The National party are up to their old tricks – appointing people very close to them to positions in a way that is not appropriate.

Trevor’s view of appropriate is sacking Madeleine Setchell because her boyfriend took a job with John Key, and defaming Erin Leigh because she was a whistle blower.

First Sir Wira Gardiner. Very talented. Appointed by the previous government to do some tricky tasks.

I’m glad Trevor mentions that. A quick search reveals Labour appointed Wira to the following:

•  independent Board of Inquiry to consider the proposed National Policy Statement for Renewable Electricity Generation, by Trevor Mallard
• interim chair of of Te Mangai Paho, by Parekura Horomia
• the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission, by Parekura Horomia
• facilitate hui on seabed and foreshore, by Michael Cullen
• Crown facilitator for Central North Island Forests Land Collective Settlement, by Michael Cullen

But he is married to a Cabinet Minister. He should not be appointed by any Minister in the current government to paid employment. John Key and Bill English have appointed him to sell their asset sales process to Maori.

As usual, Trevor is lying. Wira was selected and appointed by Treasury, not by Cabinet or Ministers.

If you claim that is a conflict, then you are also saying Peter Davis should not have been employed in the health sector.

Labour got Madeleine Setchell sacked because of whom her partner was. Thankfully National does not do the same.

And to make it clear, it is my view that there is no reason whatsoever to sell these farms offshore. To anyone.

That’s an interesting view, but that is like me having a view on who Sam Morgan should have sold Trade Me to. Labour do not own the Crafar farms. The Government does not own them. The taxpayers do not own them.

The reason the farms may be sold offshore is because someone offshore offered the owners more money for them.

Landcorp could probably hock off a couple of its non core farms and then buy Them all using its very strong balance sheet to raise debt finance for the balance.

Yes they could. And all they have to do is offer more money than any other bidder. Nice and simple, and that way the owners do not end up out of pocket, just so politicians feel better.

The Overseas Investment Act has criteria on which a sale to non-residents should or should not be approved. The Crafar farms are a small fraction of the farm land sold to non-residents and approved under the last Labour Government. One can have a sensible debate about amending the criteria, but a poling of banning all sales is just appealing to xenophobia and racism. I can guarantee you if it was an Australian farmer bidding for the farms, we’d be rolling out the welcome mat.

A UK commission headed by a former lord chancellor has found in favour of assisted dying.

Euthanasia is a conscience vote in parliament. In Hutt South all candidates from parties that got into parliament said they would support the first reading of a bill.

My view has firmed on the issue over the last decade and unless evidence to a select committee highlighted something I am currently not aware of, or if there was a major drafting error I would support a bill through all stages.

Not that I will get a vote, but if I did I would also vote for such a bill through all stages, so long as it was drafted competently.

Also like Trevor, my views have firmed up over the last decade. Coming from a medical family I used to have serious reservations about any change that may see doctors have any role apart from prolonging life. But we already see passive euthanasia on a daily basis.

The turning point for me, was Rodney Hide’s newsletter about the death of Martin Hames. The cruelty of what Martin was forced into doing, made it clear to me that the status quo was not acceptable.

This means you could have a cabinet of 12. The Speaker looks after Parliament, and one Minister per major agency. One could have associate ministers outside cabinet who get delegated some of the specialist areas within an overall portfolio.

Yesterday Trevor Mallard blogged:

New Zealand has a ridiculous number of Ministers for a country our size.

It had got slightly worse under MMP but this government has taken it beyond absurd with 80% of the non National confidence and supply partner members bought off with a Ministerial post, and the final one on a promise of getting one during the term.

It would have been nice to have Trevor speak up when he had influence. I’ve long said we should have a smaller Ministry. It was in fact Helen Clark who increased the size of the Executive to 28. Key has just maintained it at that size.

I spent three years as a whip which included cabinet committee experience in the 1980s and the nine years as a Minister in the Clark government.

I saw lots of weak, and some frankly useless Ministers. Most, but not all, were in the second half of the rankings. They often caused more work than they added value. There was an enormous amount of time wasted explaining what was either obvious or buried in papers that if they had been read hadn’t been understood.

Trevor should name names!

I tend to divide Ministers up into three camps – leaders, administrators and bumblers.

