A not-so-pretty profit

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Anyone who couldn’t figure out, pretty much at a glance, how to set a ‘‘buy now’’ option on Trade Me shouldn’t be allowed to use sharp cutlery, let alone be entrusted as one of the nation’s lawmakers. And if Trevor Mallard didn’t see the need to resist the potential profit from trading his unwanted music festival tickets, then not only is his moral compass giddy, but his sense for political survival is also utterly exhausted.

Mr Mallard made $276 in the transaction. And it’s not just Ticketek that’s unhappy with him.

Let’s not deny that untold New Zealanders have flicked on tickets for profit, but this is the man who championed antiscalping legislation.

The distinction that his law was drafted to protect organisers and sponsors of major events like the World Cup, rather than to afford protection to the apparently less worthy likes of the Homegrown music festival, doesn’t altogether dispel the whiff of hypocrisy.

Not even at the moment when the money changed hands at his Naenae offices, and he found himself assuring more than one observer that ‘‘this isn’t what it looks like’’, did any internal warning light apparently flicker in the head of this senior party strategist.

Or if it did, he paid it scant attention.

When the story broke, Mr Mallard was not immediately, nor even promptly, penitent. His reaction was typically combative.

It ‘‘pisses me off’’ he said, complaining testily that the purchasers had invaded his privacy by going public about the transaction.

For starters Mr Mallard dismissed the talk of hypocrisy with a flat, ‘‘I don’t see a problem’’.

It took a blizzard of scorn, derision and mockery, ranging from jocular to sour, to improve his eyesight in that respect and he now admits to cocking up.

The huge distinction Mr Mallard had been drawing, to let himself off the hook, was that he had not bought the tickets with the intention of selling them.

It was just that when his plans changed he realised that – happily? regrettably? – the tickets’, ahem, value had risen and he determined he should not ignore that reality.

Here, as a few Right-wing commentators have been happy to attest, is one senior Labour politician who cannot be accused of despising the free market.

Mr Mallard’s financial expectations during the sales process was made excruciatingly clear when he declined one person’s request to add a ‘‘buy now’’ figure, and even scolded their existing offer, already above the nominal ticket price, as ‘‘cheeky’’.

So his professed ineptitude when he later said he did not even know how to set a buy now price, (implausible as it is for someone who has been a member since 2005) was in any case a red herring. What’s more, it turns out that he has form. He has sold tickets to previous Homegrown Wellington Sevens events.

Initially, Mr Mallard’s reaction to this story was that he would need to get a new Trade Me user name and have others front for his purchases and sales.

The chorus is growing that what he really needs is a new career.

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