Gutter politics

You may remember that I talked about the depths that politics has sunk here a couple of weeks ago. I'm afraid we are still travelling downwards as politics has become personalised almost to a point of no return.

The Prime Minister, Helen Clarke, called the opposition Don Brash, corrosive and a cancerous growth in politics. He continues to call the Labour Party Government corrupt over payment of an election pledge card paid for from public funds (incidently, other parties did the same but not to the same high level of spending). Throw into this mix media reports (allegedly fuelled by the opposition party) that the PM's husband is homosexual and the fact that the leader of the opposition has recently taken time out to spend time with his family when he got caught having extra marital affairs.

It's a desperate state of affairs which does no politician any good and some might say that it spells the death nell of the PMs position in the forthcoming election (2 years away). Certainly she didn't appear like an international statesperson leading a country but rather like a mad fishwife who has lost the plot. Who knows where this will all go - Parliament is in recess at the moment so we'll have a couple of weeks to see what happens when the debate opens again.

I can't help wondering whether such people were ever told when they were kids "sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you". I think perhaps if a few of our senior politicians didn't react to childest namecalling then perhaps you might get some decent debate about the real issues facing New Zealand.