The ideal Minister leads their portfolio and ministry. They impose the Government’s policy agenda on the ministry, listen to officials but do not always follow their advice. The number of “leader” Ministers in a Ministry does tend to be rarely more than a dozen.

Hence why I’d restructure the state sector into 12 super-ministries as advocated in my linked post. That way each super-ministry is likely to have a “leader” Minister who will apply strategic leadership to the portfolios within. Also there are probably only a dozen great CEOs in the state sector, so you get benefits at the CEO level also. Finally it reduces Cabinet from 20 to 12, which makes it a more effective decision making body.

The “administrator” Minister is probably the most common type of Minister. Unlike Trevor I would not call them useless. Their problem is more they just do what their officials tell them to. They do not apply external political judgement to issues, and hence as Trevor alludes to they need rescuing from time to time.

If there were just 12 Ministers in total, I think the paperwork would be too much. It is not that Ministers are not busy. Hence I’d have all full portfolios held by one of 12 Cabinet Ministers but maybe still have say eight Associate Ministers outside Cabinet who get delegated specific areas. This makes them a good training ground for becoming a full Minister, but still reduces the Ministry by eight or so.

I think we don’t need more than ten or a dozen Ministers. They should all be in Cabinet. And to trial talent we should use three or four Under Secretaries who report directly to the relevant Minister.

We broadly agree, but I’d call the Under-Secretaries Associate Ministers. Maybe could do it like the UK – Secretaries of State are full Ministers in Cabinet and Ministers of State are Ministers outside Cabinet.

It will be interesting if any of Trevor’s former Ministerial colleagues agree with his description of them as useless.  To spare the competent ones, he should name those he meant!

More importantly, he should lobby David Shearer to announce a policy to reduce the Ministry from 28 to 12 Ministers. That would be hugely popular.

The only problem with Trevor’s “gotcha” expose is that @NZNational is a fake account, probably run by one of his activists.

Now I’ll give Trevor the benefit of the doubt, and assume he didn’t know it was a fake account, rather than the alternative which is he was deliberately setting out to deceive.

But so Trevor doesn’t make himself look foolish in future, here’s some things to look at, to work out a fake account.

1. Check their full description on their homepage.
2. Look at some of their recent tweets. Do they look like the tweets you would expect from that person or organisation
3. Check out how many followers they have. As this one had only 91 followers, pretty obvious it is a fake.

It’s not that hard to work out real and fake accounts. The only time I had difficulty was working out the difference between the parody Catherine Delahunty account and the real one.

UPDATE: I have had it pointed out to me that Mallard in fact knew the account was not rea as he had been told multiple times on Twitterl, so it was a deliberate attempt to deceive. Nice to know Labour’s campaign manager continues high normal high ethical standards. It’s a silly strategy because it means the public and journalists will distrust stuff on Red Alert.

• The Clerk to record and publish attendance of MPs
• A Bill of Rights analysis to be supplied not just at first reading but also for substantive SOPs amending bills. This is something I have advocated several times.
• Provision for extended sitting hours without going into urgency by sitting on either a Wednesday or Thursday morning, if necessary. Again something I have strongly advocated, as it should reduce the need for urgency so much.
• Also provision for extended sitting hours on a Thursday evening and Friday morning, but only if the Business Committee agrees, which means basically the Opposition consents to it.
• Ministers moving urgency in future will need to state the reason for the urgency. Good.
• Business Committee determinations to be published on the Parliament website. These proposals give a lot more power to the Business Committee, so this is good. The BC needs near-unanimous consent to make decisions, so it is about encouraging parties to work together more.

These changes were passed by the House last week, and will apply to the next Parliament. They were passed on a voice vote with no parties or MPs dissenting. Considerable credit goes to Speaker Lockwood Smith who chaired the Standing Orders Committee.

But I also want to acknowledge the role Labour, and its rep Trevor Mallard, played. Generally changes that make the House more efficient are not necessarily a good thing for the Opposition. Take as an example the new ability to have extended hours without going into urgency. This allows the Government to pass more laws without using urgency, which means the Opposition will lose the opportunity to complain as often about use of urgency.

