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Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics is a weekly column that appears on listener.co.nz on Friday mornings. If you enjoy a “serious laugh” - and complaining about politics and politicians - you’ll enjoy reading Greg’s latest grievances.
Forget who really shot JFK, who was behind the Jack the Ripper killings or the identity of Southland’s infamous public pool pooper.
It turns out the greatest whodunnit in the history of the world is who in Associate Health Minister Casey Costello’s office wrote a controversial memo sent to Ministry of Health officials arguing for tobacco tax cuts and claiming, “nicotine is as harmful as caffeine”.
The intriguing, ongoing investigation by RNZ into this most gripping of mysteries was revived again this week after Costello finally released a redacted copy of the memo, an unexpurgated copy of which had been leaked to RNZ months ago.
Costello, who at first denied the document existed at all, says it was not she who wrote it. So who then?
What’s obviously needed to get to the bottom of this confounding whodunnit is for her to hire some sort of experienced investigator, say an ex-police detective with 14 years on the job, someone like … Casey Costello!
Yet despite the document stinking of Big Tobacco and embarrassing her for months with no end of negative news stories, Detective Sergeant Costello seems not to have used her own well-honed investigative skills to find the person who wrote this memo. Why would that be?
In the meantime, there’s only one thing we know for sure in the greatest whodunnit in the history of the world: where there’s smoke, there’s Casey Costello.
Simeon and the Terrible Trolls
Once upon a time in a land not very far, far away, Young Simeon the Brown came across some terrible trolls on social media, living under a bridge.
“How can a boy like you be Minister of Transport,” the terrible trolls huffed and puffed and tweeted at Young Simeon, “you don’t even have a driver’s licence.”
Young Simeon was miffed. He was irked. He was narked. After all, he was in-charge of almost all of the crises in the entire Land of the Long White Cloud, like the energy crisis, the Auckland road cone problem, the local government crisis as well as the pothole crisis. He was even Deputy Leader of the House, whatever that was.
All that made him a Very Important Boy, a VIB, a boy of consequence. How dare the trolls say such things about him on social media. So unfair. They were terrible people.
But then Young Simeon had an idea. He would prove them all wrong. He would borrow dad’s car and go for a drive down Pakuranga Rd. He would put it on social media. That would show the trolls.
Sitting behind the wheel on a cushion so he could see over the wheel and with his seat as far forward as it would go so he could reach the pedals, Young Simeon drove and drove while a minion filmed.
“I am the minister of transport,” he told all who would listen, “of course I have my full driver’s licence [sic].”
It made no difference. The trolls kept trolling. More than one said it looked fake, others that he was just being weird. One posted a picture of a learner “L” plate, while another made the point that driving a car wasn’t actually proof someone had a driver licence.
The lesson from the parable of Simeon and the Terrible Trolls was there for all the other youngsters to see: It wasn’t to get a licence before you drive dad’s car. It was not to feed the trolls, it only encourages them.
Did you ask for a cash job, Gerry?
This year’s Cowboy Builders’ Association prize for Most Over-priced Reno goes to … Gerry Brownlee.
The Speaker of the House is a worthy winner after saying it is absolutely fine for the government to be spending $7 million to turn the third-floor space occupied by the Beehive’s Bellamy’s restaurant and Pickwick’s Bar into offices for just three ministers.
The only conclusion you can draw from that decision, is that all this fiscal austerity malarkey Finance Minister Nicola Willis has been inflicting on everyone else doesn’t extend to government ministers.
Attempting to justify this piece of high-priced hypocrisy, she told TVNZ it was a “pragmatic” approach to providing more space at Parliament, which is squeezed.
Meanwhile, Brownlee argued with a false equivalency that the cost “is really just a flash house in an Auckland suburb”, which is bit like saying cheating on the wife is really just another cardio workout.
If this government took its own advice seriously, it could save that $7 million, as well as end the big squeeze, and do it all in one go.
All it has to do is reduce by between 6.5% and 7.5% the number of staff in government MPs’ offices — starting with all the bloody spin doctors. Instead of overcrowding in Parliament there will suddenly be loads of empty desks and dying pot plants.
If cutting thousands of back-office staff is good enough for the public service, then it’s good enough for the government.
Political Quiz of the Week
What joke is NZ First deputy, Shane “The Miners’ Friend” Jones, telling the Northland Women’s Club Charity Ball held at Russell’s Duke of Marlborough Hotel this month?
A/ The one about the “communist” judge.
B/ The one about his undeclared ministerial dinner with a mining industry bigwig.
C/ The one about him “taking soundings” about NZ First tobacco policy from a Big Tobacco bigwig.
D/ The one about killing blind frogs called Freddie.
