You cannot, yet, be serious

"For three decades the Odysseus of New Zealand politics has navigated the turbulent seas of electoral fortune. ...

"The party has [lately] been on a recruitment drive. Is this time different; are we seeing a party in transition or the beginning of another operatic calamity? ...

"Movements like the New Zealand Party, Opportunities Party and United Future struggle once their leaders depart the stage. Building something enduring requires placing the interests of the organisation ahead of the self, and, well, people who start their own political entities are not team players. ...

"... [T]his is not a party with an ambition to form a government, merely to remain the party to decide who does. New Zealand First is important, but it is not, yet, serious."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'New Zealand First is important, but it is not, yet, serious'

Seems fair

"Given that level of unprecedented upheaval and restriction on personal freedom – greater even than wartime – which people went along with because they believed it was for the greater good [sic], it is now far from unreasonable for New Zealanders to expect Ardern, Hipkins and Bloomfield to appear before the Royal Commission to explain their actions in a way that they would not and could not do at the time.
    "Only then will the Royal Commission be sufficiently informed to report on 'lessons to be learned from what happened'.” 

~ Peter Dunne from his untitled post [hat tip Home Paddock]

Wasted life

In the end, it seems, nothing summarises the time in Parliament of Peter Dunne quite as much as his timing in choosing to leave.

After thirty years in office, around twenty of them as a lapdog to power, he had signalled that he might, for the first time, be able to see his way clear to effecting some sort of liberalisation of the War on Drugs -- his first move of any significance in all his time as the various politicians' poodle.

So the very moment he may have proved himself to be of some use to the wider world proved instead his complete and utter impotence.

And instead of a liberalisation that has been far too long in coming, an achievement for which he would have deservedly been remembered, he leaves the Parliament instead after thirty years without a single credible achievement to his name.

He will be able to look back back, in other words -- just like many another politician -- at a wholly and completely wasted life.
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