Labour presumably agreed partly because they plan to be in Government again one day themselves (when they will benefit from it), but partly also I think because they do want the House to operate more effectively. So it is worth acknowledging their constructive role in these changes. I’d like to quote from Trevor Mallard’s speech on the new standing orders:

Although it might cause him some embarrassment, I also acknowledge Rodney Hide and the work he has done within this. I was surprised at the number of occasions when we agreed as we progressed through the Standing Orders, and I think that having someone who has had a period as a poacher, and who, to a certain extent, has turned gamekeeper, was useful. It was useful having his view on the importance of Parliament and where the balances lie. People who look carefully at this report will see that it is one that very slightly tips the running of Parliament in favour of the Government, but provides some safeguards to that. Those of us who have been involved on both sides of the House think that that is something that could be useful going forward.

It does tip the balance a bit but there are stronger incentives now to gain consensus through the Business Committee.

Although I am less comfortable with that change, I am probably more comfortable than many of my colleagues with the set of arrangements around the extra hours—the extended sittings—of the House. I have had a role in Government business before. I know that things do not work neatly, and that therefore it is too easy for Governments to move to urgency in order to get through business that, of itself, is not urgent. Urgency has too often been used as a House management tool rather than as a tool to progress urgent business. I think the extended sittings give the right compromise there: select committees cannot sit at the same time as the House, except with leave; notice is given; bills are not taken through more than one stage at any one time; and the extended sitting occurs only once a week, unless the Business Committee agrees. In my opinion, that will give the Government a bit more power, but will move it back from using urgency in a way that I consider to have been inappropriate of Governments for just about as long as I can remember.

What I am pleased about is that a few months ago I co-operated with Labour MP Grant Robertson to publish an analysis of the use of urgency over the last few terms of Parliament. It didn’t win me a lot of friends in certain quarters, but I felt it was important to highlight the trend. I was nervous that Labour would be all rhetoric on reducing urgency, but not actually agree to changes such as the above, which would allow more business to be conducted without urgency. There had in fact been a sessional order asking for this sitting on the order paper for a couple of years, but which had not progressed due to lack of support.

So I was pleased to see Labour actually agree to changes (and Trevor suggests not all his colleagues were that keen to do so), to make a substantive move to back up the rhetoric. And the changes should mean that any future uses of urgency for non-urgent business will attract sustained criticism (with some limited exceptions such as post-election policy implementation).

There is, I think, quite a lot of extra power going to the Business Committee. Again, I reiterate my surprise at how well that committee is working. Frankly, Mr Brownlee, and especially Mr Power, with whom I have worked more often on that committee recently, have been open with the committee as to their intentions. The meetings have been slightly better planned, maybe, than at some stages in the past. You, Mr Speaker, in the way that you have chaired the committee, have also tried to seek consensus, although there has been an occasion or two where you have been the only person who has had a particular point of view. It is probably fortunate for the other members of the committee that you do not represent a party on that committee.

That’s a nice recognition of Gerry, Simon and Lockwood.

There are times when the House looks very juvenile. General Debate is a typical example. But there are also times when they rise above squabbling, and the review of the standing orders debate was one of those.

They weren’t the most important events of the past week. In fact, in a world racked by economic crisis and intractable conflict, they weren’t important at all.

But, as is so often the case with small, seemingly trivial events, they were highly instructive. They told us why John Key’s National Party will have to work very hard to lose the forthcoming election, and why – barring a miracle – Labour hasn’t the slightest chance of winning it.

So what is Chris referring to?

The first event involved a visit by the Prime Minister to Canterbury University.  …

Except for the sign that fourth-year mechanical engineering students had stuck to the “Mech Suite” window overlooking the PM’s arrival-point.

“John, mate,” read the sign, “come up for a yarn with your country’s future engineers.”

The Prime Minister spotted the sign and, yep, you guessed it, to the whoops and hollers of the (mostly male) students he came up.

But wait, there’s more. Not only did the PM come up, but he also agreed to match one of his larger and more terrifying DPS bodyguards against the students’ massive arm-wrestling champion, “Mad Dog”. …

What matters is that a) John Key was up for it, and carried it off with considerable aplomb. And b) The whole event is now available to the electorate via the internet. Just three days after it was first posted, more than 13,000 people had watched the YouTube clip.

Which is quite a lot for a 10 minute video.

