0 Tweet of the Day - 6 July 2014

National's Hutt South candidate Chris Bishop, likely moa-down of long-term MP Trevor Mallard was out door-knocking yesterday when he discovered this:

There will be a time when Moa jokes and references have run their course, but we haven't reached that point yet! Trevor Mallard's delightful fantasy still has some mileage.

0 Mallard's Moa

This cartoon arrived in our inbox overnight, sent to us by a keen-eyed reader:

It really has been Trevor Mallard's week. Plans to de-extinct an extinct bird and have moa wandering freely in the Wainuiomata bush have given Mallard far more profile than anyone else in the Labour Party has had, and at least he hasn't had to apologise for being what he is!

But we still believe that Trevor's staving off of extinction is merely temporary. Tracy Watkins wrote this yesterday:

Labour needed Trevor Mallard this week like it needed a hole in the head.
Mallard's blurt about bringing Moa back from the dead was a gift to National who gloried in the treasure trove of one-liners about dinosaurs and extinction.
Ironically, Mallard's grand Moa plan coincided with a morning tea shout to mark him and Annette King celebrating three decades in Parliament.
Even Mallard's Labour colleagues couldn't resist the Jurassic Park comparisons.
Bizarrely, there was also a school of thought that Mallard might actually be a genius because people were finally talking about Labour.
That must surely be the definition of clutching at straws, but it is symptomatic of the trough Labour has found itself in that generating any sort of chatter round the water cooler - even when it invites ridicule - is an improvement. 

Ouch!

0 Body on extinction

Guy Body subs in for Rod Emmerson in the Herald cartoon department this morning. And although the style is different, Body has produced a cracker:

Trevor Mallard's policy to de-extinct the Moa may not be a goer (according to his leader, anyway), but that hasn't stopped Mallard or his ABC sidekick Clare Curran pushing the idea at every opportunity, despite David Cunliffe having told them not to. 

It seems that the long-dead Moa has become something of a metaphor for the struggling Labour Party. Is extinction beckoning the party as well?

0 Armstrong on extinct birds - and moa!

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... 

0 Photo of the Day - 1 July 2014

Some people clearly have too much time on their hands. This just arrived in our in-box:

#TeamMoa; yeah, that might catch on!

0 Is Mallard seeking de-extinction?

What's Trevor Mallard up to? The Dom-Post reports:

With nine terms in Parliament under Trevor Mallard's belt, critics might say he is a political dinosaur. But no-one could say his latest idea is old-school thinking.
With "the science of de-extinction advancing quickly", as he put it, the Hutt South MP has laid down a challenge for Lower Hutt and for scientists: Let's work towards the possibility of moa one day striding again through the bush of Rimutaka Forest Park.
While admitting it sounded "a bit Jurassic Park", Mallard said scientists had been making progress on techniques for using recovered DNA from extinct animals to reconstruct new life.
Fifty to 100 years from now, Wainuiomata could again be home to the moa, which would make an enormous difference to the environment, community and economy, he said.
"It would certainly give us international focus and, frankly, I can't think of a better place. Those valleys [behind Wainuiomata] are accessible without helicopter, with a one-hour walk."
The 30 or so businesspeople at the Development Wainuiomata breakfast were expecting election-year fare from Mallard - and they got it. In particular, he had points to make about housing affordability.
But he caught everyone out when he started talking about mammoths being found encased in ice - "effectively quick frozen" - and being so well preserved that in at least one case, blood flowed as the beast defrosted.

We reckon that this is more a not-too-subtle plot from Trevor Mallard to delay his own political extinction, which is what's going to happen if he loses the Hutt South electorate. We guess he'll put his own DNA into storage whilst he's at it, so that he can be reincarnated at some time for another 27 years in Parliament.

But why stop there? Surely someone in Labour thought to store the DNA of Norman Kirk or Michael Joseph Savage.

The last time there was a moa sighting in New Zealand, it turned out to be an elaborate hoax by a West Coast publican. Perhaps that's Trevor Mallard's new career direction; when he is defeated by Chris Bishop in September, he can manage a pub somewhere, and regale people with tall stories about his political career. 

We hear the Chatham Islands are nice at this time of year...