I’ve woken up with non-buyer’s regret.  

I nearly ended up with a Ski Doo two person ‘watercraft’ last night. Persuading myself that I was just helping out the superb auctioneer Ian Paterson (another Taihape product) I became the underbidder at the Wellington Free Ambulance charity dinner and auction.

I like those bogan things. I tried to calm Cathy with reassurance that it would be good for fishing. She reminded me I’ve earned next to nothing for months. In the end prudence prevailed, but I wish it had not. I’ll probably never again be tempted in circumstances so helpful to giving in.

The dinner was a model for how those things should run, with some of Wellington’s best at their best. I do not know how the  Duxton can deliver hundreds of salmon and lamb dishes at a time all in the condition you’d expect if the service were just for one table.

Ginette McDonald as Helen Clark reaching the summit of Everest (and not saying "we knocked the bastard off") was  a high point. She had masses of material but she could have gone twice as long with no one longing for dinner.

The Beat Girls, Mark Blumsky’s genial introduction and good sponsors (including my old client – Whittakers chocolates)made the whole thing outstanding.

I hope our Free Ambulance service is never subsumed into our disfunctional state health system. The professional pride and enthusiasm of a couple of off duty Free Ambulance officers who attended one of our cafe meetings (perhaps by accident as  they were in uniform) was a striking contrast to the depression I’ve had from most other health sector workers during this campaign.

Why does nothing surprise in this Herald story. It is a reprise of so many of our dreadful stories of criminal justice system failures. 

So typical is it that it may not even be news today, one day later. Stuff appears not to have covered this aspect.

If a company had failed so totally and repeatedly to protect its customers and workers the directors would be in vengeful headlights for weeks.

Tomorrow evening is the last multi-candidate suburban meeting, at Kelburn’s St Michael’s Church hall at 7-30 pm. I’m sorry there are not more opportunities for open comparison.

The widely anticipated second Karori meeting was cancelled under pressure. Oddly you’ll have to read an Auckland paper to find out why. It was reported in the Herald, but not our local DomPost despite the wonderful opportunity to to report on sinister US intervention in Karori politics.

The DomPost seems to have abandoned substantive local reporting on Wellington campaigns in favour of sports-type commentary on the election game.

The DomPost also dropped its own major MTC meeting when their initial hall booking clashed with the Aro Valley fixture.

Now that open comparison is nearly over, and most candidates have spent up to their caps on written material to be circulate, my Labour opponent appears to be the intended beneficiary of a night postering effort that comes straight from the Helen Clark school of politics – smear, make wild allegations, do not worry if they are unsubstantiated – some mud will stick, especially if the target is drawn into rebuttal.

He asserted a few days ago on TV3. 

"We’re trying to run a clean campaign"

I worry that it merely shows how long he worked in the Prime Minister’s office. Mr Robertson’s campaign has been by far the dirtiest of the four local campaigns I’ve been in, based on slurs, innuendo and deliberate misrepresentation.

One of my supporters who happens to be gay described as "evil" the tactics involved in Grant’s attempt to paint me as anti-gay  – which I’m not. The  smear was raised at four ‘meet the candidate’ meetings. Those responsible kept asking questions containing false statements when they already knew the answers.

The sad thing is that no one in Mr Robertson’s team may have anything to do with the postering, but I would now have no reason to trust any denial. I fear that he has taken  a lead from his mentor, Helen Clark. She sticks with Peters despite knowing him so well that today’s revelations by Phil Kitchin would be no surprise. The H fee neutron bomb failed, as did her accusation that  John Key shouts at his family at home, but they presumably still think it works for them.

No election ushers in a millenium of sweetness and light. Politics will continue. But National success will replace a cunning but unprincipled gang, with people who believe there are bottom lines.

National people believe in boundaries that must not be crossed. They guard conventions that must be preserved. The other side may call that naive. I hope the voters will say clearly that the dirty tactics are repugnant.

