The following is a thought experiment to account for H Clark’s willingness to absorb huge damage from staying tight with Peters. I do not believe getting the ETS through matters enough to her .

There are a number of scenarios to account for her actions. It is only a speculative opinion, but could the discussion between H Clark and W Peters on Friday have gone along lines like the following?

HC "Winston – we have to change tack, in your interests as well as mine. The uproar will get worse till we throw the dogs a bone now that the SFO are investigating. What the hell did you think you were doing on Thursday telling them to put up or shut up?

WP – The bastard who has taken over from Bradshaw comes across as a pussy. I thought he’d fold like they always do to me. Anyway I told you to kill SFO off last year. Why did you let it take so long?  And why have you put that bill on hold?

HC – Sorry we didnt  get it across to our friendly policeman in time. You were right. We should have started earlier. But now we can offer SFO continued independence if they handle this right. You know, make a virtue of necessity, cause I think we’ve lost the Greens on that bill anyway. Couldn’t believe Nandor and Keith Locke would ever go for it anyway with the extra powers it was handing to Mr Plod.

WP So what’s your bone for the dogs?  Spit it out. I’m not resigning. – you know what I’ve said – I’m not going down for this on my own sunshine. You put that loose-lipped idiot Glenn into this case.  You gave him no script, or didn’t get him to stick to it. I had no clout with him after you canned that consulship cause it would be a bad look. I only met him a couple of times and the boorish shit left me in no doubt that he was only letting us have the money cause your guys told him to. I told him he could have that consulship so you’ve only got yourselves to blame when he got the pip.

HC – Thats the past. We are where we are and unless I look as if I’m in charge, and you look as if you accept the rules for the moment I’ll lose the power to manage this. Don’t underestimate this Winston. Even our trusties among the  journos are finding it hard to explain why you’re still standing with me beside you. None so far have tried to think past stupidities like my "determination to pass the ETS" and "keeping open a post-election coalition with you"

WP – I’ve told you, that’s your problem. I’m not withdrawing. If I’ve learned one thing it is that the moment someone like me looks like a loser, every bastard will make it true.

HC – Use your head instead of your testosterone for a moment Winston. Never admit, never apologise applies to me too. The moment they decide  I’m history it will spin out of control. You have to help me to help yourself.  If I’m neutered you are too.

WP – You work it out. I’ve told you, if you let me down I’ll make this Ben Hur.  I can explain how hard it has been going along with all this to expose what people like you do with the Owen Glenns of this world. And I’ve had to hold down my day job too, looking after Condi, and rebuilding the relationship with the US, which that pious prick Goff couldn’t acheive in 6 years.

HC – Winston you’d be finished if all this comes out, Your grey folk are conspiracy theorists but they wouldn’t swallow this one.

WP – I only need one in 20. Three times that think they’ve had outings in flying saucers. They’ll take a while but they want to believe. They’ll accept what I had to do to find out and show how corrupt you lot are. How do you think it is going to play when they find that you guys organised all that money. When you accepted my needs as  a condition of coalition, and then later when I said I would not stay if you reneged. You knew then that it  joined you to me at the hip. There was no escape for you as soon as I had knowledge that would sink you.  

HC – Don’t you threaten me. If I let you go, you’ll be yesterday’s meat. The left establishment hate you. You only survive on my  endorsement. I can make them swallow flies – look at the China FTA. They suspend judgment of you for my sake. I’ve lent you respectability for the whole three years.

WP – Tough. that’s sunk capital. Even your pet media will take a month or two to get to their feet again if I’m forced to show them you knew about my money not just from Owen Glenn in February but through all that time when you were going on about the Exclusive Brethren. From what I’ve seen  I could also give a good steer to your other techniques for rorting electoral law, with your union mates.The EB never broke any laws. How do you think your speeches on the EFA will play given what you’ve known. Your "chinless scarf wearers" will be elected before you could win another election in NZ.

HC – Lets get back to here and now. If you "stand down" I’ll put you back as soon as you’re cleared.

WP – What’s that worth.That’s what you told Dover and he never surfaced again.

HC – OK I’ll announce it at the time. And of course we’ll make sure those wimps on the Privileges Committee come out with some kind of "cant really say". We’ll treat that as ‘clearance’. Michael Cullen is putting all his skill into nobbling them. Not too hard since they havent hired a lawyer to work for them, and they’d all rather preen with their own half finished questions.

WP – A Privileges Committee roll-over doesn’t get me back if it’s the SFO investigation that’s the trouble.

HC – Look assuming you haven’t stolen the money you’ll be "cleared" when they say they are dropping the investigation cause there is no "fraud" cause the money ended up where it was supposed to. Only the Police deal with breaches of electoral law, and we can rely on them. So SFO will pull out leaving that electoral stuff alone.. The media chooks will treat ‘no further action’ as innocence, and so will your grey power.

