SATIRE
Rod Kane
It was revealed earlier this morning that another ram raid had taken place with a huge haul taken by the disadvantaged, ‘those-in–need-of-wrap-around–support,’ the Police advised.
But this one was with a difference, and this time Michael Hill Jewellers were heaving a collective sigh of relief for once. Evidently, the dim-witted ram raiders mistook Michael Hill Jewellers and raided the combined Bed Bath and Beyond and Duty-Free store right next door instead.
‘Cosy Costive’ the Police Semi-conductor said that the disadvantaged late night after hours ‘shoppers’ took off with 2000 boxes of perfumed soap which they probably mistook for watches and around 1500 bottles of scented toilet water which they would have mistaken for alcohol. “They forgot to leave any payment”, he said with a disappointed and yet surprised look on his face.
The Police have announced that they should be able to easily spot the offenders because they will have especially low foreheads, narrow beady eyes, will be sparkling clean for a change and their breath and flatulence will smell like a ‘Lavender infused white Dove in a field of buttercups on a crisp Autumn morn’.
In other news, the truly excellent New Zealand Taxpayers Union has finally got an answer from their OIA request into the shockingly wasteful ‘Great Wallaby Hunt’.
It only took six months of badgering and harrowing. “It would have been faster to harrow a field with my bare hands”, said a spokesman.
A PR officer from the OIA Public Information and Enlightenment Handling Deparment, a Ms Josephine Goebbels said, “We don’t usually respond to requests when the government has expressly forbidden it.” “The public is, as yet, too immature for information”, she went on, her leather, sensible shoe heels clicking together and a hand rising slightly to a straight arm salute before being quickly retrieved.
It was a Green Party initiative, ‘Jobs For Nature Scheme’, the party leader Jimmy ForeShore triumphantly announced at the time, which was meant to supplement the government’s ingenious ‘Make Work Scheme’.
It did in fact make work: it made work for a building full of consultants, reams of parliamentary assistants and countless iwi supplying cultural advice, Maori science and technology and any amount of genuine pre-European greenstone=handled steak knives.
But this one was a doozy to be sure.
The official figures are (I kid you not) 2.7 million dollars was spent on the Wallaby eradication project, of which 2.3 million was spent on ‘surveillance’, which no doubt could be done from the comfort of a cosy sofa and a crate of Johnny Walker Black Label in the back blocks of the Ureweras somewhere, and in total 26,000 man-hours was spent on the project.
The result…waaaait for it…18 wallabies. Yes, you read that right. Eighteen.
For those fascinated with the intricacies of advanced mathematics, that comes to approx $153,000 and 1500 hours per wallaby.
You could build a wallaby with cut diamonds and hand-beaten gold for less than that.
As one wag from the dark recesses of the underground news put it: “It would have been cheaper to fly each wallaby back to where they came from on private jets”.
Yes, quite so, but in fact that is not entirely correct.
It would in fact have been cheaper to charter the Oasis of the Seas and ship them back in real style, or (I am being a little mischievous with the truth here) they could have found their own way back for nothing since they are wallabies, and Oz is only a hop, a skip and a jump away.
Apologies in abundance for that.