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Question: What makes the coming election different from every other election?
Answer: Very little.

In the Red corner, Helen Clark, wily long-serving professional. Started out with ideals which she sacrificed for power. Retaining office trumps everything else.

In the blue corner, the new kid, John Key, the clone of clones. On the outside, freshly squeezed, micro-programmed, immaculately presented. But within? Parrots the same promises and wishy washy sentiments as did Frau Clark when she was in the starters gate all those years ago.

Key will probably win. But after a year or three he will be indistinguishable from her. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” as The Who sang those years ago.

In some ways, as a practising politician myself, I feel a little sympathetic. We all go in to bat expecting to make a hundred, save the side and walk home a hero. Unfortunately, compromise, ambition, and the civil service stymie vision and courage. Leadership requires decision-making. Every decision upsets someone. The “someones” grow, eventually become the majority, and bang! go the baubles of office.

The more you lead the quicker you die. So our leaders prolong their careers by not leading at all. Tony Blair governed by always following opinion polls. Leading by following made him popular in the short term, but finally despised. Helen treads the same path.

Here, a good example is the legal driving age. For historic reasons, it is legal to drive at 15 years of age. Parliamentarians have refused to raise the licensing age to 17 or 18, like the rest of the world, because the young want to drive and their parents don’t want to have to drive them. So the most dangerous drivers on the road (15 to 17 years olds) are left to kill and maim themselves and others because the polls show that saving lives would lose votes. Leadership loses out to politcial self preservation.

Otherwise, our leaders are just irrational. A while ago, Cabinet Minister Jim Anderton told us how Labour had transformed NZ into the Garden of Eden. But Jim couldn’t explain why the news that morning reported that 40,000 people had permanently fled paradise to live in Oz.

Annually, taxpayer-owned Solid Energy sells a million tons of coal to China, where it goes straight up power station chimneys and plays merry hell with the stratosphere. Someone asked why we were legislating clean air in New Zealand while selling air pollution in China. Jim looked a bit sad and changed the subject.

Career politicians retire to sinecures. Ex-PM Jim Bolger nets about $250,000 per annum from sitting on the boards of NZ Post, Kiwi Rail and other nice little earners. No one rocks the boat while Helen has the golden goose locked in her chook house.

I have met a few MPs over the years. Arrogant and foolish, but seldom bad. Winston Peters, bent as a batten staple, is a charming chap. John Falloon, my MP for ages, ended up in Muldoon’s Cabinet defending Erebus, fixed interest rates and Think Big. Muldoon was mad and set the country back decades, but you’d never meet a nicer bloke than John.

Our creaking democracy works. If we weren’t so lazy we would elect leaders of vision, strong character and integrity, and limit their time in office.

New Zealand is potential paradise. Sometimes there are glimmers of hope. Then John or Helen open their mouths, the flunkies applaud, and doubts arise. Until people learn to think for themselves and realise that the state is your enemy, we are stuck with the Helen /John circus.

But I I live in hope, when I’m not living in Otane. Which to be fair, is most of the time.