Let’s not go there

Jane Clifton explains the motivation for opposition behaviour over Peter Dunne’s resignation:

What’s really going on here is a three-way game of whack-a-mole. Labour, the Greens and Winston’s New Zealand First are odds-on to form the next Government, but as coalitions go, it’ll be a shotgun wedding. There are outbreaks of cooperation, and the official line is that a Labour-Green ceasefire is in place. But at bottom, none of these parties’ main players rate, respect or trust one another. They are on the same side on most issues – ie, whatever National does is evil. But they’re also in predatory competition with one another.

All of which makes Parliament’s battle-lines oscillate alarmingly. Things can seem relatively straightforward when a party recognises that its enemy’s enemy is its friend. But when that “friend” turns out to be more inimical than the enemy, what then?

There would be even more inimical participants if the Maori and/or Mana parties were added to the mix.

Labour is in the process of trying to figure out whether it can help engineer the squeezing out of one or other of its potential partners so it only has to swallow the one set of policy dead rats in government. So whose rats would be the least obnoxious? At the moment, you’d have to say Team Red is fantasising about not having to work with Team Green and thinking that maybe Winston – the devil it knows from past Beehive iterations – is the better option.

If he’s the better option it doesn’t say anything good about the alternative.

The Greens would be exponentially more demanding than Winston. The fact that co-leader Russel Norman is still evangelising the wonders of quantitative easing represents a gigantic elephant room-mate for the putative Labour/Green/NZ First finance minister. The Greens would, of course, like that to be Norman, and there’s another almighty conflict to resolve before even getting bums on seats in the Cabinet room.

The Greens would also hold out for a massive progressive tax realignment that would quickly alienate a chunk of Labour’s salaried and small-business support base, and doubtless reinvigorate the population drain to Australia. The Greens would demand nothing less than a fiscal upheaval.

All of which would provide National with plenty of ammunition to scare voters from listing to the left.

A red government would be bad enough for the country, add green to the mix and you’d get something altogether worse.

It really would be better not to go there.

On pinning down Peters

Trans Tasman observes John Campbell’s attempt to pin down Winston Peters:

For those who have been around for a bit, Peters’ mix of belligerence and incoherence is getting more and more like 1970s-80s trade unionist Jim Knox. Certainly Campbell, whose mien is usually bubbly and engaging even with the most difficult subjects, gave an impression of a man in a wrestle with a particularly large and truculent molasses-coated rhinoceros. . .

My memories of Knox are mercifully dim, but I can recall enough to suspect Peters won’t be flattered by the comparison.

Over at Opposable Thumb, Denis Welsh also paints a word picture:

 . . . But the days are long gone when he seized on something really meaningful, and it’s a sign of how impregnable the National government has been to his usual tricks that all the old shark can do now is sink his increasingly blunt teeth into a fellow minor party. Shark bites minnow: this is news? The more Peters attacks Dunne, the more he shows how weakened he has become. And as it also grows clearer with every day that he has no more of substance to throw at his victim (admitting he hasn’t got all the dirt he needs would have been unthinkable once), so we witness the sad spectacle of a veteran showbiz star no longer able to wow the crowds in the same dazzling way. The old soft-shoe shuffle, so slick before, looks worn and creaky now. One is reminded irresistibly of John Osborne’s play/film The Entertainer, in which a faded music-hall performer past his prime keeps wheeling out the same tired old jokes and routines, to increasingly thin applause. Peters has so lost the plot this time, in fact, that he’s in serious danger of rousing public sympathy for Dunne. . .

A truculant molassess-coated rhinoceros; an old shark with increasingly blunt teeth; the old soft shoe-shuffle . . .  looks worn and creaky now.

These aren’t descriptions of a man on the way up and in politics if you’re not going up you’re going down.

Points for trying

At last the media is calling Winston Peters’ bluff.

John Campbell did an admirable job of attempting to get him to show some proof and give a straight answer.

Campbell wasn’t successful but at least he showed Peters obfuscating.

And tonight Rebecca Wright did her best to get him to prove his comments on Auckland as sin-city.

Three weeks ago, Winston Peters made a speech to Grey Power in Takapuna, entitled “Auckland, super city or sin city?”

In it, he used the word “China” 21 times and he asked the question “who’s running things here, us or them?”

Is there any other immigrant group that gets singled out like that?

It was all in a speech that refers to corruption, crime, money laundering, shady dealing, pokey machines, sex workers, cheating Asian students, a slave trade, drug importation and the seven deadly sins.

