One of the amusing things about our parliamentarians is their elemental self importance. Most MPs have a strange belief constituents are taking much notice of what they do and consequently their day-to-day actions matter, when, generally speaking, they do not. I shall illustrate what I mean by comparing two MPs I knew rather well and their differing styles.
MP One
The secretary who ran his electorate office for 20 years was my aunt. She once asked me to fill in for her during an unavoidable leave of absence, which I was happy to do. So for three weeks I sat in the office, answered the telephone, sorted the mail and dealt with various nutters who would drop in. It was rather fun.
This MP had moved with his family to Wellington soon after first being elected. He was home for dinner with his wife and children almost every night and of course spent weekends in the capital with his family. They didn’t find his being a member of parliament a strain on the family at all.
Every Monday he’d fly down, pop into the electorate office for a coffee, call the local radio station and newspaper and give his views on all manner of topics (which they reported without fail) and wander around town shaking hands for a while before heading home to Wellington. He seldom arrived back in Wellington later than 4pm.
As his temporary secretary, when he popped into the office for a coffee on the first Monday morning, I handed him the mail that had built up during the previous week. He looked at it, looked at me and deposited it… all in the bin.
Each year in January he would schedule a 10-day tour of the electorate. The residents of each small town and rural community would get a leaflet in the letterbox saying ‘Come and meet your MP’ with the date and time to do so. These were always quite popular. He’d make a short speech, shake hands then trot off to the next town – managing to cover all the towns and small rural communities within that 10-day period. It also meant that all his constituents had either seen their MP or knew someone who had.
This MP was all about ‘quality’ time.
MP Two
This chap spent his nine years in parliament rushing everywhere. During the course of a weekend he’d turn up to around 10 events in various parts of his electorate, as well as holding a clinic listening to nutters ranting at him. He also engaged in the truly bizarre practice of many MPs: rising early on Tuesday mornings, rushing to the airport and flying to Wellington.
He was a fixture on select committees, speeches in the House, meetings with special interest lobbyists and flying around the country speaking to or meeting with various audiences.
Predictably his marriage fell apart. Predictably he didn’t observe his children growing up. Predictably he seldom had a moment to pause and reflect. What used to genuinely upset him was hearing constituents saying, “We haven’t seen our MP for years.” Didn’t they know how hard he worked? The hours he put in? The great personal cost of doing so? Actually, no they didn’t and nor did anybody care, as this MP discovered on a certain election night when, to his astonishment, he became an ex-MP.