Posted by Blogger Name. Category:
ABC
,
David Cunliffe
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De-extinction
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Dinosaur
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Grant Robertson
,
John Armstrong
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Jurassic era
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Labour Party
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Moa
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Norman Kirk
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Trevor Mallard
,
Winston Peters
John Armstrong lampoons the fighting-for-survival Trevor Mallard and his leader this morning. In a column headed Moa no goer, but Cunliffe must wish dead ducks could fly Armstrong opines:
Trevor Mallard's mind-boggling suggestion to harness science to bring the moa back to life will likely end up being much-a-dodo about nothing.
And won't David Cunliffe be relieved. Trying to breathe life of its own into his faltering leadership, Cunliffe had recently promised that Labour henceforth would be focusing on "the things that matter".
Mallard may have misunderstood his leader, but it is unlikely that the "matter" Cunliffe was referring to was recovered DNA from moa egg shells.
Along with his front-bench colleagues, Cunliffe had to grin through gritted teeth as they were lampooned mercilessly by Government MPs for much of Parliament's afternoon hour-long question-time and beyond.
Never one to look a gift moa in the mouth, National's Steven Joyce kicked off the mass ribbing by manipulating his forearm and hand to resemble the neck and head of a moa and then waved the ensemble at arriving Labour MPs -- a pantomime act so polished that Joyce must have devoted all but a few moments of his lunchtime to perfecting it.
Trevor Mallard certainly provided a fertile topic with which the Government could mock the Labour Party. And of course David Cunliffe won't have been grateful for that as he tried to attack the Government's record on education using questions that may well have been written for him by NZEI.
But surprisingly (or not!), it was another parliamentarian from the Jurassic era who copped the best sledge of the afternoon; read on:
The subsequent deluge of puns and wisecracks became progressively more lame from thereon -- with one exception. When Winston Peters got to his feet, National backbencher Scott Simpson interjected: "A live moa!".
Peters -- for once -- was silenced, albeit briefly. He had no answer to Simpson's clever jibe, which labelled Peters a dinosaur without calling him a dinosaur.
Winston Peters looked a little confused by Simpson's jibe, and didn't quite know what to make of it. Then again, and to be fair, confusion has been Peters' hallmark of late, and he still looks far from well. He may even have felt in need of a dose of Mallard de-extinction yesterday, not that we would ever suggest that anyone try to clone Mr Peters!
For Trevor Mallard though, this was a clever move. Facing a real fight for political survival, he got a day's free publicity, and as the experts say, there is no such thing as bad publicity, especially with an election just around the corner.
There was another benefit as well, notable for the fact that Mr Mallard is the de facto president of the ABC (Anyone But Cunliffe) faction within Labour. Armstrong concludes:
The person who should have been quivering in embarrassment at having created yet another distraction from Labour's less zany efforts to connect with voters instead seemed to be revelling in all the attention. Maybe Mallard has been so ostrich-cised (sorry) by Cunliffe that he no longer cares too much what he says or does. To escape Cunliffe's fury, Mallard could have argued his idea was a cunning plan to outflank the Greens. The latter have been devoting much time and energy to saving the Maui's dolphin from extinction. Labour could go one better by saving an already extinct species ... well, from extinction. On the other hand, maybe not.
When it comes to saving animals headed for extinction, Cunliffe would probably happily exchange a dead duck for a live moa.
Before you could say Dinornis giganteus novaezealandiae, however, Cunliffe had decreed the moa was not a goer. Like Mallard's wacky idea, this bird was never going to fly.
Regular readers will be aware that we are not members of the Trevor Mallard fan club. But give the man his due; this was clever stuff from the veteran MP. He managed to boost his own profile for a day, and stop his leader getting Labour's message out; a Machiavellian master-stroke.
And perhaps that's why Labour doesn't want the media present at its "congress" this weekend. Maybe there's going to be some DNA experimentation going on. Is a reconstituted Norman Kirk about to gazzump Grant Robertson's plans to assume the Labour leadership after the election?
Maybe Trevor Mallard is on to something after all...