So Campbell Live asked Winston Peters for proof. . .

The video is here.

Unfortunately the deluded who think he can do no wrong will probably think he’s in the right and that the media is treating him unfairly.

 

Was it all just a lucky guess?

Did Peters really have access to emails between Andrea Vance and Peter Dunne or did he just make some lucky guesses based on their Twitter exchanges?

Mr Key said he did not believe Mr Peters had seen emails or other communications between Mr Dunne and the reporter, Andrea Vance, which Mr Peters has claimed contained personally embarrassing material.

“It’s normal modus operandi for Mr Peters, bluff and bluster and claims to have lots of information.” . . . 

Mr Peters again refused to say what information he had, but said there were “countless examples” of others doubting his word in the past and he had proved them wrong.

I’d have said there were more examples of others doubting his word in the past and the doubters being proved right.

The invisible party

Labour leader David Shearer appears to be auditioning  for the role of  the invisible man.

He’s the leader of the opposition but Russel Norman and Winston Peters do a lot more visible, and audible, opposing than he does.

It’s easier for them, of course, they know they’ll never have to lead a government.

This gives them the freedom to make outrageous promises with the knowledge they can claim that being a minor partner requires concessions to excuse their inability to deliver on them..

Labour doesn’t have that luxury.

It is aiming to lead a coalition government and therefore needs to be more circumspect in its policy and practice.

That shouldn’t stop it formulating policy and taking action but in the last week it’s looked like the minor party playing catch-up and me-too in attacks on Peter Dunne, not the major one.

In this saga, Labour and its leader have been followers not leaders.

If it doesn’t start taking a more proactive stance, it won’t just be the invisible man, it will be the invisible party.

Illiberal left

Do LabourGreen and New Zealand First understand what they’re doing in calling for a police investigation over the leaking of the GCSB report?

Politics lecturer Brent Bryce Edwards rightly says they’re being illiberal:

“There’s always problems when the police get involved in the political and media realm. It can have a very chilling affect on politics and journalism,” Dr Edwards says.

Threshold not reached
Generally those that regard themselves as politically liberal will not want the police involved unless utterly necessary, says the Politics Daily compiler.

“Therefore the threshold for calling the cops into Parliament and newsrooms should be very high. It’s hard to see that this threshold has been reached in this case,” Dr Edwards says.

“Normally those that call the police in on their political opponents are from an authoritarian political philosophy. By contrast, liberals generally regard those that leak government department reports as heroic whistleblowers that are enabling the freedom of information and the right of the public to know what those in authority are doing.”

That was certainly the case when, Tracy Watkins reminds us,  Labour’s Phil Goff was gleefully leaking sensitive Cabinet documents relating to Foreign Affairs.

He almost certainly got the papers from a public servant who, like an MP, is supposed to keep confidential matters in confidence and, unlike an MP, be non-partisan in his/her work.

Jane Clifton reminds us:

The affair does underline the dichotomy we in the political firmament face over the issue of leaks, though. Labour and New Zealand First are harrumphing like scandalised Wodehousian aunts about Dunne’s behaviour. Yet both have received, publicised and gloated over similarly spicey leaks in their time.

Leaks have come to the Opposition from two of the most sacred departments, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government Security Communications Bureau, at times in farcical quantity. Information from these bureaucracies have the potential to harm this country’s security and trade.

It’s a very unhealthy sign that such officials are prepared to undermine the Government by leaking information that could also undermine the welfare of the country. Yet the Opposition has trafficked in them with abandon, and never has a single Labour, Green or NZ First politician called the police about such documents, as they have done over the Dunne situation.

Clifton goes on to remind us that leaks are undeniably desirable for the media and the public who learn from them.

Calling for a police investigation is at best baffling and definitely hypocritical when all three parties have benefited from leaks, the most recent being of the Henry report to Peters.

Would he like an investigation into that one too?

If Dunne didn’t who did?

Peter Dunne has resigned as a minister but says he didn’t leak the Kitteridge Report on the GCSB inquiry.

“While I did not leak the report, and challenge Fairfax to confirm that, some of my actions after I received an advance copy of the report were extremely unwise and lacked the judgement reasonably expected of a Minister in such circumstances.

“I accept full responsibility for that.

