Island Life by David Slack

The candidate must lie naked all night in a coffin-like box, only his nostrils protruding above the icy water with which it is filled, and with heavy stones laid on his chest. In this position he must compose a poem of considerable length in the most difficult of the many difficult bardic meters, on a subject which is given him as he is placed in the box. On his emergence next morning he must be able to chant this poem to a melody which he had been simultaneously composing, and accompany himself on the harp.

The penalty for any failure is, of course, death.

You may be thinking this is the initiation ceremony for the Auckland Rotary club, but you would be wrong. It was the test the ancient Druids used to assess your competence in poetic composition. I learned of it on one of the blogs of Jack Ross, and my first thought was: NCEA really is easy.

My next was to wonder: if you were to make this a rite of induction, how many of the candidates would still be willing to stand for Parliament? And which of them would measure up?

I predict the Libertarians would do rather well, a good number of Green Party people too; being green is indeed not easy. ACT members would have ample Darwinian instinct to carry them through or, at any rate, the more mature ones, and their fellow traveller Stephen Franks grew up in Taihape, so he’s seen worse.

Matt McCarten would be no pussy either, if he could just be persuaded to put his name on the ballot. You could expect valiant efforts from Ron Mark and Sue Bradford, but probably just a lot of whining from Peter Brown, and Jonathan Coleman looks to be more of a feet-up-with-a-cigar man.

Gerry Brownlee might rely on natural advantage to sustain him through the ordeal. As for the Maori Party MPs, I can’t see Pita Sharples, proud warrior and learned orator, being at all troubled by any of it. Hone Harawira would be staunch, but could he stay within the confines of the bardic meter?

Peters would get through by making a lot of noise. He’d say he’d already done it when the media wasn’t looking and he wasn’t about to do it again for second-rate reporters who were too lazy to do their job properly.

And what of the heavy hitters? I keep saying I wouldn't like to find myself in a lifeboat with Helen Clark, and the more I say it in a public forum, surely the more scrotum-shrinking I make the prospect. Nonetheless it’s hard to see that cross-country skiing, mountain climbing, steely politician even breaking stride for such a simple task. It would be just another day at the office; in fact I picture her reclining in the chilled waters with Heather Simpson plonked on a stool alongside, reading out the Cabinet papers.

And John Key? I think he would adopt the time-honoured practice of all CEOs with animal instincts of self-preservation. He would delegate. Bill, can you take this one? Failing that, he’d probably turn to the other technique of highly effective CEOs: deride, disparage, marginalise and discard the proposition so thoroughly that it would be seen to be neither advisable nor prudent to pursue it.

Which brings us to the other players in the drama: you, me and the rest of the little orange stick figures. As a voter, how confident do you feel that the candidates and their policies will have been well tested by election day?

Consider the prospect of a comprehensively managed six week programme of marketing, with policy McNuggets carefully drip-fed into the news cycle for the duration. The better the politicians get at modern marketing, the more an election campaign is just another product launch, and this National Party machine looks to be exceptionally well primed to roll out their latest offering.

Earlier this week John Key chatted to Wammo about the vexed business of policies. Where were they? When would he release them? He began by breezily declaring that they’d issued 14 already and they would be steadily announcing more.

Let’s trade in the prevailing currency: I can give you 14 of those Chesdale slices your kids have in their lunch-boxes and I can give you 14 one-kilogram blocks of cheddar; either way it’s technically correct to say I’ve given you 14 packets of cheese. Michael Cullen rightly calls attention to the substance - you call those policies? , but the brute reality here is that the packaging and marketing matter more. Fresh, new, ambitious John will give you a better cheese experience than sour, tired Helen and Michael.

John tells Wammo the tax cut package will come later this year, specifically: the first week or so of the election campaign. He can tell you when that will be once the Prime Minister tells him when the election will be held. Then just count on your fingers and thumbs six weeks back, and that will be the day you find out how much you’ll be getting. And I hereby declare this election campaign well and truly launched.

He talks about timing: it might be pointless to talk much about policy before the election campaign: wonks might be paying attention, but the hoi polloi probably won’t. Hitherto he has been saying that he doesn’t want to bring out policy too soon because Labour would just pinch it, but now he’s on a new tack. There’s no point bringing out the big guns now, he says, because if you try to wheel them out again at election time, they won’t be new and therefore you won’t be the lead item on One News.

The news cycle is of supreme importance. Policy announcements will be calibrated to meet its demands, and thus do they become McNuggets. You know how it plays out as news coverage: Who’s bigger, who’s better, who’s winning, who’s losing? Before we can pause to ask of a given policy Does it create more growth or not? What kind of country will it produce? we’re on to the next morsel.

News thus becomes an amplification of marketing messages; longer on emotion than reason and thus did you get a superior performance from National for most of the 2005 campaign.

Paul Williams put it concisely in a discussion thread here yesterday. Although all parties, Labour included, were guilty of similar sins, he found the Iwi/Kiwi tactics of John Ansell particularly disagreeable.

All spin and no substance, designed to polarise and certainly not to inform.