Wellington is to get the new do-it-yourself check-in and baggage loading system in December, after Auckland and Christchurch according to the Herald report. Several Stuff comments on the story are sceptical but I look forward to the new system.

Funny how technology is permitting a return to the simplicity of the earliest arrangements before check-in became necessary. Only one thing will then remain then to get back to something near the speed still available on some of the smallest airlines and smallest regional airports (where you just carry your own luggage out to the plane).

The final step to retro efficiency would be reinstatement of direct self-collection of luggage from the un-loaders’ wagon train instead of having to wait for them to double handle onto the carousel.

Lets hope bugs with the system are sorted in Auckland and Christchurch so that there is not Christmas travel chaos at Wellington airport. 

On the other hand, by then lower traffic could make everything more relaxed at the airport. We’ll severely economize on travel after our media turn from reporting election sport to catch up with the rest of the world’s panic.

We’re in an election induced sleep-walk in the financial storm. Labour cares more about holding power than the economy in the short term, and does not want to scare the horses. The other parties know that messengers of unwelcome news get shot if they do not reflect  a consensus lead by those in power.

Good news that the Sanctuary’s tuatara are nesting, the first time on the mainland for a very long time. Wellington Central’s new MP may need a lot more of that kind of news to buttress a case for more public funding of the Sanctuary, if it becomes a victim of Wellington City Council’s economy drive.

I’m surprised that it has taken this long for the cost over-run in the $16.6m building project to become public. At the ceremony to celebrate the launch of the project I thought the plans looked ambitious for the site, tucked hard in against the steep hill, to avoid having to build on dam fill.

In discussion then, project technical advisors were quite open with me about their worries over the site. Among other things, they’d discovered the mouth of the tunnel dug by our forebears to take the water main to the Aro Valley, and the source of much fill.

They said the tunnel seemed still to be negotiable. We joked about reorienting the building project to use the tunnel as a privileged route for bikers and others wanting to avoid the Karori tunnel bottleneck. I wondered whether anyone had thought seriously about developing the tunnel as alternative access to Karori. Fifty years ago planners had Aro Valley designated for the major road access to Karori. Opposition to that proposal energised Aro Valley residents into forming their current association.

The engineers said the tunnel was very steep.

The Sanctuary’s money needs highlight for Wellington the critical value of having your local MP within government.  The $6.5m secured by Marian Hobbs was frequently (and deservedly) cited by the current Labour candidate as a high point of Marian’s advocacy for Wellington within the Labour government. 

Mr Robertson seems to have stopped stressing that success recently, talking instead of his determination to stay in touch with "our diverse communities" and to fight for ‘social justice’.

Highlighting Marian Hobbs’ success put the spotlight on the benefits of having an electorate MP within government. She was able to use all her connections within government. There were reports that she’d threatened to resign and cause other strife for Labour if the project was not supported.

It is not easy to see that a new National government would be moved by any threat by Mr Robertson to resign, were he to become the Wellington Central MP.  As a quintessential Labour party insider he is scarcely known outside its  specialised circles.

Indeed, given the way Labour has abused its appointment powers to load public bodies with party hacks, there is likely to be a period of deep suspicion of all Labour people from the new government.. That could be exacerbated if the new government uncovers concealed grenades when the true state of our finances emerges after the election.

Welllington is going to need every scrap of internal championing it can get in a new government. The rest of the country will be hunting for people to blame for fiddling through our golden years of high export returns and tax receipts.and leaving nothing in the kitty when the cold winds came. "Wellington" must not become the shorthand answer for the scape-goat hunters attacking the new government because the old one has gone.

I want to be there where the decisions are made, to protect the interests of the people in this city I love.  

I was also glad to meet Trevor Mallard today for another reason. He congratulated me on the stand we’ve taken on smashed signage, and said he was similarly hunting vandals, and that his team had caught one this week. The vandal was taken to the Police after the large team member who caught him was persuaded not to administer his own punishment.

