Treat the rich

As policies wither on the vine - wealth tax? What wealth tax? - the party machines crank out the slogans

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On Radio New Zealand's website last week there was a picture of a geezer standing on a footpath in Auckland. He was looking into a pothole in a very serious sort of way. What had the pothole done to deserve this? It merely existed.

Potholes, it seems, are the enemies of the people. For one thing they make motorists say rude words when they drive into them and end up in China. The photograph was hilarious. It might be the worst news photo of a politician ever taken - bar those ones of MPs doing tours of fascinating factories while wearing hair nets and pretending they really don't mind looking like Coronation Street's Ena Sharples. Oh, the glamour of politics.

The seriously worried-looking geezer was National Party leader Christopher Luxon, who, given he wasn't doing anything about the pothole, might as well have been a pothole worker. And now he sort of is. National has promised $500 million to a pothole repair fund, if it is elected to the government benches in October. So Luxon, who obviously wants to be the next prime minister, has become pretty much the political equivalent of prime pothole filler-inner.

There was another joker in the photo standing on Luxon's right. This was National transport spokesperson Simeon Brown. He was asked by RNZ whether the promised pothole-fixing plan was a "political gimmick".

He said it wasn't. "This is a reality of our roads being in the worst state they've ever been and the need for us to be investing in making sure that they are safe to drive on so we can keep our economy moving." If it is a gimmick, it's a dud. A pothole repair fund is about as exciting as the gravel and asphalt needed to fix things.

IN WHAT?