We should start a book. Bets on when you reckon the Government is finally going to build up the nerve to publicly let us know what it has done with Ihumātao?
We already know, of course, that it has cut a deal whereby you and I give the AucklandCouncil money to buy Ihumātao off Fletchers. The fact its using our money to extricate itself from a problem that's only its problem because the Prime Minister waded into an area she didn't understand, is of course a scandal.
You remember just before she left for yet another one of her Pacific sojourns, this time to Tokelau, she stopped Fletchers from beginning construction. Rolled out ministers Jackson and Henare and then naffed off to the islands on a Navy ship.
In the ensuing period, a deal was done. But when Winston found out, he pulled the pin.
Pania Newton then said a deal was done. They were meeting that night, announcements would be made within 24 hours. The media bought it hook, line and sinker. Led with it on the telly, only to see no deal, no announcement, no nothing. Until Winston came on this show, post another rumour that it would all be done by Waitangi Day, only to tell us it wouldn't be done by Waitangi Day.
And he is the only one who's actually told the truth so far.
Newton, meantime, has popped up periodically. She's seemingly not remotely bothered by the fact she's been played like a fiddle and made a fool of, and kept up the rhetoric on why this thing is so important.
Her latest headline is that Heritage NZ has had another look at the land and thinks it's more important than it was originally. It has moved it from Heritage 2 to Heritage 1. It has done this by using its hocus pocus approach of thinking of it differently, and taking into account things it didn't the first time.
Basically, Heritage NZ has made it up. It can be whatever it wants it to be.
More importantly, legally its decision means nothing, Heritage NZ is like the Privacy Commissioner and Retirement Commissioner and the Coroner. They write reports, they might get a headline or a talkback caller but they have no power. Nothing changes.
Which is important to remember, because the Prime Minister tried to spin her way out of this mess on this show. She asked me what I would do now that Heritage NZ had reclassified the land. The answer, of course, is ignore it. But her hope was we'd all be mesmerised by what Heritage NZ has to say.
So here we are, Newton still spruiking her dream. Heritage NZ has filled out a bit more paperwork, and everyone else is stony quiet. Apart from Fletchers, who said they're impatient, and who can blame them? They've been treated abysmally. The longer the Government stalls on this, the worse it is. The worse it is, clearly the longer it stalls.
