February 17, 2009 3:00pm by David Farrar

Ralston’s Advertisement

Are you an up-and-coming, energised self-starter who enjoys working in a close and happy team?

• Are you a confident communicator with a strong social conscience?

• Are you looking for a job with more responsibility, good salary and a secure employment contract for up to the next three years? …

• The ideal skill set consists of you having been either a teacher or active in the union movement and being capable of holding a safe seat in a by-election.

• Having no experience is not necessarily a bar to this position but it will help if you are an out of work former cabinet minister or current List MP who is being groomed for stardom.

Heh.

Currently it looks like a split fight for the job between old hand Judith Tizard, who hasn’t had a lot to do since losing Auckland Central, and new List MP Phil Twyford, a nice enough bloke who used to run Oxfam, but he’s not exactly going to set the world on fire.

Actually I think Twyford will go quite far – probably be a front bench Minister in the next Labour Government.

It wouldn’t be all bad to be the party’s candidate for Mt Albert. It is one of Labour’s safest seats. You would have be proven failed finance company director with paedophilia convictions to actually lose the by-election.

I like how it is “and” not “or” 🙂

Take Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully. Around Parliament people call him Charlie Wilson, after the movie Charlie Wilson’s War. It could be because he could start a war if he wanted to but I suspect it’s because Murray does like to party and his office staff looks like they were recruited by Hugh Hefner.

I don’t think Murray would trust Hugh with such an important job 🙂