WP – OK I’ll go along with it for the meantime. I’ll review it every day, and the moment I think you might renege, it’ll be Plan B.

The Wall Street Journal  reports on research casting doubt on the consensus that if we could just get more disadvantaged kids to pre-school they’d have a better chance of keeping up later.

The research covered finds no significant benefit to American kids in a number of states who’ve had pre-school over those who have not, after several years at school. In some respects they may be worse. Here’s the crunch:

"If anything, preschool may do lasting damage to many children. A 2005 analysis by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class. Likewise, Canada’s C.D. Howe Institute found a higher incidence of anxiety, hyperactivity and poor social skills among kids in Quebec after universal preschool."

New Zealand’s critical task is to deal with the 20%+ tail who leave school functionally illiterate. The report may be slightly less depressing for them:

The only preschool programs that seem to do more good than harm are very intense interventions targeted toward severely disadvantaged kids. A 1960s program in Ypsilanti, Mich., a 1970s program in Chapel Hill, N.C., and a 1980s program in Chicago, Ill., all report a net positive effect on adult crime, earnings, wealth and welfare dependence for participants. But the kids in the Michigan program had low IQs and all came from very poor families, often with parents who were drug addicts and neglectful.

Dear Sir Robert

I like your column in today’s DomPost.  You are of course insightful beyond all imagining.

But I wish I’d been able to nominate beforehand which one of my passions you’d praise, because I do not quite deserve it in relation to nuclear power.

I do speak plainly. I did answer a question in a Wellington flat by suggesting the first nuclear station would go in Auckland, but it was intended to raise the laugh which followed, at Auckland’s expense.

I share the view of  eminent overseas green thinkers, that most countries will have no choice but nuclear power if the world is to have any hope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But I know enough about the electricity industry to be aware that it will be a very long time, if ever, before nuclear power is economic here.

If any country can rely on sun, rain, wind and tide it will be New Zealand. So I have no difficulty in affirming [Gerry Brownlee’s dismissal of nuclear power stations]. They are not likely for New Zealand in the foreseeable future.

Brian Henry may fall into a category of lawyers we would be poorer without, but who are among the reason why applying professional ethical rules is not straightforward.

5.9 A lawyer must not directly or indirectly offer to, or receive from, a third party any reward or inducement in respect of any advice given, referrals made, products or services purchased, or any work done for a client. This rule does not apply to arrangements under which a third party has agreed to pay or contribute to normal fees payable by a client with the knowledge and consent of that client.

Yesterday evening the New Zealand Portrait Gallery opened its exhibition "Looking Down the Barrel – the face of New Zealand wine". 

Drop in to Shed 11 on the Wellington waterfront for a look.

The exhibition was launched with fulsome honour to wine-drinking. No opening could slip away more pleasantly. No need for the pretenders to look at the pictures – they could be open about preferring the wine.  And the speeches and readings stayed just the righ side of self parody. What could be more cheerful than hearing eloquent speakers say that what we like doing also has the highminded virtue of art.

My firm, Chapman Tripp, are the Gallery’s honorary solicitors, and I’m it for the firm. It is rarely onerous. Though the gallery does not confine itself to flattering portraits, in my time there’s been no litigation.  

The Gallery has some high powered support. Former Governor-General Rt Hon Sir Michael Hardie-Boys chairs the Trust. He and trustees Alan Bollard and Keith Ovenden were among those who help get funding for such exhibitions. John Saker curated it.

But the most exciting news for the Gallery from my perspective came last month. Chris Finlayson MP announced in National’s Arts policy that the gallery would be included for government funding, which it has been seeking for a long time.

The Peters party survives on belief that Winston defends the realm against establishment conspirators. That faith has been held by enough people to get Peters over the 5% mark time and again.

Accordingly, despite the pressure on National (and Labour) to send him to the political wilderness by vowing not to give him power next time, a premature move could have revived the convictions of the believers, after weeks of having their faith shaken by Peters behaviour and the contradictory evidence pointing to hypocrisy.

Because of the risk that those people would  treat the big parties "ganging up" on Peters as confirmation of his outsider status, the stake would only go through NZ First’s heart if it was propelled by the plain facts or some objective body (the SFO?). To stay buried he must be buried by the evidence, not a political adversary.

Today’s Glenn evidence was so simple it leaves room for only one of two conclusions –  one of Glenn and Peters is not telling the truth.

The weight of evidence is now sufficient to justify John Key’s decision that: "he would not accept Mr Peters holding a position in a future National Cabinet unless he could provide a "credible explanation" following evidence put before Parliament’s Privileges Committee by Mr Glenn, which "appears inconsistent" with Mr Peters’ earlier evidence" as stuff reports it.

John Key was right to resist the pressure and ignore the criticism till now.

 From Mr Glenn’s letter

Try this Hansard transcript for a sad illustration of a Speaker not up to the task. She accepted being bullied into rulings that diminish Parliament and its role as the last place in the country where free speech will be impaired by abusive lawyer power.

