Hutchison chases the Green Fairy

Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, April 18th, 2008 - 18 comments
Categories: john key, national - Tags: ,

absinthe.jpgEarlier this week, John Key had a whinge about ‘personal’ political attacks on him. Particularly, he thought it was a waste of taxpayers’ money that some Labour MPs wrote and performed a version of The Gambler mocking him. The song was written in a pub on a Saturday night (Key thinks they should been reading Cabinet papers instead) and performed when the Prime Minister ran a few minutes late to her speech at the Labour Party congress (the MPs would just have been sitting in the audience otherwise but that’s, somehow, a better use of taxpayers’ money).

Seeing as Mr Key has set such a ridiculously high standard for good use of taxpayers’ money, it’s only fair to hold his own party to it:

For example, was it a good use of taxpayers’ money for National’s Jacqui Dean to write a question to Minister Jim Anderton about banning dihydrogen monoxide (water)?

Or how about the nine, yes nine, written questions National’s Paul Hutchison has so far asked Minister Damien O’Connor about absinthe and whether kids might start dancing with this Green Fairy now party pills are banned. Hutchinson is particularly concerned about ‘side effects’ of absinthe (contrary to urban legend, absinthe is just another type of alcoholic drink and has no special effects). O’Connor patiently explains that that the only ‘side effect’ of absinthe is alcoholic intoxication, which, after all, is the whole point.

Do National MPs have nothing better to do with their time and taxpayers’ money than ask silly questions?

Hat tip: No Right Turn

18 comments on “Hutchison chases the Green Fairy ”

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  1. rjs131 1
    18 April 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Do you think it was an appropriate use of taxpayers money for Taito Philip Field to help illegal immigrants evade police???

    Dean was obviously an idiot for asking that question.

  2. Steve Pierson 2
    18 April 2008 at 3:12 pm

    rjs131. Yes I do.

    I’ve just been looking at some other written questions; ‘stupid questions from National’ could become a regular column.

  3. higherstandard 3
    18 April 2008 at 3:15 pm

    This is the twilight zone

    rjs131
    Apr 18th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
    Do you think it was an appropriate use of taxpayers money for Taito Philip Field to help illegal immigrants evade police???

    Steve Pierson
    Apr 18th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
    rjs131. Yes I do.

    What the ??

  4. Steve Pierson 4
    18 April 2008 at 3:27 pm

    Well, that’s not exactly what Field was doing but I do think he is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

  5. Phil 5
    18 April 2008 at 3:28 pm

    Ignoring the fact that “Dihydrogen Monoxide” is a poor use scientific language, i’d be carful of going down this road Steve, because it’s made a few politicians on the left (one of the Green’s Sue’s?) look like total muppets too.

    For a real waste of Taxpayer dollars, you could start with having back-bench govt MP’s used in question time as a puppet for the latest ministerial trumpet blowing exercise…

  6. Steve Pierson 6
    18 April 2008 at 3:44 pm

    but patsys are a proud westminster tradtion 🙂

    question time is often a waste of time but it’s an institution. There’s no institution that forces mps to send questions to ministers that they could solve in a 2 minute google search.

    Yeah, Bradford made a muppet of herself over the old H2O as well.

  7. mike 7
    18 April 2008 at 3:55 pm

    When was the last a Labour Miister actually anwsered a question in Parliment. Thank god Wilson is hanging up her broom..

    [calling women witches does nothing to strengthen your arguments. SP]

  8. ghostwhowalks 8
    18 April 2008 at 4:05 pm

    The written answers to questions are the real waste of time.
    There are literally hundreds from national every week. Most sound like a computer program driven asking for the same information in slightly different ways.

    What was the total cost of overseas travel by Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry staff for the years ended 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006?

    What was the total cost of overseas travel by Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry staff in the last twelve months?

    How many primary schools currently teach swimming as part of their curriculum? Brownlee ?

