Eric Roy

This weekend’s National party Mainland conference in Hamner Springs will probably skirt around the most important issue…where is the new blood coming through to replace the inevitable retirements?

• Colin King will be on the pension before the next election
• Nick Smith is rumoured to have a major international appointment lined up
• Chris Auchinvole has health issues and will retire
• Kate Wilkinson got the arse from cabinet and will get beaten in Waimak if she runs again
• Gerry Brownlee will either burst or retire   Read more »

What the f***?

An eagle eyed long-time reader spotted the horribly sanctimonious Holly Walker yesterday making a mockery of Parliament’s dress code in an attempt to be taken less seriously than Kermit the Frog as she sits with the adults.

I look forward to Eric Roy, Tau Henare, Chris Tremain and Todd McClay wearing gumboots in Parliament and seeing how that goes down with the Speaker if they do a bit of duck shooting from their mai-mai.

Walker’s female co-Leader has purple hair. Are the Greens in a competition to make the Maori Party seem dignified and well attired? The rest of Walker’s outfit is bad enough. A man cannot get away with looking as disheveled.

If Clare Curran was booted out for the Highlanders jersey, how the hell does Holly Walker get away with gumboots? She’s an MP and an alleged Rhodes Scholar. Although you would not know it after her recent failure in the “Lobbying” Bill and a pelting from Labour’s Senior MP’s.

Women must wear “normal business attire”. A female farmer would not wear gumboots in the city if they had to walk on carpet. Walker’s are probably cheap and from The Warehouse so she cannot claim them to even be a Jimmy Choo/Hunter fashion item. They also break the “no dickheads” rule. Only rural New Zealanders and blue collar workers should ever wear gumboots. Anyone wearing them from a city looks like a dickhead.

Does Winston Peters describe Walker as dressing like “Brown’s cows”?

But Winston Peters, noted for his sartorial credentials, said he didn’t think that leather jackets and cardigans were what New Zealanders expected to see when they came to Parliament.

He had observed relaxed dress standards among men in the Danish Parliament. “They looked like Brown’s cows.”

There was an insignificantly ranked MP from the Cook Islands government seated in Parliament yesterday. Dressed in her form of business attire she must have been sniggering wondering why she bothered. She will return to the Cook Islands and laugh with tales to the jandal wearers at Trader Jacks that New Zealand is so backward she saw an MP in their Parliament wearing gumboots.

UPDATE: Some self important spokesperson from the Greens has rung me to clarify that they were not gumboots…they were in fact Green leather boots…I remarked they still look like gumboots.

One thing that does come to mind though…Is Holly Walker a vegetarian/vegan?

There are three outsiders being talked of regularly. Eric Roy, Lindsay Tisch and Hekia Parata. I think that the fight between Tau and the top brass means that there wont be much space for any of these.

Eric Roy

A man with a presence who would intimidate with his bearing from the speakers position. Known to be handy in an all in brawl and not afraid to kick an enemy when he is down just to make sure he stays down. The best of the outsiders, and with a beautiful .338 Lapua as well.

Lindsay Tisch

Too short, too out of favour and too past it.

Hekia Parata

Would be a good speaker as she is a brilliant speaker herself, and unafraid of ratbags like Winston and Trevor. Her imperious manner may not work well in a referees position. Moving Hekia to Speaker would allow Nick Smith to come straight back into cabinet and take over the environment portfolio, and would remove the conflict of interest issues around Wira being party president.

My sources are telling me that the only one of the three with any shot at being Speaker is Hekia because it is convenient, and she hasn’t covered herself in glory as minister.

The tipline has been running hotter than ever on the battle for the Speaker. In a series of posts I will outline the information I have and the implications of each of these moves.

There are three main contenders. The top brass choice David Carter. The man best suited to the role, Maurice Williamson, and the man with the most mongrel who wants it the most, Tau Henare.

Outside of the three main contenders there are several outsiders, with Eric Roy, Hekia Parata and Lindsay Tisch being touted.

The broarder implications of Tau declaring is that National now have the first signs of unruliness inside caucus. The Prime Minister will not anoint the Speaker, as he has done with every other position so far. There will be old fashioned backroom politics that the PM and his key henchman Steven Joyce have limited experience at.

It is also a sign of the times, there is a strong undercurrent of discontent within caucus, who consider Cabinet aloof, out of touch and of limited ability. If Tau is not bought off he could cause havoc, and could also make others in caucus think that they should have a go too, as they have nothing to lose.

The really difficult thing for John Key is his key offsiders, Steven Joyce and Peter Goodfellow, have no rapport with the back bench. There is no good will towards Peter because he is a Muppet, and even less towards Steven because he is bloody difficult for anyone to like. He is near impossible to get into your electorate if you are a backbencher, and he has a staff who are holier than thou and bloody rude to backbenchers.

As I said I’m going to buy a truck load of popcorn because this is setting itself up for a whole heap of fun, all we need now is corporate whore Matthew Hooton to start running stocks on Parliaments next Speaker.

At this rate London might be a pipe dream for Lockwood.

I was recovering from my trip to Fiji and so missed this article by Jane Clifton about National’s next Speaker:

The parliamentary speaker’s chair will be vacant early next year when Lockwood Smith is posted to our High Commission in London, and though to say speculation about who will be our next caped crusader is feverish would be an overstatement, there is a degree of jockeying for the position among National’s seniors.

Not all the jockeying, however, is aimed at securing the position. As a result of a flying wedge interrogation operation I conducted at one of those inside-the-beltway Wellington parties the other night with two fellow senior members of the press gallery, I can be reasonably certain that the front-runner is not the widely-tipped David Carter, but Maurice Williamson. By a process of gall, guile, charm and flattery, we have reliably deduced from our research that, while both ministers have been sounded out for the role, one is having a renewed lease of life in his portfolios and wants to keep them, while the other gentleman, not to put too fine a point on it, has not.