He also justifies not releasing all the relevant emails:

“The sole reason why I did not disclose the full content of my emails was because of my strong belief that citizens, be they constituents, members of the public or journalists, ought to be able to communicate with their elected representatives in confidence if they wish, and we tamper with that right at our collective peril. . . “

I have a great deal of sympathy for the right to communicate with any MP in confidence, but I thought any communication with a minister was subject to the Official Information Act.

The Henry report which precipitated Dunne’s resignation identified three people who had access to the leaked report and contact with the reporter, Andrea Vance, who wrote the story on the leaks.

10. In relation to the two public S9I’\/BUYS I have obtained all the information I required, including the content of emails exchanged with the reporter over the period 22 March to 9 April (inclusive). I have established those contacts were entirely commensurate with their official duties.

11.The third person identified was the leader of the United Future political party- the Hon Peter Dune MP. Mr Dunne had a copy of the Kitteridge report from 27 March 2013 onwards. He is a minister outside cabinet.

12.l have not obtained all the information I required from Mr Dunne. I advised him that I considered it necessary for the purpose of this inquiry to have access to the full text of 86 email exchanges between him and the reporter during the period 27 March to 9 April. Mr Dunne has declined to allow me to read those emails. . . 

The case against Dunne is unproven, but if he didn’t leak the report who did?

The reporter could clear up the question but journalists will usually fight for the right to keep their sources private.

Two other questions as yet unanswered are: who leaked the information that Dunne was a suspect to Winston Peters and why, if he was so sure of the information, wouldn’t he repeat the allegations outside parliament?

He had a lot to gain from Dunne’s downfall, but who had anything to gain from leaking the information to him?

Dunne has said he will continue to support National for supply and confidence so this government is no less stable than it was.

But if Dunne doesn’t stand again it could make forming the next government more difficult.

Labour might well be delighted that a Minister has resigned, but it could make it more difficult for the party to form a government without Dunne’s support.

If he doesn’t stand again it will make it more difficult for National to form a coalition.

Dunne could stand again of course, but if he did, the voters Ohariu might be a lot less keen to split their votes than they have in the past.

Who would it hurt?

Winston Peters and his sycophants and Trevor Mallard walked out of parliament over the Speaker David Carter’s ruling that Peter Dunne could still get a leader’s budget although his party has been deregistered.

Mallard and Peters are trying to get at Dunne but who would the loss of funding really hurt?

It would be a temporary inconvenience for Dunne. The people the funding employs could be far harder hit, losing their jobs, if only temporarily until United Future’s membership is sorted out. They’re the workers, the “ordinary” New Zealanders, who Peters and Mallard purport to represent.

The requirement to have 500 valid members is a very low threshold for party registration and it doesn’t reflect well on United Future or its leader that it’s having problems with it.

But the membership problem which caused the deregistration is expected to be sorted out by next week and the party will be re-registered so any loss of funding would be very temporary.

Opposition MPs keen on publicity might think it’s worth making a fuss in spite of that but the people whose jobs could be affected won’t.

Lazy copy

Inflammatory statements make good copy but it’s also lazy copy.

Winston Peters is a master at making the comments which the media happily report.

The headlines appeal to the deluded who support him but are rarely supported by facts.

It’s the media’s jobs to dig for the facts, or at very least challenge Peters to front up with them.

He is hiding behind parliamentary privilege with his accusations that Peter Dunne leaked the GCSB report.

As Jock Anderson says (behind the pay wall at the NBR) :

Speaking freely does not mean making any old allegation without the support of facts . . .

Mr Peters does not have the guts to repeat his allegation outside parliament because he is afraid Mr Dunne might sue him for defamation.

This suggests Mr Peters knows his allegation is not true.

That is bad enough. But Anderson points out that voters should be even more concerned that MMP could allow Peters to have considerable sway in the next government.

That doesn’t say much for those who support him but it might help them think again if the media went beyond the easy copy to find the facts.

Winston’s ill-wind, does Dunne good

A rant against immigrants, and Chinese ones in particular, is vintage Winston Peters.

But he must have decided that didn’t get him enough publicity.

What else could explain his bizarre accusation that Peter Dunne leaked the report into the GCSB?

It was done under parliamentary privilege which protects the accuser from legal action. It doesn’t protect him from derision, though.

If he was going to make a mad accusation he should have chosen someone who wasn’t on most people’s list of politicians least likely to leak.

Dunne would have nothing to gain and lots to lose, by leaking like that.

But it’s an ill-wind which blows nobody good and Winston’s ill-wind has done some good for Dunne, if only because the accusation has given him some much needed publicity.