And the other event?

In a posting headed “Bill English Funds Bryce Edwards”, the Labour caucus’ chief election strategist, Trevor Mallard, launched a vicious attack on the young Otago University academic Dr Bryce Edwards for his, at times, highly critical assessments of the Labour Opposition’s performance. …

It is difficult to know where to begin with this outburst.

That it was made by the caucus’s chief strategist raises a whole host of questions about the nature of the election campaign Labour is intending to run.

Does Phil Goff sanction this stuff? We can only hope that he does not endorse the sort of crude ad hominem arguments featured in Mallard’s posting.

We must hope, too, that Labour’s appeal to the electorate is fuelled by emotions considerably less disreputable than the petty spitefulness and partisan hostility which it displays.

To be fair, it is not all in Labour who act like this. But they sit back and enable it by having Mallard as their “chief strategist”.

And this is how they act in Opposition. It is worse when they are in Government, when they can actually use the powers of office to strike back at those who dare criticise.

Trotter concludes:

All elections have a “tone”: a mode of address to the voting public which (largely unconsciously) “cues” their response to the competing parties.

If we compare and contrast the tone of the YouTube clip of the PM’s visit to the Mech Suite, with the tone of Mallard’s Red Alert posting, picking the election result becomes a cinch. Sometimes, little things generate big consequences.

I recall Chris wearing a red Labour rosette in the lead up to the last election. Now Labour probably dismiss him as a member of the VRWNLLWC.

Back home we don’t have truthers or birthers, but instead the Labour Party Campaign Manager Trevor Mallard. He blogs:

Interesting disclosure from David Farrar yesterday. He, along with Matthew Hooton, and (waste of members money) PSA are bankrolling Bryce Edwards, one of the few remaining supporters of the Alliance, to provide the political commentary which mainly attacks Labour and the Greens from the looney left. The guy makes Margaret Mutu look like a well balanced academic.

As we all know the majority of Farrar’s income comes from the taxpayer via a “research” arrangement.

I wonder if Bill English signed the deal off or whether it was just a nod and a wink.

So Bill English secretly instructed me to secretly fund Bryce Edwards, so Bryce would attack Labour. With such insight, Trevor could apply to join either the birthers or the truthers.

First it is interesting to note his portrayal of Dr Edwards as more unbalanced than Margaret Mutu (who called for a ban on white immigration). This may come as a surprise to his many colleagues who have been interviewed by Dr Edwards for the OU Vote Chat series. His attack on Dr Edwards may remind readers of his attacks on Erin Leigh and others, and are perhaps a salient reminder of what awaits people if Labour gets back into Government.

I do wonder what Trevor’s colleague, tertiary education spokesperson Grant Robertson, thinks of Trevor’s attacking of an academic for his political views.

I should point out at this stage that Dr Edwards is what one would call left-wing. Like John Pagani, he used to work for the Alliance in Parliament around 10 years ago. It is of course very unusual for an academic to be left-wing. Almost unheard of.

Now let us get to Trevor’s discovery of this big secret, the sponsorship of NZ Politics Daily. It was a closely guarded secret until I revealed it in Stuff yesterday. Oh except for the fact that every single issues for the last few months has said:

New Zealand Politics Daily is produced independently by Bryce Edwards, Department of Politics, University of Otago, with the help of a research assistant who is paid for by the sponsorship of:
Curia Market Research – the place to go if you want to know what New Zealanders are thinking
Exceltium Ltd – New Zealand’s most successful corporate and public affairs consultancy
PSA – the public sector union advocating for strong public services and decent work.

On top of this daily disclosure by Dr Edwards, I blogged on the sponsorship back in June. The $100/week Curia pays doesn’t go to Bryce but to a research assistant who compiles the scores of stories included in the e-mail edition. I find the compilation incredibly useful as it lists every political story and major blog post for the day, and often discover stories I would have missed through it.