I can just imagine Jane leading the flying wedge.

Not, as a regular parliamentary sketch-writer, that I’m self-interested or anything, but a Williamson speakership would guarantee a lively and entertaining parliament, as the Pakuranga MP has a ready and anarchic sense of humour, and what Dr Brian Edwards likes to call the performance gene.

He’s understood to be very enthusiastic about the idea –as he is about much in life, the early-90s nickname Tigger having stuck fast. Unless he affects a personality change, he would be the most colourful presiding officer in living memory, and would likely build on Lockwood Smith’s change of the role, to a less legalistic style of applying the standing orders.

Williamson would also, again not to put too fine a point on it, not necessarily need a microphone as all past speakers have done.

The only questions are: how Williamson might manage to keep a straight face during the arcane daily ritual whereby the speaker is escorted at funereal pace by liveried officials carrying the ceremonial mace into the House each day; and how might the former Air New Zealand IT wallah part with his beloved iPad for the hours he would be required to spend in the chair?

There are some others who would eye the job with envy:

However, other speakership possibilities are experienced assistant/deputy speaker MPs, Eric Roy and Lindsay Tisch. It’s not clear whether either has yet been shoulder-tapped to express an interest in the job, but if not, at least in the latter case, it may be because the MP’s short stature would require him to over-use the speakerly warning,”I’m on my feet!”

There is at least one other wild card contender, who falls into the realm of a would-be poacher-turned-gamekeeper. No, not John Banks – that I know of, anyway – but watch this space.

Lindsay should just retire, his days of glory faded a long time ago. He is just holding up a safe blue seat for a star of the future.

I’m interested in who her wild card may be.

If the rumours that Roger Bridge is intending to tender his resignation are true National has the mechanism to replace a board member without a fresh election. This happened in when then board members Eric Roy and David Bennett resigned to contest the 2005 election.

The difficulty in replacing Roger is there is a fairly limited talent pool for potential directors. In recent years Alan Towers has lost board elections twice, so obviously not popular enough within the party to deserve a place. Regional chair for the CNI Peter Osborne is regarded as one of the most indiscrete men in the party, and someone who would probably leak even more than the current board leaks. Plus he has a moustache and men with moustaches generally can’t be trusted.

Both men are members of the buggers muddle and Osborne especially loves to meddle in selections and is a known misogynist who actively seeks to discourage women candidates. The last thing National needs is to be taken over by the kind of factional fighting we see in Labour. Placing either on the board means a confirmed vote for the buggers muddle factional leader Alastair Bell for president, and sources from close to the parliamentary leadership are saying there is no way Alastair Bell will ever be president because he has repeatedly proven himself to be a lightweight.

The only other regional chair not on the board is Ele Ludemann from the Southern Region. Ele is a much loved member of the National Party whose grace is unusual in political parties, where pettiness often dominates. Ele would provide a welcome strategic brain on the board, and would be a nice geographical replacement for Roger, but may get tripped up by overt and unsubtle lobbying by the buggers muddle.

Eric Roy has a new rifle:

Eric Roy the local M.P. who is a mad keen hunter popped in to see us today and show us his .338 Lapua, this is built on a Remington Model 700 action, of course!!!!(a superb action as mentioned below), with a Bell and Carlson Stock and a Nite force scope, what a package, it has a single drop down “spike” off the butt for support of shot and we placed it on a Harris Bi-pod for him, am looking at taking a few shots with it at the range in Te Anau coming up, will keep you posted.

Last night during Trevor Mallard’s anti-graffiti bill Maggie Barry dropped an awesome sledge on Andrew Williams, the Clown of Campbell’s Bay.

Trevor Mallard leapt in to defend the “honour” of the CLown and just rammed home the point of her sledge. After the point of order was batted away by Eric Roy, The Whaleoil Rookie of the Year stood again and repeated her sledge.

Maggie Barry has great promise in the house with her ability to deliver these sledges dead pan.

The tipline has been buzzing. It appears that Maggie Barry is about to announce her candidacy in North Shore. My sources are not usually wrong. It seems Maggie has finally done her “due diligence” and after shopping in Botany and Rodney has decided on North Shore. The local members will be pleased to see that she wants to represent the people of Botany Rodney North Shore.

This also confirms other messages that Steven Joyce has re-thought his position and listened to the Prime Minister, on standing for an electorate at this election, remaining on the list. If this is the case then I woiuld think that Steven may well step into Murry McCully’s shoes when he retires in East Coast Bays.

David Farrar also speculates on retirements in the next term. Though he doesn’t name names because of his squeamishness in talking about the dead I am not so squeamish.

Both Murray McCully and Maurice Williamson should be looking for retirement at the end of the next term. They both have solid blue seats and so patience will reward those who wait. Allan Peachey is pretty much a political corpse now. If someone had the gumption to challenge him then he would probably lose. He won’t go quietly, telling everyone who will listen that he doesn’t have a job to go to. Lindsay Tisch is another old tusker sitting in a prime blue seat and not achieving anything. He hit the glass ceiling the first day he was sworn in. Dr Paul Hutchinson is a thoroughly nice guy but isn’t ever going to set the world alight so perhaps Tony Ryall could find him a nice DHB board position or two. The last old tusker that should retire gracefully before being knifed is Eric Roy. That is six retirements, exactly the number Farrar thinks is appropriate to refresh caucus in a timely fashion.

Right now though as National goes into the election it is the one that looks fresh and up to the challenges of government whereas Labour looks tired and worn out with its entire front bench being retreads of the previous governments with some entering parliament in the 80s and early 90s.