The feds are supposed to crash in with all guns blazing – and draw lots of blood in a power play

Dunno if Federated Farmers has farmed out its public relations to some outfit in India, or somewhere even more remote, at weekends.

The fury has sadly gone from a press statement issued this evening.

The bloke whose name is attached to the statement is not an Indian, of course, and may well want to boast it’s all his own work.

Alf’s would counsel him to plead confusion somewhere between drafting, sign-off and release, or crossed wires, and blame the distant PR team for placing so much emphasis on the bleeding obvious.

The press release (here) might just as well have declared that beer will spill if you drop your mug, or that the sun will rise again in the morning (in some parts of the country anyway).

All power to the Minister and the Speaker as Russel Norman’s question is short-circuited

It was great to see Russel Norman get his come-uppance from Mr Speaker in the House this afternoon.

Norman obviously hoped he was going to screw some politically embarrassing information out of our splendid Minister of Energy, Simon Bridges (although Alf likes to think he would be an even more splendid Minister).

At Question Time, Norman asked (here) if Bridges believed the electricity reforms of the late 1990s delivered lower electricity prices and – if so – what had happened to household electricity prices over the last 20 years?

Obviously 20 years is a long time, and it would have required lots of beavering away in the database to come up with the figures.

So Bridges short-circuited things and said yes, the reforms were on the right track.

Good answer.