Winston Peters and swallowing a dead duck

I am in favour of MMP. It produces pragmatic governments rather than doctrinaire ones. But the price we pay is Winston Peters. I am not in favour of Peters.

I interviewed him once some 15 years ago. Nothing he said bore any relevance to my questions. Nor did it make much sense. He was long on grievance, short on coherence.

He sees himself as a political messiah whom everyone conspires against. Everyone includes the media, whom he berates at every turn. And yet he craves and basks in their attention. In short he is a mini-Trump.

Peters, you sense, would like to be as powerful as Trump. And Trump, you sense, would like to be as powerful as Putin, say, or Erdogan of Turkey. Putin or Erdogan don’t berate critical media. They silence them, one way or another.

The world never lacks for populist leaders and there’s a particularly rich crop of them at present. You might think that as a species we would have seen through them by now, but every generation is born freshly gullible.

Our best defences are an independent press, honest institutions and a half-awake democracy. We are lucky enough in New Zealand to have all three, for now at least. Which leaves me at liberty to ignore Peters and seek a sermon in ducks.

Last spring, morning by morning, I watched a brood of paradise ducklings grow to adulthood. It gave me more pleasure than any election.

They hatched down by the wharf where I take the dog first thing. There were nine at first, if memory serves, nine balls of beaked and flippered fluff, waddling after their parents, cheeping. Why such a scene should be endearing is hard to define.

I suppose, in the end, so long as it doesn’t threaten us, we’re on the side of nature because we’re part of it. When we see a brood of ducklings, we half see a mob of toddlers. But it is possible to go too far with this. Ducks, I’m sure, don’t see any kinship with us. And ducks in the end, are ducks. I’ve eaten several. I’ve eaten few toddlers.

Four of the ducklings succumbed to the weather or cats or Mr Dunlop. The parents did not mope. They kept on with the five remaining. And morning by morning I watched them grow.

Paradise ducks are exemplary parents. Sometimes, when I am fishing, a male will try to lure me away from his little ones by feigning a broken wing. He’ll flap and squawk and splash up river, which is where I want to go. So when I follow him he thinks his ruse is working and keeps it up for half a mile or so, ruining the peace and scaring the fish. But on the wharf the ducks became accustomed to my presence and let me come within a few yards, (though they never, wisely, trusted the dog). I watched the chicks grow proper feathers and learn to fly. And then, in late summer, by which time the chicks were as big as their parents, they went away.

Where to, I didn’t know, but it felt like the happily tearful ending to a family movie.

Two weeks ago the parents

Will he die of a broken heart? Or will he shake off his loss and start again?

came back to the wharf. Of course I couldn’t be sure they were the same birds, but I thought it probable and found the idea of such continuity pleasing so I presumed that it was so. As just as they were last spring the birds were so devoted to each other as to be effectively one. They grazed side by side. They drank from a puddle side by side. When alarmed they took off side by side, and they called to each other as they flew. They cheered me up each morning and I looked forward to seeing another brood reared.

Then last weekend the female disappeared. I’ve seen no corpse. Only the male alone. He frequents the same spots, grazes from the same patch of grass, drinks from the same puddle, but he does so without spirit.

He looks a broken duck. He lets my dog come closer than ever he did before, as if he did not care if he were caught.

And if he does take flight it is without urgency and in silence. It is hard not to see the bird as bereft. His chromosomal other half has gone. If the pointless point of everything is reproduction, then he has been robbed of all purpose.

Will he die of a broken heart? Or will he shake off his loss and start again? The latter, I hope.

Just as I hope the Greens will step into the governmental ring and neuter Peters. For everyone’s sake, ducks included.