Rule 111  preserves the supremacy of Parliament over the courts. It reads

Subject always to the discretion of the Speaker and to the right of the House to legislate on any matter, matters awaiting or under adjudication in any court of record may not be referred to –

(a) …

(b) …, or

(c) in any question including a supplementary question –

if it appears to the Speaker that there is a real and substantial danger of prejudice to the trial of the case.

Every one in Parliament knows that Peters files defamation actions to kill further discussion.

Now the Speaker has ruled that he can exercise her discretion, by holding that she can not question his claim that it should not be exercised. it is not as if she had no help. Gerry Brownlee urged the right point.

Why did the Speaker not ask Peters why the question could prejudice the trial of the case? Without having asked that question, how could she know whether the rule applied at all?

Why did she not ask for an indication of the timetable for the case, and what interim rulings had been made?.

Without that knowledge how could she even exercise an informed discretion?

Weighed in that exercise should have been the need  to let the House and the country cleanse itself of the stench there’s been since the Simunovich/scampi corruption allegations were first raised.

The Standard’s contemptibility is shown in its frothing about the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s determination not to let the EFA gag it during this election.

That post follows immediately on the Standard’s apologia for the EPMU’s attack on its own offficial (Shawn Tan) for daring to think for himself politically.

That is the same EPMU that announced it would ignore the court and campaign anyway if an appeal went against them on the question whether they are prohibited from registering as a third party under the EFA, because of involvement with Labour.

The Standard pretends  also to have heard of speculation about a deal between National and Sensible Sentencing.

"There is also speculation they want to run parallel campaigns for National and Stephen Franks’ nomination for Wellington central was part of the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s deal on this’"

If only I’d known as much as the Standard before list ranking.

I’ve been an infrequent blood donor for years.

The needle scared me off until empty pockets in Greece in 1976 overcame that fear. In Athens twice I earned what I recall as the equivalent of 12 pounds sterling per extraction. The attendant joked with us that Greeks held parties to get high on hippies’ blood.

From then on I donated here though I still don’t look at the needle.

Then in the early 1990s I was engaged as a lawyer by the Ministry of Health on the restructuring of blood transfusion services. It followed a Hepatitis C scandal.

A French Minister was convicted for allowing risky blood to be used. In New Zealand culpability was never clarified. Some of it occurred on H Clark’s watch as Minister of Health though neither she nor any other Minister may have known enough to be in the gun. Haemophiliacs mainly paid the tragic price for casualness about blood borne diseases.

My job was to develop the legal structure for a new nationally coordinated service, and to negotiate contracts with CSL of Australia and other foreign suppliers. As lawyers do, I learned a lot along the way about blood services, products and risks.

Our ability to draw from a purely donated domestic supply is a powerful protection for New Zealanders.

I vividly remember one of the most qualified directors reminding a meeting that blood transfusions were inherently dangerous, and we should design the service to use as little as possible.  "There is so much we still do not know about what is transmitted, and latencies" he said, before mad cow disease turned the British beef industry upside down.

A month ago I was told my last donation would be used only for plasma, not red cell transfusion, because in my household there’d been a severe stomach upset a week earlier.

So i was specially interested when people at the Rainbow forum last week asked candidates to stop blood services from distinguishing between gay donors and others.

I respect their wish to give blood. Our voluntary system depends on altruism. But it appears this issue is now used by some gay activists to sniff out those they call "homophobes".

I did not then realise the significance of the probing. Now I know the background.

The New Zealand Blood Service is now proposing to move further away from the total "no thank you" policy recently reaffirmed by the UK and the US. I hope it is driven purely by NZBS views of best practice for patients, and not by fear of seeming unfashionable. It is not a good sign that NZBS’ introduction makes more of the involvement of a QC than the medical authority of the authors.

The AIDS Foundation in a handy paper has described the new policies as likely to "…position New Zealand as having one of the least restrictive [donor] deferral criteria in the world…" 

It appeared that was not enough for many at the Forum, and the candidates seemed happy to encourage them.

My approach was simple. In blood safety matters the interests of the innocent recipients come first, second and third.  And without perfect knowledge and perfect screening tests safety is governed by probability assessments. A wish to donate blood is not a right. If we have enough blood from lower risk people then do not take any from higher risk donors.

Screening tests will not necessarily pick up blood infection in a latency period after infection but before the sufferer is aware.

Some who’ve  been in the UK  during the incubation period for mad cow disease have grizzled about rejection as donors.

Tough – the interests of helpless sick people must come ahead of any donor’s desire to feel virtuous.

So I was amazed when the ACT, Green and Labour candidates all assured the Rainbow forum of support for eliminating the "discrimination". 

The Labour candidate was effusive, though to be fair it was hard at the end to know exactly what he’d said. 

His earlier blog post on the topic does not make things much more clear.  

Nevertheless he was not pressed for clarification. The audience must have been content.