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The truth is so rare and painful in politics, it’s so valuable it must be rationed.  That’s why satire and comedy are so important because it’s the best way to explain the absurdities of life.  Twenty years ago, the most popular political comedy was ‘Yes, Minister’.  The struggle was always between the elected politicians and the senior bureaucrats who ran things, and always would.  Politicians of my generation swore it was a documentary.

Because comedy can tell the truth, the popular political TV series in Australia and the UK are now based on the hapless elected politician and the paid political apparatchik, the advisors, mainly planted in Ministers’ offices, run from the Prime Minister’s department, to keep things in line and the Minister ‘on message’.   The word, “spin”, is a new word from a new generation of politicians whose basic skills are, well ….. politics.  It’s what they do best.  Selling, in advertising terms, the ‘sizzle’, not the sausage.

Politics, how to sell the politicians, takes up more time at Cabinet and Caucus meetings than the substance.  The policy substance is decided well before a Cabinet or Party meeting, driven by polling and focus groups.  The Capital’s commentariat and communications experts live in a special world.  Disconnected from paying the bills, worrying about where the next job comes from, and if the car will start in the morning.  They encourage the politicians to announce grand objectives, normally to be measured after the next two elections.  Achieving headlines such as: ‘To halve child poverty within 10 years’; “To lift economic performance to the top half of the OECD”;  “To achieve the best of work/life balance”;  “Close the gaps and the ‘knowledge wave’.”  For several years, the word ’transformational’ appeared everywhere, then it was ‘sustainable’;  this and that in Ministers’ speeches.

Feeding the chooks, the media, through whose blinkered filters we get to know our politicians and their policies, such as they are, is all important.  In a small democracy like New Zealand , this relationship creates what economists call a ‘moral hazard’, which is not funny.  Note the number of journalists who wrote ‘independent’ stories about the National Party, including authors of an indepth series of who Prime Minister John Key was, who are now employed in the Beehive.  True of earlier governments too.  The 1980’s and ‘90’s saw a lot of government services contracted out, and the explosion of Commissions.  Commissions, we were told, that would be independent of politicians and politics, and could deliver honest services and advice.  For ‘independent’, read ‘unaccountable’.  The unaccountable Commissioners are not answerable to public opinion as are politicians, in fact they think they are better than you and me.  They are above public opinion, they are answerable to some higher authority, their mission is to make us better people, more sensitive, a bit like them. 

The unreal comments of a Commissioner that the rights of young people to express themselves, had to be balanced against  the rights of property owners not to have their fences defaced by aggressive graffiti.  Radio Live took them to task about this and other edicts.  Using taxpayers’ money, the Commission sought to gag radio and stop the criticism, free, even improper, impertinent, speech won. 

A TV advertisement about a young couple who sabotaged each other in the mornings in a comedic series of slapstick bombs, etc. to get the car keys, that the worthies said encouraged domestic violence.  There is a charming TV advertisement for a car about two toddlers driving a car and dating and surfing?  The Wellington do-gooders thought that was encouraging paedophiles.   Tells us more about them than us.  Just imagine the outcry if a government abolished or cut the budget of these organisations whose appetite for spending and new legislation is insatiable.  If you question them, that proves you are opposed to families, children, or the environment, or whatever splendid cause they report on and live off.  All worthy ide as, probably nice people, it’s often silly but can become sinister.  The welfare safety net is being turned into a fishing net, as they try to turn the country into a kind of well-meaning boarding school, by social activists who see themselves, not as public servants, but the public’s conscience.  Appealing to the herd and nerd instinct.  Liberty , as explained by John Mortimer, Q.C., the creator of the TV hit series “Rumpole of the Bailey”, is the right to do things we disapprove of.

When has any Commission, pressure group, or government programme ever abolished itself, ever said, “We are not relevant; it doesn’t work, or the job’s done.”  Never.  They just seek more resources to do better.  Perhaps the economic downturn will create some financial and intellectual discipline.  Prepare to laugh when busy-bodies and politicians claim the credit for a drop in pollution as industry winds back.

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