Since it is getting close to the election, I thought I would check out the different political parties and, more importantly, who they have all selected to be placed on their “lists”. If you dont know what those are, you have probably been living under a rock for a while, but suffice to say, its the numerical selection of potential MP’s that will go into Parliament at the next election, dependent on the percentage of the popular vote each party gets.
As an example, say the National Party gets a percentage of the votes (lets say 40%), that entitles them to 48 seats in Parliament. So the geezers in the electoral commission (or whereever), pull out the National Party list and draw a line under number 48. They then look at numbers 1-48 and strike out those who won an electorate seat (which gets them into parliament anyway). Say they strike out 30 names, so they then keep going down the list (looking at 49th, 50th, 51st etc on the list), and those who havent won an electorate seat, get tapped on the shoulder and told to pack their bags and head to parliament for 3 years. This continues until they get their 48 MPs that party is entitled to have in Parliament.
So the “list” is pretty important as there will be various odds and sods on those who could end up with a chair in the parliamentary debating chamber, however chances are most of us know bugger all about these people.
In fact if you look through many of the MPs who came in at the last election, compliments of the “list” setup, chances are you wont know most of them and probably never heard about anything they did while they were in there.
Which makes it all the more important that we scrutinise these assortments of characters who have attached themselves to a political party in the off chance that they will get a cushy job with lots of pay for the next three years. Plus if you are a “list” candidate you don’t have an electorate to look after, so life’s a breeze.
In my perusal of these “lists” I came across a chap sitting at Number 30 on the Labour Party list. Now being no mathematical genius, I could still work out that someone at No 30 on the Labour Party list is highly likely to get a magic carpet ride into Parliament.
However the major issue I noticed about the person sitting at No 30 on Labour’s list, named Warrick Cleine, is that he hasnt lived in New Zealand for 27 years. No I am not making this up. He lives in Vietnam and has a sweet little job there running KPMG’s Vietnam and Cambodia division. If you don’t know what KPMG is, they are an international bunch of overpaid accountants, auditors and consultants who actually do very little to generate anything tangibly useful, and get oodles of money for doing that.
Lo and behold, it appears that Mr Cleine has vowed to relocate back to New Zealand if he ends up as an MP in Parliament after the November election.
Firstly we should all be cheering from the rooftops because he is hopefully coming home to show us how to put together a few really good Vietnamese meals.
Secondly, with his vast experience consulting to organisations and Government bodies in Vietnam and Cambodia, he can give us some grand ideas on how to pay the workforce here a lot less money, get them working 7 days a week and increase the production lines in our factories making summer polo shirts and beach wear (that is assuming we have any factories making those here anymore).
Lastly, if Mr Cleine does end up gracing our hallowed halls of Parliament, what specialist areas and select committees is he likely to end up on? Given that he hasn’t lived here for 27 years, he probably needs to spend some time getting up to speed on recent one way systems on our roads, buildings that have changed a bit or gone altogether, and prices that are rocketing through the roof. But I guess on his recent KPMG pay, he doesn’t really need to worry about that does he?
I personally find it extraordinary and actually quite insulting to the people who have stuck it out here, that we have to do a candidate search across the globe to find people to sit in our Parliament and enact laws that affect our lives. Don’t we have people of calibre, reputation, abilities and passion for the country here?
Clearly not (as he answers his own question). I am sure other political parties spread their “list” candidate search far and wide, but this whole selection feels like a perfect example of “jobs for the mates”, which has been going on in our political system for decades. But now they clearly don’t give a flying fig what anyone thinks about it, because apparently New Zealanders are too dumb to complain and will vote for them anyway.
