Why “Waitangi” Day? The shit-stirring calls for a more appropriate name

Welcome to the marae, John...

Dunno why we bother calling it Waitangi Day.

It has become an occasion – in the Far North, anyway – for unseemly shit-stirring.

Accordingly we should think about calling it something more appropriate, like Maori Malevolence Day.

Hone Hawawira’s gaggle of malcontents is promising another dose of aggravation this weekend.

The Mana Party is warning Prime Minister John Key will get a hostile reception at Waitangi this weekend as anger among Maori grows over the potential removal of Treaty rights and cutbacks at the Maori Affairs Ministry, Te Puni Kokiri.

Mana spokesman Malcolm Mulholland said this morning Key was walking into “a perfect storm”.

Outrage: if the spoils of victory are going to our opponents, we might as well make Goff our leader

Alf has been hugely comforted by the certainty that a cosy job would be found for him, should he quit parliamentary politics. His ministerial mates would stick him on the board of an SOE, a quango or one of umpteen other types of publicly funded organisation.

Their structures provide for oodles of political appointments, and they enable our ministers to dispense favours and patronage.

Alf is comforted no longer. We are giving these plums – the spoils of victory – to our bloody opponents.

The idea used to be that the jobs were dished out to long-serving, and maybe not-so-long-serving, members of the party in Government.

That was the point of winning an election. You got to run the bloody country – dig up the conservation estate, run down the public service, turn Auckland into a Super City then govern it from Wellington, think about taking travel privileges off the oldies but back off when they squawk loudly, and so on.

Cullenary thrombosis: a clot in the SOE kitchen

Eketahuna's public dunnies - would you let them be managed by Michael Cullen?

Add Alf Grumble’s name to the growing list of bloggers expressing dismay at the appointment of Michael Cullen to the board of NZ Post.

As soon as the news had been broken by the Trans Tasman newsletter – tipping Cullen to chair NZ Post and KiwiBank when Jim Bolger retires – Ele at Homepaddock was clearly upset.

A loyal National Party member has just phoned to tell me he and others who spent nine years working to get Cullen’s hands off the reins are furious about this and I share their views.

There must be someone better equipped for these roles than the man who overtaxed and over spent for nine long years, leaving our economy far less able to weather the recession than it would have been had his policies been directed at growth rather than redistribution.