I wonder if Helen Clark lies awake at night questioning where she might have gone wrong? I suspect if she did, the answer might require more than a few sleepless nights. The heady days at the birth of her administration are now distant and clouded by a fog of regret. The problems are piling up pretty much as fast as the cast of her production fall, one after the other. If the government was a car it’s probably time to trade it in. Her hand has firmly navigated not only the direction of her caucus but also the intricacies of MMP management requiring in equal measure the masterful handling of necessity as well as expediency. Sadly the real casualty has been service to the public.

Most people have at least a few principles of some sort to guide them, or a semblance of ethics which gnaws away at their conscience when things go off-track. Given her history with speed-gate she probably has enough trouble with the Highway Code let alone a moral code.

In at least one way it’s not really surprising that comrade Helen fails to see the world as everyone else does. She has spent much of her life closeted away from the daily rigours experienced by her subjects. School, university, parliament - that’s been her life. She was surrounded quite early by people educated in expounding theories of how the world should be, rather than engaging in it as it was. It is an irony that the same freedom given her and her close supporters, upon assumption of power, should be used to tether the free thoughts of the public. The Electoral Finance bill, now before parliament, severely restricting our freedom of speech and right of dissention is simply the latest in a long line of social engineering edicts spewing from her Beehive palace. We shouldn’t forget the anti-smacking legislation which marked the high-water tide of extreme arrogance in its dismissal of public sentiment. I’m sure Nia Glassie was most grateful for the passing of that legislation. It’s funny how the main proponents, Sue Bradford and the whipped Labour vote, were remarkably mute on the subject. Ah well… sometimes real life does disappoint the theories.

No matter… given time and even more resources there will be more hypotheses to test whether the public want them or not. After all, the bureaucratic machinery has been put in place for a reason, and with particular vigour since Helen ascended her throne. A few numbers might illustrate the point. Since Labour began resting their buttocks on the Treasury benches in 1999, there has been a 375% increase in the number of civil servants earning $100, 000 or more. A commentary in the 2003 annual Report showed that the budget for the State Services Commission had doubled. Some of that went to defray the costs of a mammoth explosion of pen-pushers, rivalling the proliferation of rock-snot, as our greatest threat to civil society. Despite the availability of condoms, the number of public servants increased from just over 30,000 to nearly 43,000. Clearly they are not on the endangered species list however much we might wish for it.

But the worst aspect of the tumorous growth of bureaucracy is that in a time when Labour extended the welfare net to enslave an ever increasing chunk of the public through Working for (or is it against?) Families, the pay checks of our dearly beloved civil servants skyrocketed. The ministry of Maori Development chief executive salary shot up 80%, only to be overtaken by the chief executives of the Ministry of Justice whose salaries went up an eye-watering 91%. Now I ask you, are we better off?

I certainly haven’t noticed a commensurately increased level of service in our health care. In fact it’s gotten worse. Neither have I witnessed a mammoth drop in crime; or a lift in educational attainments; or skilled Kiwis choosing to come back from overseas. Our incomes haven’t risen… people are less able to afford their homes… so what’s improved?

I suppose the only people who have reason to skip and wear silly happy faces are the civil servants. For them life could hardly be better. More jobs, more money, and a direct line into the queen bee herself, Helen the politburo chief, to whom they pledge their clipboards. The downside is what I alluded to earlier, which is the particularly insular world view of these pencil armed knaves surrounding her court.

The creaky bones of the Labour government are now resting in the departure lounge of parliament. Even those who work there are now openly talking about its impending move onto the opposition benches albeit with a reduced waistline – the political equivalent of the Biggest Loser, well… except that they actually do lose.

For much of the last six years there hasn’t been so much as a peep from the Labour backbenchers restless to move up the ranks. Hardly surprising given that Herr Clark seemed in total control, more as a consequence of her personal poll ratings and the delivery of electoral success rather than the other ay round. The tide however, is coming in. Labour’s grievance division, which used to be as quiet as the complaints department at a parachute packing plant, now more closely resembles the first hour of the spring Briscoe’s sale. The experience is new to Helen Clark and I bet she’s as astonished over her dip in fortunes as she would be if she suddenly woke up and found herself wearing a dress.

In fact the whole Labour caucus seems equally as surprised by their fall from grace. They’ve been doing startled possum impersonations as though looking into the headlights, seeing their careers dissipate into the great beyond.

Most people downplay their mortality. They take risks of one sort or another every day failing to acknowledge that the end isn’t something to ‘get over’. That’s it. When your number comes up you’re in the newly minted edition of history. It seems all the more so for prime ministers. They seem to cling onto their power until prised out with all the decorum associated with a caucus crowbar. So while Helen Clark fiddles and her Rome burns to the ground around her, the biggest delusion is her unfaltering confidence that despite being pronounced dead and buried, she carries on as if being crowned all over again.

But the natives at Camp Labour are restless. They are forming small clusters in their tepees whispering of a beheading. Nevertheless the optimism of Helen Clark has persuaded her that even though the guillotine is being sharpened, she sees herself as odds-on favourite that it will be her neck that survives and not the blade.

I therefore predict that the sale of silver bullets, and sharpened lengths of two-by-fours will jump.

ENDS

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