"Do pubs even have fires any more?" Les’ friend, Laurie, replied, having carefully tested the quality of the beverage placed before him.
"Haven’t open fires been banned?"
"Not all of them," Les insisted. "A friend of mine was telling me only the other day about this pub with a brewery attached — or was it the other way round? Anyway, he swears there was a roaring open fire in the bar, and another one outside for the smokers."
"However did they get past the Fun Police? For God’s sake, don’t tell your Green Party mates, or they’ll be in there with buckets of water before you can say ‘Consent Variation’!"
"Truth to tell, Laurie, I don’t really have any friends in the Green Party. Not any more."
"But you used to have heaps of Green Party ‘comrades’. I had to listen to you singing their praises for years. Hell, you even voted for them, if I recall correctly."
"So, what went wrong?"
"They did, mate. They did. When I had friends in the Greens, the party was led by Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald, and it boasted old lefties like Sue Bradford and Keith Locke in its ranks. Back then the Greens were eco-socialists — an ideology I was happy to vote for."
"They’re still bloody eco-socialists as far as I can see."
"Yeah, but when it comes to the Left you’ve never been able to see very clearly — have you, Laurie?"
"So, what are they, if they’re not eco-socialists?"
"That’s a bloody good question! As far as I can make out, they’re an unholy mixture of Treaty-freaks, transgender defenders and homespun, patchouli-scented, simple-lifers, deeply suspicious of anything ‘more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom’."
"What’s that? Tolkien?"
"It is indeed, Laurie, straight out of the prologue to The Lord of the Rings — "Concerning Hobbits".
"Hmmm", Laurie mused, setting down his glass. "Nothing very Hobbitish about Julie-Anne Genter’s performance in the House last week. Poor old Matt Doocey looked like he’d just been admonished by the Witch Queen of Angmar."
"Well, it’s all in the hands of the privileges committee now. But, you know what? I actually feel sorry for JAG. She’s an enormously talented politician with a huge amount to offer."
"Whether people want it or not."
"Yes, yes, I know, she is prone to letting her political passions carry her away. But that’s a side-effect of the parliamentary life itself. Nobody should be expected to live that way — in that dreadful, hot-house environment."
"They’re paid well enough for putting up with it."
"True. But it wasn’t always such a crazy pressure-cooker. I remember listening to Phil Amos — Minister of Education in the Kirk Labour Government — recalling the advice given to him when he was a brand new backbencher, way back in the early 1960s. He’d just been elected as the member for Manurewa and had no idea what he was supposed to do. So, he called his boss, Arnold Nordmeyer, Leader of the Opposition. ‘Well,’ says Nordy, ‘we’ll have a caucus meeting some time in February, and the Nats won’t call Parliament together until about June.’ (This is the beginning of December ’63, don’t forget.) ‘So, you just use the time to get to know your electorate."’
"And we paid him for that?"
"Yes, we bloody did, Laurie, but not because he was our employee. Members of Parliament don’t work for us, they represent us, a different thing entirely. As with so much that has turned out badly, the re-organising of MPs’ responsibilities began with the fourth Labour government. That’s when they began to be treated like employees — public servants — whose diaries had to be kept full-to-bursting, in case they found themselves with enough time on their hands to talk to their constituents and start thinking for themselves."
"Yeah, well, as I said, they get paid more than most employees."
"But don’t you get it? That’s the whole point! Phil Amos was a secondary school teacher. His parliamentary stipend wasn’t a whole lot more than his old salary. That, and having time to talk and think, kept him grounded. Prevented him from melting-down like JAG."
"By keeping him a safe distance from the fire."
■ Chris Trotter is an Auckland writer and commentator.
