Jonathan Milne: Journos and MPs taking a walk on the mild side

COMMENT

If these are the lengths Labour will go to to win a fitness challenge, what lengths to win the general election?

Forget Donna Awatere Huata's fraud hearing, or John Tamihere's $195,000 golden handshake - Parliament has been talking about one thing in the past week.

And that is the scurrilously predetermined exercise challenge, in which seven government MPs are taking on seven journos in a week-long test to see who clocks up more clicks on their pedometers.

Inevitably, it will be dubbed "Walkergate", as even the most half-baked scandals usually are.

Sports and Recreation Minister Trevor Mallard has distributed pedometers - little electronic gadgets worn on the belt - that count how many steps the wearer takes in a week.

But evidence of attempts to predetermine the outcome quickly emerged.

First, the timing - the challenge began in a Parliamentary recess week. What this means is that while the journalists are stuck in their offices working harder than ever to find stories with which to fill their newspapers or bulletins, the MPs are out and about.

One of Labour's reps, Conservation Minister Chris Carter, took his pedometer tramping as he opened a conservation department hut in Bay of Plenty's historic Waitowheta Valley. The beginning of that tramp just happened to coincide exactly with the beginning of the challenge at 1.30pm on Thursday.

Already, there had been evidence of rule-tinkering.

After Mr Mallard's office got wind that NZPA journalist Sue Eden was a keen cyclist and horse-rider, the rules were quickly clarified to ban the use of pedometers on horses, bikes or while rowing. It was decided that these were not legitimate forms of exercise.

As the increasingly cynical hacks pointed out, the minister had in one fell swoop written off all our most successful Olympic medallists.

Running on the treadmill - Finance Minister Michael Cullen's exercise of choice - is still permitted, of course. Some gallery representatives have been darkly pointing to Dr Cullen's penchant for hogging the Parliamentary gym treadmill for 45 minutes to an hour, while the well-behaved journos who stick to the 20 minute time-limit are forced to wait.

Worse was to come: the Munted Meter scandal.

Four of the six journalists discovered the meters they had been allocated by Mr Mallard's office were shonky: they were all under-reporting the amount of exercise the journos did.

Newstalk ZB political editor Barry Soper wore his pedometer on an hour-long run, only to discover it had recorded the equivalent of a gentle stroll down the corridor. Herald on Sunday writer Leah Haines found her trips to Copperfields for coffees were being grossly under-estimated. And Dominion Post political editor Nick Venter discovered he walked so softly that his steps failed to register at all - and it is not often that political journos are accused of treading softly as they go into battle with MPs.


The gallery is waiting with dread for what must be the next step: drug testing. Should such drug tests be given to the journos, any advantage they may have got from their performance-enhancing caffeine and nicotine would be eliminated.

- THE HERALD ON SUNDAY