Cactus Kate MP

Audrey Young reports:

Cathy Odgers, the author of the acerbic website Cactus Kate, is expected to be approved today as an Act candidate – one of the reasons sitting MP Heather Roy is likely to today announce she will stand down at this year’s election.

Heather has since announced her retirement. It is a shame that the internal politics of the last year played out the way it did. I’m someone who admired both Rodney and Heather, and think they both made good contributions to Parliament.

Cathy’s impending demotion to Parliament has appalled and excited many on the left. First we have Bomber.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me be 1000% clear, Cathy Odgers is a hateful person who is the very last human being one would ever wish to enter politics.

I understand that Cactus is delighted with this endorsement by Bomber, and is considering turning it into billboards around Auckland.

At the Dim-Post, the commenters are salivating with excitement over her blog posts. I don’t think they realise that every journalist in NZ has probably already read them all.

But at Kiwipolitico, Lew endorses Kate’s candidacy:

It is in this vein that I endorse the rumoured candidacy of Cathy Odgers, aka Cactus Kate, for the ACT party in the forthcoming general election. If true, Odgers will be doing Aotearoa a genuine service, showing us all what ACT really stands for. …

But this endorsement isn’t all about foreshadowed electoral schadenfreude. Odgers, for all that I disagree with nearly every aspect of her politics, is intelligent, articulate and possessed of a sharp and analytical wit. By reputation she is driven, hard-working and will not tolerate time-wasters or time-servers. If her boasts about the expat lifestyle and her drinking habits are to be believed, she will be taking a considerable cut in pay and increase in workload if elected to parliament, so we might reasonably assume her intentions are genuine. In other words, aside from her politics — which is admittedly a very big aside — she’s just the sort of person we need more of in Parliament. It may be that the rigours of public office mellow her, or it may be that her prickly public persona hides one more rounded and reasoned. They often do.

I can’t wait until Cactus is interviewed on Campbell Live.

If Cactus does become an MP, I have the perfect job for her. Make her Minister of Revenue, with her job being to close down all the loopholes. Ultimate poacher turned gamekeeper 🙂

Plus the Hon Cactus Kate MP has a certain ring to it.