John Ansell might be gone, but surely the lesson has not been forgotten.

News cycle management is not in the least bit new. Helen Clark's lot are past masters at announcing good news on Sunday afternoon and bad news on a Friday or just before a sufficiently diverting event. But at least they have seemed to feel obliged to offer big wodges of detail in their policies and more willing to produce it sooner.

Trader John seems to be rather more interested in fizzing up the buyers and getting their signature on the contract. Don’t you worry about the details. We’ll sort it out. You’ll get your three-garage Mediterranean style house and we promise it won’t leak.

If he could put in a bardic meter and accompany it with harp music, I expect it would sound even more alluring.

I was both touched and humbled to receive my Queens Birthday honour for blogging. I will accept it on behalf of the many hard-working Kiwis who sit down in front of a blank screen to bang out post after post for no more reward or recognition than perhaps Blog of the Week in the newspaper of the year.

I especially want to mention my fellow blogger Russell Brown. Public Address was very much his idea as well, and I am deeply indebted to him for stepping in with an interesting post on the days when I am too busy to get one out.

I generally give the honours lists a quick scan before I crumble up my WeetBix, but this weekend I was brought up short by the composition of the Order of New Zealand, that leader board of our finest living men and women. It was always going to look a little less lustrous without Sir Ed, but all the same, I couldn't help thinking to myself: that’s it? Doubtless they will list the names of the members each time a new one is added to the board, and doubtless each time my scanning will be brought up short by the name of Jonathan Hunt and then, having had the aura of greatness punctured, I will look askance at some of the other names on the list.

I have a proposal. It’s a somewhat more elegant variation on the worthiness test prescribed by by Elaine in Seinfield. This one eschews the sponge, and turns to something rather less domestic. The drumbeat sound is rising: fetal and embryonic stem cells, admixed embryos; at some near point lies the possibility of cloning ourselves. Given the chance, which of our great and good would we most want to replicate?

I propose this sole, simple and elegant criterion for admission to the Order of New Zealand: is this person so good we'd like to clone them? You might refine that further: how many copies would we want?

A few Jim Bolgers might be handy. One of them could be reserved for Irish raconteur duties, the rest would be deployed to pour oil on sundry troubled waters.

I imagine the country would take as many copies as it could get of Sir Ed and Sir Peter, and it would be fascinating to see what they all might do. At least one of them would surely go boldly into outer space, and perhaps one might be prepared to take on the job of rebuilding the Labour Party in November.

How many copies of Jonathan Hunt, would you like, Mrs? Perhaps one at a time, to keep Parliament ticking over, but outside of that, I’ve got nothing.

The Peter Jackson machine is once more rolling across our achingly beautiful landscape, filming The Lovely Bones in Queenstown. No doubt there will be a red carpet premiere and the surely-not-replicable John Campbell will do a red carpet broadcast. Back in the days of the Lord of the Rings premieres, when Peter Jackson was still a little on the sturdy side and wildly unkempt, I fancied a stunt: you get a few rugby teams together, kit out the stout ones in a pair of round spectacles, a puffy ski jacket, large black fuzzy beard, shorts and gumboots and you let them loose all over Wellington to have sport with the credulous international media.

What’s not to like about the idea of several dozen copies of that man? You just can’t get too much of a good thing.

Here’s something to think about over the weekend. Would you like to come to Devonport and write the next Harry Potter?

Jill Marshall is on Public Address Radio this Saturday afternoon (Radio Live 5.00 pm). Eight years ago she gave up her management life to take a Masters Degree in Writing for Children. She graduated in 2002 and moved to New Zealand, bringing with her the idea for a series of children’s books that has turned into a splendid U.K. publishing success. She writes, she consults, she mentors, she runs workshops, all under the business banner of Write Good Stuff. She’d like to help another writer enjoy the same good fortune she’s had.

This is where the Harry Potter idea comes in. Jill has funded a ten week residency at the Michael King Writers Center for a children’s writer. It runs from late July to late September 2008. You’ll be living in a historic home on the side of Mt Victoria in Devonport. Your room has an ensuite bathroom, office area, double bed and access to the kitchen and the rest of centre. During your residency you’ll work on a manuscript for children. You don’t need to be published already; you may be published in other genres.

The residency includes:
- up to 10 weeks paid accommodation in the Michael King Writer's Centre between July 21st and September 26
- mentoring from Jill Marshall
- potential access to an agent at the end of the project
- access to the local writing and school community in Devonport
- a training course with Write Good Stuff at the end of the tenure

You’ll have to meet the cost of travel to and from the centre and your living costs.

How do you apply? Send a one page CV, a synopsis or outline of your proposed project, and a sample of up to 10,000 words, to:

Write Good Stuff
PO Box 46116
Herne Bay
AUCKLAND

by no later than 30 June 2008.

Mission Impossible always began the same way. Jim Phelps would slip into a phone booth, sneak behind a vending machine or shut himself in an elevator, and unearth the tape player secreted thereabouts. The recorded message would give him his instructions, and always there was the same abandonment at the end: Should you or any of your team etc... this tape will self destruct in five seconds. Good luck Jim. What an elaborate performance things were before we had broadband.

