Saunders Unsworth Party

Saunders Unsworth had their annual party last night at the Backbencher, and it was a great affair. It is probably the only party in town where you see the CEOs of the main ministries, their Ministers and the Opposition Spokespersons all in attendance – plus scores of media, industry groups, clients and the like.

The party always has really interesting people, copious amounts of quality wine, and top class nibbles to soak up the alcohol. There are so many people to talk to, you probably don’t spend more than 10 minutes with any one person.

Many jokes last night about secret recordings of course. At least I hope they were jokes.

Got to meet half of Dr Cullen’s staff, who were a very pleasant bunch (well to my face anyway 🙂 and had some interesting conversations around tax and Working for Families policy design, as well as Cullen’s wit in the House yesterday.  Also amused chats with my occassional Green Party drinking buddy over the outrage in the blog comments that we sometimes socialise and drink together.

One highlight for me was chatting to a Labour MP about a private company, with the MP praising them for their commitment to a heavy capital works programme, and I couldn’t resist quipping that this sounds like praising borrowing for infrastructure – it was taken in good humour 🙂

Eventually a few of us headed down to the Green Parrot around midnight. When I say a few, I mean around 30 – 40 people! It was probably one of the more unusual and larger groups they have had –  a collection of current and former National, Labour and Maori MPs/Cands and staff and a few journalists and others. I was really tempted to grab a photo of the 30 of us all around one large (series of) table, but a few people are camera shy!

So congrats to Saunders Unsworth on another very good function.