And now for an even sillier idea

If you think the LabourGreen power plan is silly – Winston Peters has an even sillier one.

He wants the government to use Kiwisaver and the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to buy back Contact Energy and Mighty River Power.

Kiwisaver funds aren’t public. That money belongs to individual account holders.

The Superannuation Fund is supposed to help insulate future governments against the cost of superannuation in the future.

Its investment decisions are supposed to be based on sound financial considerations, balancing risk and return, not politics.

Won’t his elderly support group be delighted to know he’s prepared to take their savings and put politics before security?

 

Power prices

I was the National Party’s electorate chair when Max Bradford introduced the power reforms.

It wasn’t an easy time to be a volunteer in the party – people inside and outside opposed the changes.

More than a decade later many still regard them as a mistake and blame them for steep increases in the price of power.

But as this graph from Kiwiblog shows, that is wrong.

Labour are saying that it was the Bradford reforms that led to increased prices. in fact the four years after the reforms saw the smallest increases in 25 years.

Also worth noting that of the increases in the last four years, two of them were due to external factors – the GST increase (which had compensating tax cuts) and the introduction of the Emissions Trading Scheme.

A variety of factors impact on the price of power.

The most obvious one this graph shows is Labour governments and the LabourGreen plan to nationalise wholesale power could well make that worse.

Peters’ protectionist policy would sabotage most banks

During Question time yesterday Winston Peters showed just how dangerous his protectionist policies would be:

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could I ask the Minister why he would prefer an open bank resolution scheme, which in part or wholly in extreme circumstances could see the depositor having all their money stopped from their use, rather than a very sound scheme announced by me in October 2008—[Interruption] Well, we were there before you even did the ballot, OK?

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Rt Hon Winston Peters: In 2008. It would have this effect: it would have the effect of a Government guarantee for the first $100,000 of a deposit in a New Zealand – owned bank.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I could think of a number of issues with the member’s proposal immediately, because what he would be proposing to do would be to guarantee a certain number of deposits in a New Zealand – owned bank, which would mean that suddenly all the money would move, particularly in a difficult situation, like we have with the global financial crisis, from other banks that were not necessarily New Zealand – owned, and that would collapse the other banks, which I do not think would be in the interests of the financial stability of the New Zealand economy.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: They’re all foreign-owned.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Right, so we should actually—here is what Mr Peters is suggesting in a xenophobic way. It is that we should collapse all the foreign-owned banks into the New Zealand— thank goodness he was not in Cabinet during the global financial crisis.

Thank goodness, in deed.

Peters’ doesn’t appear to appreciate but a lot of the people he purports to represent would lose their savings if his misguided policy was implemented.

WIll it be a bottom line?

In a speech typically high on emotion and rhetoric Winston Peters says:

We will use every ounce of influence after the next election and all the financial measures available to us to buy back Mighty River Power shares at a price no higher than originally paid for them.

The only way he can do this is to make it a bottom line in negotiations over supply and confidence with the party which will lead the next government.

It would mean that New Zealand First makes full state ownership of an energy company a higher priority than schools, hospitals, roads, irrigation and other assets.

It would mean that the party isn’t troubled by the prospect of sabotaging the value of public and private shareholdings and destabilising the share market.

It would mean that if New Zealand First held the balance of power, there would have to be another election.

The re-natonalisation of MRP would be a bottom line National wouldn’t accept.

And although David Shearer hasn’t quite ruled out buying back the shares in Mighty River he knows the cost and it’s one no party which wants to be regarded as a careful steward of the economy could contemplate.

If Peters is making it a bottom line he’s ruling his party out of government.

If he’s not then it’s just another example of his hot air.

 

Pay it back

Oh dear.

Winston Peters has never let selective memory get in the way of political point scoring but Keeping Stock has come across this which would be difficult to beat for hypocrisy:

A huge 70% of Kiwis back our call for Hollywood companies to pay back the $67 million Government subsidy they got to make The Hobbit. They should do the right thing & give the money back.

If polled I am sure an even more huge 99% (that’s everyone minus the few deluded who believe Peters can do no wrong) would back the call for him to give the money back too.

He might have forgotten but we still remember the  $158,000 he took from taxpayers to fund his 2005 election campaign which has never been repaid.

Who’s leading the Opposition?

Last year the Green Party had a higher profile than Labour.