There is absolutely no input or influence over what Bryce writes as an intro summary to the daily bulletin. I would say I disagree with Bryce’s take on things probably twice as often as I agree with one! To give an example of some of Bryce’s recent summaries which in Trevor’s fantasy world Bill English is paying for:

• This could be the year of the Greens – finally they might crack the 10% mark that has eluded them in every general election so far. And with the popular demise of Labour and the ideological confusion of Mana, the Green Party might end up being the real success story for the leftish side of the political spectrum.
• With patience to delve through this analysis, anyone should be able see that the Police modus operandi and the Government’s attempts to help the Police out are rather outrageous.
• The politics-free zone of the Rugby World Cup was supposed to deprive the Opposition parties of any significant media publicity in the main period leading up to the general election – but it might not quite work out as National intended. … Of course, the RWC opening night debacle has tarnished National’s competency reputation … Labour and the Greens are not just basking in National’s woes, however, but seem to be proactively attempting to get their messages out to the public while National has its mind on other things. During the last day or so, Labour and the Greens have been announcing all sorts of policies and campaigns. Labour’s policy on the Christchurch rebuild, in particular, might gain it some real kudos
• There is no doubt that the National Government deserves the pressure that is currently being applied over the shambles of the Rugby World Cup opening night. …But the fiasco has certainly taken the shine off the National Government’s general appearance of competency. Murray McCully’s days as a minister suddenly seemed numbered.
• National needs to be reminded that most people believe that we have governments and collective responsibility so people can feel protected from these bolts from the blue. 
• Another chapter in the saga of malicious bungling by the Police has come to a ridiculous end with charges being dropped against 11 of the accused in the Urewera ‘terror’ case
• Another chapter in the saga of malicious bungling by the Police has come to a ridiculous end with charges being dropped against 11 of the accused in the Urewera ‘terror’ case
• The National Party list for the 2011 general election is disappointing and boring.
• John Key hasn’t let the fact that he has not actually read Nicky Hager’s book stop him from voicing the same arrogant dismissiveness we saw in evidence in his initial handling of the Israeli spy allegations and the work of journalist Jon Stephenson on Afghanistan.
• Apparently there will be a ‘welcoming committee’ there to greet the National Party ministers and thank them for all that they’ve done to start to rebuild the city. Unfortunately for National, this sarcastic ‘thank you’ will be in the form of a protest against the way that the city is being rebuilt

I don’t mind Trevor’s mad conspiracy theories involving me and Bill English. They are at least amusing, even if often copied from Whale Oil.

But I do think he owes Dr Edwards an apology for impuging his integrity.

Matthew Hooton is less kind to Trevor in his blog post, and Whale is his normal gentle self. Also Keeping Stock chips in.

Finally a video reminder of Trevor  at his finest, courtesy of Whale.

UPDATE: I’m relaxed about Trevor’s defamatory comments and have better things to do than talk to lawyers, But I understand others who were named are not so forgiving and have consulted their lawyers. No parliamentary privilege for Red Alert. Could be an expensive exercise for them as not only is Trevor liable but so is the Labour Parliamentary Party as the blog publisher.

It is a brave woman who takes on a government alone.

But with her professional reputation in tatters and a successful communications career hanging by a thread, Erin Leigh felt she had few options left.

It also takes a rich woman to challenge the establishment and, despite a recent Supreme Court ruling in her favour, Ms Leigh has had to abandon her defamation suit against the Environment Ministry and former deputy secretary Lindsay Gow. …

Ms Leigh has been caught up in the Christchurch earthquakes and felt financially unable to carry on the legal battle.

While happy with the result, she regretted not being able to carry on her own fight.

We should all remember the Leigh case in future, in case Labour tries to position itself as a champion of whistle-blowers.

Ms Leigh says his claims of her incompetence were completely untrue. She also laughs at accusations of being a National lackey.

“I’d always been a Labour Party voter. The first MP that I voted for was actually Trevor Mallard.

“It was beyond my imagination at that point that they would actually make up a whole lot of stuff that wasn’t true.”

That was the culture of the times. If you spoke out, you were dealt to.

Trevor Mal­lard is host­ing a Live chat tonight at 7pm.

You can ask your ques­tions & fol­low my answers via the ‘LabourLive tab’ on the New Zealand Labour Party Face­book page or by going here.

It is on from 7pm Wednes­day for about 30min.

