a good sense of the absurd, and seem to enjoy themselves.   And I do read what Jeanette Fitzsimmons writes, it’s thoughtful and worth arguing about.  All politicians have my support, sympathy and condolences this year.