This year, as Lew at Kiwipolitico points out,  Winston Peters is leading the charge:

David Shearer says he won’t rule out buying back shares in state-owned power companies sold by the government. He won’t rule it in, either. Why? Does he need to consult his leader?

There’s so much wrong with this that I scarcely know where to start. This buyback agenda has been set by Winston Peters; it’s now two years since the 2011 election campaign kicked off with a pledge to sell these assets, and it’s like the boffins in Labour haven’t yet had an original idea about it. The problem with old generals is supposed to be that they fight today’s war with the strategies of yesterday’s war, but this is worse — it’s fighting yesterday’s war with the strategies that lost the one before that. . .

Peters will never be in a position to act on his threat to renationalise any energy companies which are partially sold.

He’s not stupid enough to make it a bottom line in a coalition or confidence deal. He’s just whistling to his dogs.

But he’s also showing up David Shearer and Labour who are in a no-win position.

They’re not stupid enough to promise to renationalise the companies, that would really scare the business horses and push moderate, wavering voters to towards national. But that just makes Labour’s continuing campaign against the policy redundant.

If they’re not going to change the policy they are neutering their opposition.

The party and its leader need to find another policy to help them make some traction because until they show they can lead the Opposition they’re not going to be able to convince enough voters they could lead a government.

The enemy of their enemy is Green’s new friend

The Green Party and New Zealand First have little in common except their opposition to National and the possibility they might be in coalition with Labour.

The divide between the two parties has widened with the Greens agreeing to cast Independent MP Brendan Horan’s vote when he isn’t physically in the debating chamber.

Rt Hon Winston Peters says the move by the Greens to help Horan can unfortunately be seen as legitimising his place in Parliament.

“There is no legitimate place in Parliament for Horan, now or in the future.

“And the Greens are wrong to say that his situation is similar to their exercising Hone Harawira’s proxy.

“Mr Harawira represents an electorate.

“Horan represents no one. For obvious reasons, New Zealand First does not want him and he should have resigned his list seat. . .

Peters might question the legitimacy of Horan’s status but his right to remain and MP is sanctioned by MMP.

A legal right is different from an ethical one, though.

Horan is only in parliament because he was on New Zealand First’s list and having left the party it’s not just Peters who thinks he should resign.

However, the Green Party, which likes to think it’s more ethical than others, isn’t above using his vote when it suits.

The enemy of their enemy is their new friend.

Would they buy them back?

Labour and the Green Party are still wasting their time gathering signatures for their petition opposing the partial sale of a few state assets.

They need to explain if they are going to present the petition and, if it has sufficient signatures, force the expense of their politicians’ initiated referendum on us when it will be too late to achieve anything.

Mighty River Power, is expected to be floated by mid-May, long before a referendum could take place, so why are they bothering to collect more signatures?

Truth points out in its editorial Labour  and the Greens need to come clean on asset sales:

. . . We know what the government thinks. We can all read the prospectus when it comes out for Mighty River Power, but what investors don’t know is what Labour intends as its policy towards these sales.

We know they oppose them, but what is their policy moving forward.

Investors and voters need to know if Labour intends opposing the sales in actions and not just words.

Will Labour commit to forced buy-back of the shares, essentially a re-nationalisation of the asset. Before readers poo-pooh that suggestion remember Air New Zealand.

Helen Clark even flirted with securities laws by advising on national television for Mum and Dad investors to keep their shares in Air New Zealand…that everything would be alright. As we know everything wan;t alright and some weeks later the government forcibly acquired as many shares as it could and left about 25% of shareholder mired without any sort of say in the company.

Would Labour do this again with the listed power companies…and if so how much would they pay for the shares…The listing price? The market price (unlikely)?

Labour and their hangers-on who oppose asset sales need to clarify before even a single share is sold what their intentions are.

I suspect that their policy will be as bankrupt as their position so far has been. Words not Deeds. . .

Winston Peters, a likely coalition partner in a Labour/Green government wants to buy the shares back:

. . . New Zealand First will use its influence on the next coalition Government to buy back our state-owned power companies which are being flogged off by National and we are committed to buying back the shares at no greater price than paid by the first purchaser.

Labour and the Green Party haven’t let us know their plans yet.

If they go ahead with the petition without making a commitment to buy the shares back they are adding yet more proof to the contention they’re after publicity for themselves not a change in policy.

If, however, they plan to buy back the shares they will sabotage any efforts they make to pretend they have any interest in the careful management of public finances and any concern for investors.