Your mis­sion should you choose to accept it is to ask ques­tions, like these suggestions:

• When you retire, which Labour MP do you think should inherit your seat?
• Who is a bet­ter leader, Helen Clark or Phil Goff?
• How do you think the Labour Cam­paign strat­egy is get­ting on?
• Do you think Paul Quinn’s list posi­tion is indica­tive of the lack of diver­sity in the National Party?
• Has he ever felt like hit­ting Tau Henare again?
• What’s more impor­tant; diver­sity or competence?
• Is 24 years in Par­lia­ment too long?
• Why do you think social media is more impor­tant than door knocking?
• Did Chris Carter get a fair trial, or has he been proved right?
• Was there ever an Amer­i­can bagman?
• Does you think Shane Jones will make a good Labour leader?
• What’s it like know­ing you are going to lose the next election?
• Can he give an uncon­di­tional assur­ance to Hutt South vot­ers that he will go full term if/when Labour loses, or should they vote for Paul Quinn?
• How many pairs of under­pants has he stolen so far?
• Which polling com­pany do you trust the most?
• What does Blue State Dig­i­tal think about your social media strategy?
• Do you think Win­ston will get back in?
• Why did Win­ston lie to the select committee?
• Are you a mem­ber of the gaggle?
• Is there a mean­ing­ful role for a straight white male in mod­ern Labour?
• Is Phil Goff a corpse-cuddler, just like Helen was?
• Will you apol­o­gise to Pansy Wong?

There are a few, I am sure loyal Army mem­bers can come up with a few more to fill in the 30 minutes.

So Labour’s campaign manager compares the Prime Minister of New Zealand to the Nazis, the fascists and the Stalinists. Could you imagine the outrage if Steven Joyce compared Phil Goff to Al Qaeda or something.

Hat Tip: Whale

UPDATE: How is this for irony. TVNZ reports from two years ago:

Labour MP Chris Carter is in trouble with his party again for making a joke comparing New Zealand Prime Minister John Key to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. …

Carter later blogged about the incident, but it was later removed by the blog’s editor Trevor Mallard, who did not see the funny side.

“Trevor was sensitive to anyone who found it offensive. There are people still alive who suffered under fascism; that wasn’t something I thought about when I put the blog up,” says Carter.

So Trevor is now doing the exact thing he censored Chris Carter for doing two years ago.

Labour seems to be going the other way. Whale has audio of Trevor Mallard saying that you shouldn’t have an earthquake levy, and within 24 hours also Shane Jones saying you should have an earthquake levy.

I did note earlier this month:

I’d have to say that Trevor would be considered the favourite and Cameron the underdog.

Trevor is basically a professional full-time cyclist, an amateur part-time blogger and an occasional MP. He did the 160 km Taupo cycle race in under 5 hours in 2009. Off memory he was in the top 5% of cyclists for his age group.

Cameron got on a bicycle around three months ago for the first time in 10+ years. Now Cameron has been training pretty hard, doing 20 km rides most days. But Trevor used to be able to do 20 kms in around half an hour. Whale does have a slight advantage with the course being local to him.

Now of course the big factor is Trevor’s bike crash and broken bones. If Trevor had not had his injury, it wouldn’t even be a contest. What we don’t know is to what extent Trevor is still injured. The crash was just over four and a half months ago which normally would be enough time to rebuild some of the leg muscles etc. And I suspect his overall level of fitness is still pretty good.

I was tempted to joke about what an achievement it is to beat a sickness beneficiary who hadn’t been on a bike for 10 years, until three months ago, but that would be unfair to Trevor who did have a pretty nasty injury to overcome. Full credit to him.

In one sense I think the race has been a win-win. It gave Trevor the motivation to get back on the bike seriously, and it gave Whale the motivation to get seriously into shape and be better both physically and mentally.

Anyway congrats to Trevor and Cameron, and I look forward to donating $1,000 to the CCS far more than I suspect Cactus will enjoy donating $1,000 to the Labour Party!

In a year of mismatched and painful political races, tomorrow’s is likely to be the silliest.

The blogger known as Whaleoil will face off against the “bovver boy” of the Labour Party in a 60-kilometre bicycle race in Auckland’s eastern suburbs.

In a sport often called “chess on wheels”, the bike race between Cameron ‘Whaleoil’ Slater and Trevor ‘Duck’ Mallard will hear little mention of the word “mate’”.

There is mutual loathing.