I wish Grant Robertson had consulted Trevor before his condescending rejection of  my invitation to set an example by working cooperatively against vandalism. Graffiti, vandalism and street crime generally are major concerns for many Wellingtonians. We have an opportunity to show that we mean more than fine words and empty promises. I offered a chance to show that practical community cooperation could work, and Grant trivialises it.

I’m glad to report that all three of the students previously shown in photos posted on this blog have now got in touch, and their offer to help us has been accepted.

I believe in restorative justice, when the apology is genuine. In this case I told each boy that I was happy to remove their photographs simply because they’d fronted up and apologised. They maintained their offer of help, which is gratefully accepted.

This morning at 10 am 12 of us local candidates paraded for the regular coffee meeting of  stay-at-home mums and dads who call themselves ":Still Got a Brain".

They meet at Southern Cross tavern, assembled by Belinda Milnes and Rachel Dahlberg. See page two of this Herald report for more background. A Stuff search did not bring up the DomPost story on the group.

They’d be a formidable audience to a single speaker. They’d bore in on the platitude and promise mush I’ve been hearing from my opponents. Presumably our politics is  steered that way by focus groups. I can’t stand it, so I try to raise real issues each time. Some times it works. Some times it does not, as my wife Cathy promptly informs me.

This time we had 2 minutes each. With so many of us and only two minutes each Still Got a Brain eyes would have glazed if they’d not had children at knee.

I thought the most interesting question was on the extension of the 20 free hours early childhood education subsidy to Play Centre. National will extend it, and both ACT and United Future said they supported that. I think the Greens also did.

I was a play centre child in a play centre family. My mother became patron of our local play centre after 5 children had gone through it.

I was reminded of the  old Kindy/Play Centre tension by someone on whose door I knocked recently. She was hostile to the extension of the subsidy to Play Centre, not because of anything to do with kids, but because it would "undermine the professionalism we must bring to early childhood educators, to increase their status and conditions".

Sounds to me as if this is another policy area (like Corrections) where Labour has mortgaged itself (and the interests of parents and children) to its union funders.

I admired Trevor Mallard’s two minutes. He debated a real issue – the National policy to cut RMA process obstacles to infrastructure decisions. Trevor attacked the idea of requiring objectors to provided security for the costs they might cause, payable if their objections are without merit.

John Key, Pansy Wong and I joined the thousands of Wellingtonians who came to celebrate Diwali with the Indian community during the weekend at the TSB Events Centre.  Cathy and I returned on Sunday evening for good food, the finalists of the colourful Bollywood dance competition and fireworks outside. 

I’ve spent this morning outside the Wellington Hospital and in Midland Park highlighting the appalling health care shortfalls in Wellington.   If it wasn’t for the dedicated staff who have kept the hospital and  health services going, patients would be getting even slower treatment and care.

My team today had pillows with them to highlight the long hours and even days people may have to wait to be seen at the Hospital. 

 Our National team’s sign surveillance delivered an arrest early this morning in Newtown.

This long weekend saw a 90% reduction in the destruction of our signs. It appears that costs of destruction have been substantially reduced for other parties. Only on one site last night (Wadestown) were all except Labour’s signs destroyed.

We’re protecting freedom of expression.  It is vital to everyone who believes in elections without coercion, whether you think signs are useful or not. Some parties whose budgets would not stand the cost of continual sign replacement will remain visible..

And we’ve cut the waste plastic going to the tip.

But law and enforcement can’t work long term without a practical consensus. Respect for others, for their rights to express opinions and respect for their property should concern all candidates.

So I’ve invited other candidates to join with National in this effort. I’ve asked them to contribute volunteers and to share the costs and the results of the infrared camera hire. Here is the invitation.  One other candidate has accepted the invitation already.

I’d like to think most candidates can show New Zealanders’ traditional tolerance and respect for the rights of those we disagree with.  “Whatever it takes”  is not yet embedded as the governing principle for elections.