Winston's game has not only been long, but a permanent battle into the wind.
Winston's game has not only been long, but a permanent battle into the wind.
Comment
The occasional excellent wildlife doco can justify a goggle box in the lounge.
Even more so with latter advances in both hi-tech photography and the extra resourcing that permits sometimes literally years of assiduous filming for a single programme.
But of late I must admit a certain fatigueregarding fang and claw survival on the African savannah.
When the heavy hitters of the food chain tire of lolling around digesting their last kill, and the pack or pride get peckish once more, off they saunter with protein on their mind and you know it's soon curtains for some poor sucker of a wildebeest or gazelle.
The devil is in the detail, and small vulnerabilities usually define who's for the chop – the young, the old, the under-nourished, the lame, or simply the unlucky.
Such is life and death in environments where governments, police forces, or public health systems don't mess with the natural order.
The occasional excellent wildlife doco can justify a goggle box in the lounge.
What passes for modern civilisation means past-use-by-date human protagonists needn't necessarily suffer the grisly end of the veldt.
But one wonders when it's time for NZ First leader wily Winston to opt for the fishing rod and a more leisurely pace of life away from the political bear pit - perhaps at his family base in picturesque Whananaki, up Bay of Islands way.
Being aged 74 isn't all that ancient in the wider political world. Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, is a sprightly 94. Ronnie Reagan was nearly 78 by the time his US Presidency finished, the same age as Walter Nash when ousted as NZ Prime Minister in 1960.
But Winston's game has not only been long, but a permanent battle into the wind.
Out of rude ambition, a self-perceived maverick saviour; out of plain cussedness or just boredom, not happy unless he's a burr on the saddle-biting bums.
The battle scars are starting to show, and now he finds himself smack-bang in the middle of another NZ First donation hoo-ha just when he seemed to have mellowed and settled for perhaps one more term at or about the centre of power.
Since cutting loose and launching his own party 27 years ago, Winston's been a virtual one-man band complete with between-the-knees cymbals trying to keep it all happening.
Initiating and maintaining basic party infrastructures, staffing, and funding, as well as being parliamentary and media front man, is one helluva workload.
Reform of the political donations process is long overdue, but the issue here – as with the current investigation into National Party donations – is not that interested parties contributed money, but the manner in which it was allegedly done.
One wonders when it's time for NZ First leader wily Winston to opt for the fishing rod and a more leisurely pace of life away from the political bear pit.
The glory days of the Tight Five and 17 seats in the 1996 election, and his valiant Winebox revelations, were a long time ago.
But despite winning concessions for his constituencies as "king-maker" in the current Coalition Government, yet again NZ First is a polls cellar-dweller.
Winston's made a memorable mark on the New Zealand political landscape, showing the sort of grit that had him daily doing two full shifts in the milking shed as a 10 or 11-year-old kid.
But maybe it's time he traded the trademark double-breasted suit for a singlet and Stubbies, baited up the rod, and stretched back in the boat out in the sparkling waters off Whananaki.