That’s a little tough. More opponents than enemies.

The contest came after Slater goaded Mallard by calling him “cripple” over his badly broken leg.

The elder statesman of the Labour Party lashed back, calling the comfortably-padded Slater “blubber boy’”.

“I bet he is too chicken,” Mallard said.

Well, he did accept.

It is worth remembering that Trevor did challenge Whale and call him chicken. So Whale had little choice but to accept.

And Slater – known for obsessively hounding issues – has turned his compulsive nature to the race and cycled about 15kg off his frame.

Best thing Labour has ever done for Cameron.

Slater, who Mallard calls an “obsessive character”, is relentless.

“He is a cripple. And he’s running a crippled campaign.’”

Slater has been in training and, as his physical fitness improved, so did his mental health.

Slater had publicly struggled with depression, and credits getting off anti-depressants, good vitamin B levels and a good diet with the improvement.

I should see if Trevor would challenge me to a half marathon – could be just the motivation I need

Otago University zoologist Philip Seddon said whales in the wild would always be faster than ducks.

“Almost whatever kind of whale you thought about,” he says.

Seddon – who runs the university’s Wildlife Management Programme – said smaller whales were faster.

Slater’s time could, perhaps, dictate whether the blogger was truly small and dangerous.

“Maybe he’s an orca… a killer whale,” said Seddon.

I love how they went to a zoologist for a comment!

The race starts at 1.30pm tomorrow, at Musick Point reserve at Auckland’s Buckland Beach.

If you’re up in Auckland go along to view the fun!

But I don’t have to blog all that, as John Hartevelt has done it for me at Stuff:

Sigh. Another day and the Labour Party takes yet another turn for the cringe-makingly desperate.

The party’s chief strategist, their sharpest political mind and the chap responsible for winning the election campaign has this morning come up with this rather lame attempt at humour.

Trevor Mallard’s theft of an overused and not terribly funny concept from a right-wing blogger is just a bit sad.

If it was an isolated example of an odd attack on the PM, it wouldn’t rate a mention.

But ever since the intellectual excitement and esprit de corps that accompanied Labour’s tax policy announcement died down a fortnight ago, a steady drip feed of rather juvenile stunts – many of them played out unthinkingly online – has been issued from a few in the Labour caucus.

Mallard and the Dunedin South MP Clare Curran are the chief mischief makers. A missive from Curran last week seemed to subtly encourage readers to make some sort of a link between John Key and the 1991 US invasion of Iraq, on the grounds that a PR company hired by Tourism NZ to secure a spot for Key on the Letterman show was the same firm that had been criticised for its role “as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign”. Good grief.

These have got so bad, that even on Red Alert Labour MPs are getting a pasting for such idiocy. The response is for Clare Curran to do a poll asking people if they agree that Red Alert should be moderated more tightly, with no option for people to say that the censorship there is already way over the top.

Normally you would count on the campaign manager, being the one to tell MPs who are making the party look like idiots, to pull their heads in. But when it is the campaign manager himself leading the charge, well you really do have problems.

Senior government Minister and key National Party campaign strategist Steven Joyce will be spotted to the Labour Party for the election campaign, Prime Minister John Key announced today.

The surprise announcement comes after weeks of dire polling for the Labour Party, compounded by a series of public relations fiascos. Joyce is regarded as Key’s closest advisor, and National’s strategic mastermind.

‘This will make the 2011 General Election a fair fight instead of a somewhat undemocratic cake-walk,’ Key said in his Beehive Press Conference. He added that came to the decision after speaking with Joyce, who ‘loves a challenge.’

Heh.

Joyce will work closely with senior Labour MP Trevor Mallard, who is currently running Labour’s election campaign. Joyce has insisted that the two men will work together as equals.

‘Trevor’s role will be crucial to our success’ Joyce announced in a joint press conference with Labour leader Phil Goff. ‘In light of recent information security problems, Trevor will safeguard our campaign strategy documents in a tent on the Auckland Islands.’

The Auckland’s are an unpopulated sub-Antarctic island group with no phone or internet access. ‘Everything depends on this,’ Joyce insisted, as Mallard’s tiny orange dinghy sailed out from Invercargill into fearsome three meter swells.

