I couldn't help but laugh when I heard Hone Harawira on the radio yesterday. The, 'she'll be right bro,” audacity made me laugh only because it reminded me how far this country has come in terms of expecting political abuse of power and waste.

Apparently it's now funny to spend money that isn't yours. In Hone's case: a jaunt to Paris and a walk on the beach in Hawaii. Come to think of it, the whole press conference reminded me of the late great Billy T James' skit parodying Lands For Bags T.V ad, Billy says, 'Where did I get my bag? – I pinched it”! (Insert Maori giggle here)

Far from being funny though, is the fact that Hone the Maori really did 'pinch it”. Sure it was legal – but it is no less a theft of other people's money, for what he called something like, 'a choice trip”.

Now I'll give Hone some credit. He admitted that he took what he could, he made no apology for his largesse; he even made a prescient remark that said that most New Zealanders would have said, 'good on you” – sadly he's probably right on that count.

Leaving aside Hone for a moment…

Less funny is Rodney Hide, Roger Douglas, Chris Carter and Bill English (And various others I'll leave out because that would take week). They've all been on the take too. Chris Carter is a member of the collectivist, socialist Labour Party, so we'd expect that kind of ‘damn the working man' attitude from him anyway; so I'll not dwell on him. Bill English has asked us all to tighten our belts during the recession, but doesn't think he should, and he of course thinks that double-dipping on his rental properties at the tax-payers expense doesn't constitute wrong doing, does anyone seriously think that he wanted to pay the money back because it was blatantly wrong, or did he do it to save his own hide?

Speaking of Hide, and his 'I'm entitled” squealing mate Roger Douglas. These two have campaigned…excuse me…have made a career out of peddling the line that they are 'Perk Busters”, 'Waste Eliminators”, 'Tax-payer Protectors”. Now they are caught with their pants down, becoming the very same bludging, snoughts-in the-trough, principle-bereft thieves they always claimed to be fighting against (ha, on our behalf) - Rodney was the guy who helped Dave Henderson fight off the IRD; does anyone see the irony?

Dear reader, if you happen to see Hone in the street, ask him how ‘choice' his trip was at the expense of some poor, working, tax-paying Maori who is struggling to feed his whanau; ask him how ‘choice' it is that same poor Maori's EFTPOS card just declined at the supermarket.
Ask Bill if you see him, how his ‘belt tightening' is going, and think about how much money he's taken of yours over the years when you are forced to tighten your belt and forgo a Christmas ham or holiday this year.
Ask Roger if you are unfortunate enough to meet him, whether you are entitled to give up one of your jobs, or whether your children's mum is entitled to give up her full time job, which she has just to make ends meet and pay the tax bill and stay at home with the kids.
And finally when you happen upon Rodney Hide, ask him how he can sleep at night knowing that good men, like small business owner Ian Mutton, killed himself because of being bullied by the IRD, the same IRD that collect tax so Rodney can go on holiday with his girlfriend. Ask him if he can face Ian's poor surviving wife and what it's like to live without her husband, and their son – their son, who at 13 killed himself six months after his dad did due to the despair at loosing his dad. Just bloody ask him what kind of twisted logic makes him the doyenne of the working people of New Zealand.

Message for Rodney: you are the worst of the bunch I've just mentioned; you can never claim, ever again, to be anything but another political parasite on the back of all of us!