Nick Smith: Idiot.

We all know that National's Nick Smith is an idiot, but you'd think he could at least remember what he says from one week to the next. Last month he described Labour's proposed changes to the RMA as a "massive U-turn." "...This important change was proposed in a bill by National in 1999 but dismissed by Labour as evil and dangerous," says a breathless Smith.

Now, a month later, he says of these same reforms they are "window-dressing ... a piecemeal response to a law that requires far more substantive reform."

So which is it? Like a monkey on a typewriter trying to type a word, you can be sure that if he open his mouth and lets the wind blow his tongue around for long enough he'll eventually say something that's correct. In this case, it's his most recent pronouncement. Labour's proposed amendments are indeed "'window-dressing' to try to convince voters they had fixed its problems, when they had not." Much like Nick's own proposals when he was Minister of the RMA back in 1999 and has been peddling ever since. What Nick is really angry about is that Labour have stolen his own window-dressing, and he's now exposed as a peddler of nothing but nonsense, and certainly not of substantive reform.

As I said at the time they were announced, Labour's proposed changes to the RMA are a lane-change not a U-turn. To use Nick's words, it's "a piecemeal response" to a law that requires a stake through its heart -- much like Nick the Dick's own proposed RMA reforms. He would certainly know window-dressing when he sees it since that describes perfectly the changes he presently proposes to the RMA, and indeed those he proposed as Minister back in 1999.

Perhaps as he looks for further things on which to pontificate, Nick might contemplate this question: if Labour's proposed amendments constituted "substantive reform" in 1999 when they were put forward by Nick Smith, and just "window-dressing" now they've pinched his plans from him, then what does that say about Nick's own past and present plans for the RMA?

Nick Smith: Idiot,window-dresser and, as Lindsay Perigo said of him back when, a man with a fork in his tongue big enough to hug a tree with.