Ah, the sun is bright and warm, the air is clean and crisp, the politicians are consensus-building and commentless. New Zealand: what a country!
The dark clouds will gather over Wellington again before long, no doubt, but until then, there's absolutely nothing political that we need to concerned ourselves with. Except for the coalition negotia-
LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!
Nope. Nothing at all.
I saw on the news the other day that, apparently, the election is now over. I guess that means I should probably stop with the whole election commentary thing. I doubt that there will be anything to say even when a new government is formed, because every permutation will be unstable, and that instability will be the new Government's salient feature. It'll certainly be interesting to see whether this Government can wobble its way to a full third term, but for now, I'm signed up to a three-month unilateral moratorium on giving-a-shit.
None of the particular coalition permutations worries me too much. Not even Winston Peters. I may live to eat these words, but I think he may be the most docile of the centre-pack. Sure, he's made his reputation as "Nobody's Poodle", but that was before he got mostly-neutered. He's already lost Tauranga (aka "Lefty") and the NZF Party Vote (aka "Righty") is dangling by a 0.72% thread. One wrong move...
Anyway, this is more a pointer post than anything else. With a sentimental sob, I have officially left student media, my home for the past five years (with a 2-year exile in the middle, admittedly). Russell has invited me to stay on with Public Address for a bit longer, so I hope to blog a bit more over these coming months and perhaps reinvent the blog under a different name, with a different, broader focus.
In the near future, I'll be (finally) posting my interview with Tom Scott and resuming the Maori seats debate I was having with Che before we were interrupted by the injunction. At the risk of getting too introspective, I also want to blog about some of the lessons I've learnt this year about political journalism in general and blogging in particular. It'll be a good way to get some closure on Poll Dancer.
As for closure for my time in student media, I don't think I could have done it any better than the last story I wrote for Salient, about the injunction. This is the final paragraph:
In a post-modern statement juxtaposing the institutional authority of the university and the under-resourced informality of student media, Salient drew penises all over the confidential papers. These have now been returned to their original owner, Professor Pat Walsh.
The paragraph had a little trouble getting past Salient's legal department. Graeme noted a particularly thorny legal issue: since the penises were on the confidential documents, they may well have been covered by the injunction and the subsequent settlement, too, making their release illegal. In the end, it was decided that Salient would "release the penises".
It's been, however, an uphill struggle trying to convince people that it really was a post-modern exercise in contextual art. It was originally intended for the courtroom, so that when the documents were presented in the High Court, we would see the judge reviewing, as evidence, a simple yet elegant illustration by Salient Designer Dave Batt entitled: "Pat Loves the Cock".
Our legacy for student media.
[Also of interest: Salient sums up the year with a line-up of celebrity columnists, including Jane Clifton, Alan Duff, Bill Manhire, Jon Johansson, Chris Knox, Sean Redmond, Lauren Pyle, Uncle Russell, Michael Appleton (former Salient Editor and more recently of frogblog), outgoing Salient Editress Emily Braunstein and incoming Editor James Robinson. Phew that's an awful lot of linking.]