Ross river fever hits the swamp
As National tries to drain the swamp of a nasty case of Jami-Lee Ross river fever, one wonders if the bad boy from Botany ever had any master plan, or was he simply hellbent on self-immolation and taking everyone down with him.
Reeling from Ross’ revelations about foreign influence in the National Party and accusations that Ross was a low-life Lothario, politicians and journalists chimed together in choruses of Doctor Doolittle’s ‘‘I’ve never seen anything like it in my life’’.
The dirty politics of it all had AM Show host Duncan Garner congratulating himself for quitting the political gallery. He made the sybaritic confession that back in the day he used to come home from work and take a shower to cleanse himself of the daily muck, but still feeling dirty, had to take another, and another.
Even Our Lady of the Long Knives, Crusher Collins, said she felt ‘‘sick’’ when she read about the brutal pain Ross is alleged to have caused to several women.
Trying to keep his anti-stab vest in place, Opposition Leader Simon Bridges had to walk the plank of public opinion while the nation took bets on how long he would last. Meanwhile it was a case of FHB (Family Hold Back) as Judith Collins, Mark Mitchell and Amy Adams did their calculations and realised it was too far out from the next election to receive a poisoned chalice.
Deputy leader Paula Bennett passed moral judgment mutterings about Ross’ alleged marital infidelities, while in the House Winston Peters said that Paula was the last person to talk about morality.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern refrained from commenting on the Opposition’s meltdown, leaving her deputy, and his side-kick Shane Jones, to have a field day as Bridges went AWOL attending an A&P show.
Both Bridges and Ross, once close colleagues, spoke of how they were ‘‘feeling incredibly comfortable’’ with their moral compasses, vowing that they had done nothing wrong. Hearing this, their moral compasses shook with mirth, clutched their sides, and laughed hysterically.
T
he public listened to the secret Ross tapes and wondered why Bridges hadn’t smelt a rat at the forced and unnatural line of questioning The Bag Man had put to Bridges about The Donation. The perversity of the party’s attitude to cultural diversity and their mutual complicity over ethnicity was laid out for all to hear, as we learned the price of becoming a party list MP was a ‘‘nice’’ $100,000, and if you were Chinese you were top of the heap.
Allegations rolled in that a woman, who had an affair with Ross, had signed a confidentiality agreement brokered by party president Peter Goodfellow.
Ross, who entered politics at the age of 18, will find it hard to gain work outside Parliament. Blowing your life up and everyone else in the marketplace as well is a daft career move for someone deft in the dark arts of cuddling up to those with access to power to achieve desperate ambition.
No doubt Ross will take no personal responsibility for his destructive acts and instead blame the health professionals, who cleared him good-to-go before he set fire to himself. If there are smoke signals that would give clues to his perverse purpose, I’d like to read them.