Unequivocal or not

Spot the difference in responses to New Zealand First MP Richard Prosser’s vitriolic attack on people from “Wogistan”.

Judith Collins was unequivocal:

Minister for Ethnic Affairs, Justice, and Minister Responsible for the Human Rights Commission, Judith Collins says comments by New Zealand First MP Richard Prosser are extremely disappointing and may cause international embarrassment for New Zealand.

“New Zealand values diversity and prides itself on being an inclusive society.

“Muslims in New Zealand are also a diverse community – it is simply appalling to profile people based on their religion, skin colour, country of origin, or a perceived stereo-typed ‘look’ as Mr Prosser has done.

“Mr Prosser’s anti-Muslim rant has let New Zealand down and as a Member of Parliament he should know better.

“New Zealand First Leader, Winston Peters, needs to do much more than to hide his MP – he needs to explain why Mr Prosser’s behaviour is acceptable to New Zealand First.

“The Office of Ethnic Affairs works closely with the Muslim community in New Zealand – a community that denounces terrorism and has vowed to work with authorities to counter any terrorism threat.

“We have a strong tradition of human rights in New Zealand. Our Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race and religious belief, and our Bill of Rights Act affirms the right to freedom of religion, including the right to hold views without interference.

“As far back as 1978, New Zealand ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which underlines the right to freedom of religion.

“I suggest Mr Peters and his caucus familiarise themselves with this legislation to avoid causing further embarrassment to New Zealand,” says Ms Collins.

Prosser’s leader, Winston Peters, made a very brief statement:

I have spoken with Mr Prosser regarding the Investigate magazine article.

He wrongfully impugned millions of law-abiding, peaceful Muslims.

Mr Prosser agrees that the article did not have balance, and does not represent the views of New Zealand First.

Peters would be the first to call for a government MP to resign for a statement far less damaging than Prosser’s.

However, he has been a strident critic of immigration and is no doubt careful about not alienating the supporters attracted by his xenophobic stance.

Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesman Phil Goff was much firmer:

“Mr Prosser’s statement is unacceptable from an MP and he and New Zealand First should consider whether he has any future in politics,” Phil Goff said.

Labour leader David Shearer was somewhat more equivocal than Ms Collins:

David Shearer says Richard Prosser’s comments were “offensive and completely inappropriate” but wouldn’t say if he would stand him down.

A war of words on Twitter between Green co-leader Russel Norman and Labour MP Trevor Mallard point to problems with one of Labour’s potential coalition partners.

Maybe Shearer’s initial reluctance to take a stand on this was because any tension between his party and the Green Party increases Labour’s reliance on Peters and his party.

Or maybe it’s just another example of Shearer being quick to criticise but much slower to commit himself or his party to action.

Leadership requires the ability to be unequivocal when it matters, Shearer has yet to show he has it.

Herstory of Waitangi

Trans Tasman has suggests the history of the Treaty of Waitangi might be being re-written as a herstory:

There’s a generation of school kids growing up under the impression the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between Governor Hobson and Titewhai Harawira.

This is not so much an indictment on our school system: more on the way Harawira manages to plant herself at the epicentre of our annual national day.

It isn’t clear quite how this happened. True, she managed to make Helen Clark cry, and for some of us there’s always a hope Titewhai – who has become a sort of Kiwi version of a fierce Wodehousian aunt as imagined by one of the more bizarrely gothic Dutch painters – would have a similar impact one of Clark’s successors. There doesn’t seem much chance with the current lot.

If she were to try such a stunt today, John Key would either declare himself relaxed about it, or just have one of his memory lapses. Labour’s David Shearer probably would not notice, unless a staffer or his autocue told him about it. NZ First’s Winston Peters and Act’s John Banks would respond with inarticulate belligerence, and United Future’s Peter Dunne probably with a milder, if more articulate, form of same.

The only ones discombobulated would be Green co-leaders Russel Norman and Metiria Turei: they are more used to being part of protests than being on the receiving end of them.

So what does Waitangi Day, our national day, tell us about ourselves – you know, apart from the fact we are suckers for being bullied by stroppy old ladies?

Well, we’re still working on this treaty stuff, and we’re not very comfortable about the whole race issue. But also we’re not ignoring it and we’re kind of muddling our way through it all, if a little noisily and apologetically.

Apropos of understanding the history of the treaty, I have to confess that I went through school under the impression it ended the land wars.

It was only when I did a New Zealand history paper at university that I learned that wasn’t the case.