Getting those instructions looked like such fun; a Christmas present every week, and every week a fresh surprise. I imagine it must be much the same for John Key and his caucus. First, David Farrar and the the rest of the rumpelstiltskenites on the phones gather the survey data. How do the voters feel about the budget? Tax cuts? Nuclear Power? Export incentives? Compulsory employer contributions to Kiwisaver? It all goes into pie charts, graphs and spreadsheets. Next, if Kiwiblogblog is to be believed, the pollsters just have to step across to the the next desk at National Party HQ to hand the data to the strategy people and/or Kevin Taylor. I imagine it is compiled into some kind of handy dossier with an executive summary, at which point it is ready for John Key to be briefed about the policies for which he and the National Party will be standing.

I can understand how a principled Christchurch lawyer who came into the National Party on the basis that she felt an affinity with its avowed values ( see in particular: Individual freedom and choice, Personal responsibility,  Competitive enterprise and rewards for achievement, and Limited government) might well find this a little irregular. I can certainly see how as the party’s designated spokesperson on Industrial relations, she might, upon being asked about the party’s position on compulsory employer contributions to Kiwisaver, have felt confident enough to declare that the party did not believe in compulsion. As someone doubtless familiar with political history, she would well know that indeed her party did not. Whether it does not, is of course in the hands of the pollsters and the focus groups.

I say to Kate Wilkinson: do not give up the good fight. These are dark days for your party but surely, one day before we all pass from this earth, it may yet recover its enthusiasm for the primacy of the individual, the sanctity of money, the freedom of Business to roam green fields at will, unfettered by the RMA, political correctness and and mile upon mile of red tape. Just today, a baby may have been born who will one day grow to be a politician who cleaves to such a posture of ideological purity and steadfastness. In the meantime, there’s always the brooding Bill English.

Helen Clark will, now and then, and often on a Monday morning, turn to a spot of ice-cold rabble-rousing. Monday is post-cabinet press conference day. It is also the day the Prime Minister has her weekly chat on the radio with Paul Holmes and, in more recent times, a chat on Breakfast TV with Paul Henry. It has become the day to climb up upon your bully pulpit and speak plainly with the people.

The Sunday papers all dwelt at length on the sorry outcome of the Kahui investigation and trial. People were angry and frustrated that no-one would be paying for the death of the boys, and angry to hear the Police declare the matter to be at an end.

The Prime Minister knew what to say on Monday morning.

I certainly would urge them (police) not to leave it where it is because our society now has in front of it a case where two beautiful young babies were killed and we don't know who did so justice has not been done.

Gears graunch when the Prime Minister uses uncharacteristic language. From time to time you can hear the cue cards turning. That’s the price she pays for being authentic. She’s absolutely right when she avers that no-one will die wondering what she thinks. Here, it seemed, she wasn’t offering her own thoughts. Rather, she was purporting to embrace the undiluted outrage and emotional frustration of the voters as her own, and she was prepared to overlook constitutional considerations with which she is only too familiar.

Congratulations, then, to Marie Dybergh for having the fortitude to stick up for the separation of powers as she did today on Morning Report. We overlook the way the justice system works at our peril. The golden thread that lets ten guilty men go free rather than see a single innocent one rot in jail will inevitably have days when we will feel it has let us down. But the alternative is too authoritarian and arbitrary to ever be acceptable. The words the Prime Minister used were nuanced, but the tenor was not. It was bully pulpit, it was rabble-rousing, leaning on the police to go looking once more, perhaps at the deeply unlovely Macsyna. Let’s just assume that Chris Kahui was in fact guilty. If someone else should, under the Prime Minister’s urging, now be prosecuted and convicted, in what sense would that be right?

A more fruitful avenue to pursue might be to ask how an entire family, such as the group of adults that surrounded those babies in a fog of drugs and alcohol and neglect could be living such feckless lives. Fix that problem, and you might save the lives of some other children.

If the Prime Minister would like something less momentous but nevertheless equally outrageous on which to vent her spleen, she might like to consider that Porkometer in the Herald. If you thought the butcher had his thumb on the scales last week, wait till you get a load of today’s edition. It has totted up the budget spending and declared that Labour is promising 16 billion of ‘pork’ and National still just 1.5 billion. I won’t shoot every one of the many smelly fish in this pork barrel, I’ll settle for just the one. The four years of tax cuts that Labour are promising are, we have been assured by John Key, going to be at least matched by National. So that thin blue line in the Porkometer graphic of 1.5 billion could get at least 10.5 added to it. Surely.

Elsewhere in today’s edition they also have a photo of new protective clothing for the brave lads who have to disable bombs and open letters from Cameron Slater.

They look very snug and secure, I must say. In fact I think I might get one for myself, because I fear that at rate the toxicity of its bias appears to be growing, I many need to slip one on before I go out to the letter box to pick up my copy of the Herald.