    Or this beauty on something Brownlee has expounded on at length previously
    How many litres of diesel has the the diesel-powered plant at Whirinaki used in the past three months to generate electricity?
    How many gigawatt hours of electricity has the diesel-powered plant at Whirinaki generated in the past three months?
    How many days in the past three months has the diesel-powered plant at Whirinaki generated electricity?

    Does he now admit he didnt know ? he asks on April 18
    AFter saying it was running “flat out”

  9. Tane 9
    18 April 2008 at 4:09 pm

    Yeah, Bradford made a muppet of herself over the old H2O as well.

    That was Kedgley bro.

  10. MikeE 10
    18 April 2008 at 4:35 pm

    Actually it wasn’t Kedgely, it was one of her Staffers.

    Whats hillarious about that was that the National Party even put a press release about it – then fell for the same thing 6 years later.

    What disgusts me is that the National Party voted on the BZP ban due to the influence of Jacqui Dean on Drug Policy. This is the silly woman who tried to ban Water (and whose first speech was ON water!) based on a prank email the three of us sent.

    Argh.

    I might be an ACT supporter, but I can’t stand prohibitionist idiots like Dean who don’t even try to research the topic. Note to the Standard and Labour. Please, please bring this up at EVERY public meeting during the Otago election.

    Please mention this in EVERY letter to the editor.

    Do not let her forget.

  11. AncientGeek 11
    18 April 2008 at 5:06 pm

    Steve:

    …forces mps to send questions to ministers that they could solve in a 2 minute google search.

    Ah yes…. We’re talking about people who typically are over 40. That typically means that they are not that competent at searching the net.

  12. Psycho.Milt 12
    18 April 2008 at 7:06 pm

    We’re talking about people who typically are over 40. That typically means that they are not that competent at searching the net.

    As a 46-year-old member of NZ’s aging Librarian population, all I can say is “Shame on you.”

    Re Cabinet Ministers singing petty insults out-of-tune for the TV cameras: does Labour have any other plans to assist National with its election campaign? Having endured several seconds of that footage on several occasions, I’m damn near ready to vote National out of spite.

  13. Hillary 13
    18 April 2008 at 7:14 pm

    Ere AncientGeek, that’s ageist!!!

    Re the fuss that’s been made about the Labour Ladies performance, its pretty sad for Key to make an issue about it. He does himself no favours playing the ‘they’re being mean, teacher’ card. It hardly paints him as a strong leader capable of withstanding the rigours of Prime Ministership.

    Why do the left have to always play nicely while the right shamelessly make all kinds of attacks including personal (eg attacks on /clark and her husband’s sexuality) against the left?

  14. MikeE 14
    18 April 2008 at 7:15 pm

    “Ah yes . We’re talking about people who typically are over 40. That typically means that they are not that competent at searching the net.”

    These people have freaking researchers.

    I’m sorry, but if between and MP and their research team and they can’t search for something on the net (where the first 5 results say HOAX) then they are too incompetant to be law makers.

    If they are too useless to do research this, then how on earth can they be trusted to research anything else.

  15. infused 15
    19 April 2008 at 10:13 pm

    You do realize absinthe has woodworm in it?

  16. Matthew Pilott 16
    21 April 2008 at 10:20 am

    Infused – interestingly enough, the stuff in NZ has a wormwood infusion (funny, geddit?) that is basically a flavouring and doesn’t containg a hang of a lot of the good stuff that makes you happy. So they make it up to 180 proof…

    Still, it did the trick on Friday…

  17. infused 17
    21 April 2008 at 1:49 pm

    Yes it does Matthew. You have to go to the right place to get it. Only two bars in Wellington sell it. I’ve had it and it sent me to the side walk spinning after two shots. Basically like taking very strong LSD.

  18. Matthew Pilott 18
    23 April 2008 at 3:39 pm

    I was going to ask which bars – until I saw the last line…!

    So..which bars?

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