Well they will be safer there, than backing them up to the webserver.

In the interests of party balance, Labour has traded Joyce for Dunedin South MP Clare Curran, and she’s believed to be behind the Prime Minister’s shock announcement that he will conduct the remainder of his campaign in virtual reality environment Second Life, and prefix every single word he speaks with the letter ‘i’.

The Prime Minister’s fairy-winger avatar commented on the new strategy when he addressed an online press conference of goblins, virtual journalists and the National Party Cosplay Association this afternoon.

‘iI imay ihave imade a ihuge imistake,’ Key said.

I love the phrase “the Prime Minister’s fairy-winger avatar”

Just about all the Stan­dard posts that Mal­lard has pro­moted on Red Alert have been from Zetetic. And a com­par­i­son of Mallard’s post­ing style and Zetetic shows very close cor­re­la­tion. Espe­cially when they post from an iPad with all the give­aways that post­ing from that plat­form reveals.

When you do a Google search of “Trevor Mal­lard + Zetetic you find that Zetetic has an almost unhealthy obses­sion with every utter­ance of Trevor Mal­lard in the house. Som many posts about how great Trevor Mal­lard is, so many that the only con­clu­sion you can come to is that Mal­lard is Zetetic or some­one on his staff is. Either way they are one and the same.

I’m sure Trevor is far too ethical to blog something in one identity, and then praise it with another, and then tweet about how great it is.

This is such a horrendous slur on Trevor, that I am sure Zetetic will reveal his or her identity, in order to defend Trevor’s otherwise sterling reputation for ethical behaviour.

From Gotcha. Fill in the paper for Trevor – funny, not nasty.

Turns out it was my cockup that resulted in an email intended for supporters getting out into the blogs and then the MSM.

I added a few friends and acquaintances who are interested in politics to a list to get the package stopping asset sales and doing a tax switch to my normal supporters list. They got that on Thursday as the embargo came off.

Unfortunately for me I used that list again instead of my normal supporters list on Friday evening when I described the positive response to the package.

On it inter alia was David Farrar.

My bad. I’m sorry.

It is true I received Trevor’s e-mail. But I did not pass it onto Whale. I glanced at the first sentence and deleted it unread as was too busy to read Trevor’s propaganda in detail. I did not see all the juicy stuff about Trevor saying the public don’t care about the details, and suggesting lines for supporters and MPs to use on Twitter (which many of his faithful colleagues then used).

If I had seen that, I would have blogged it myself – not given it to Whale!

Whale got the e-mail from someone else, not me. And good on him for taking the time to read it!

If in future Trevor sends me secret supporter e-mails, I’d appreciate it if he puts the juicy stuff up the top, so I actually see it!

How­ever, as we all know the NACT team will be com­ing for us over the week­end, there will be hic­cups includ­ing a TVNZ poll taken before the launch and with­out the pol­icy details. We want to keep the momen­tum going as much as is possible.

The key point for us is not to be dragged down into the detail on the CGT. The pub­lic don’t care and we get boring.

Very ironic. Trevor is saying ignore the poll because it was taken before the policy details were known, yet he is also instructing the faithful to avoid mentioning the detail as he says the public don’t care about it.

If they don’t care about the detail, then the TVNZ poll should be regarded as accurate as it was taken after they had announced there would be a CGT but prior to any details. Can’t have it both ways.

Trevor even supplies pre-fabricated tweets for Labourites to use:

• Labour’s plan to keep assets and pay off debt  #ownourfuture
• Labour’s bold plan for the econ­omy– most NZers will get a tax break  #ownourfuture
• NZ not for sale #ownourfuture
• Fam­ily home exempt – tax not ret­ro­spec­tive #ownourfuture
• Kiwis bet­ter off with Labour #ownourfuture
• Stop Asset Sales #ownourfuture
• Labour’s plan means we can keep our assets #ownourfuture
• If you are in a hole, don’t sell the lad­der #ownourfuture
• Labour: Keep our assets to grow our econ­omy not some­one else’s #ownourfuture
• Labour’s tax reform will pay the debt down, and lets Kiwis own our future.    #ownourfuture

Of course the tax reform will not pay the debt down until at least 2018. It will increase the deficit and debt for the next two terms of Parliament if implemented.