Last call at Back Benches

Just catching the last train home after witnessing the final episode of Back Benches live from the Shepherd's Arms Speights Ale House in Tinakori Road. It was the busiest show I've attended, with something like 350 people spilling out of the place. Adding insult to injury to the final show was a fire alarm in the middle of filming, which rendered the audience and panel onto the winter streets of Wellington (note the Goodnight Kiwi loitering on the left of the shot:



I've attended many Back Benches shows, mainly as an audience member, and on one occasion as a Soapbox speaker (for the Republican movement) as well as a vox pop or two. Rough and boisterous as the show is, I hope it gets picked up elsewhere as it serves a purpose as well as reaches an audience.

Whether it has been the professionalisation of political communication through media advisors, press secretaries and so forth, or other causes, Politics has suffered a disconnect between the apparatus of representative government and the people. Back Benches has helped mend that wound by bringing strangers and political animals alike back into contact with their alleged representatives.

As David Farrar attests in his autopsy of the show, it has also proven to be an excellent training ground for new MPs to gain their feet in the public. Young people are once again interested in political debate. Collegial talk across the cross benches is not unheard of either.

Unlike Farrar, I believe in audience participation. Peter Dunne earned his boos during the introduction tonight. Witnessing the filming of the Native Affairs election special last year, with its nana hecklers, brought home the important part the public plays in this feedback loop.

I hope Back Benches is reincarnated elsewhere, and that the live pub format is not neutered by some timeshifted slot in some arcane morning slot.

Backburners

It's a sad day for political animals, cartoonists and bon vivants, as the Backbenchers Pub was ravaged by fire this morning. Jeez, I haven't felt this bummed out since they closed the fish and chip shop opposite Parliament to build the Kate Sheppard apartments.

Thankfully no-one was injured or killed in the fire, however National coalition MP puppets for Peter Dunne and Pita Sharples were among the casualties, as well as an unknown number of original political cartoons.

The makers of the world's only live political TV show hosted in a pub, Back Benches, had only three more shows to go before death by National party firing squad. Maybe they'll take over the Sports Bar or find an alternative room at the labyrinthine Backbenchers building. Maybe they'll wind up at another venue entirely. The scouts are out for the final three.

Things will never be the same again. But at least Wellington's secular cathedral is fixable, and the wine cellar intact. And so it goes.

Public Bar Republican

Backbenchers is talking Republicanism with Peter Dunne, Charles Chauvel and John Hayes tomorrow night. I have been invited on the show to give the citizen's perspective on a Kiwi Head of State. The show goes out live after 9pm on TVNZ7. I'll be in the bar from 7:30pm if you're curious about what it's all about, armed with a copy of the new Hitchikers Guide to the NZ Republic. Don't be shy.

Safety Nazis out in force

A Kerikeri hospice is going to lose up to $15,000 a year from selling jam because the jam maker doesn't have a licence.

Auckland CitiRat councillor Aaron Bhatnagar is seeking to do unto the hospitality sector what John Banks did to the sex trade; try to regulate it out of existence. Suggested outcomes include mandatory CCTVs, bouncers at fine dining restaurants and pumpkin o'clock enforcement. Licences depending on garrymandered favoured property sites and cap in hand pleading with the rubber stampers.

Bhatnager has more dollars than sense. Thank Dagg I'm a Wellingtonian!

Finally, tobacco.

It was a great night at the Backbencher last night. I had been down the hill for the launch of The Republican Handbook (which I'll write up after a read. In the meantime, join the Republican Movement and get the book for free!) Saw many old faces and met some new ones too at the Grand Hall launch.

I planned to go straight to the supermarket afterwards, but was sidetracked to the Backbencher. Didn't plan to stay too long, but I did. It was a most excellent night with wit, gossip and crowd watching. One of the most festive crowds I've ever been there for too.

Hone Harawira had successfully gatecrashed the Backbenchers show talking passionately about his detestation for tobacco companies. All that talk of tobacco had me craving a cigarette out the front door. I all but missed Hone's Cunliffe line, but the audience loved it.

I also caught Ian Lees-Galloway out back later on arguing about the alleged evils of dairy tobacco walls; Power Walls, he calls them. Fair go for him trying to sell it to the ring of smokers out the arse end of the building. He's pushing a private member's bill to that end, after all.

But he's pissing in a Southerly if he thinks one more ban will make a blind bit of difference. In spite of killing sponsorship, print and web advertising, and attempting to kill smokers through hypothermia outside public bars, tobacco use shows very strong resilience.

While Hone Harawira can act as born again non-smoker all he likes, you will find that a good percentage of humans will always smoke. I quite enjoy the rite. Smokers are humans with inalienable rights. We have a right to food, shelter and warmth too. Stop sticking us in the gulag.