I was once a solo mum struggling to survive, trying hard to make ends meet and support a family. It was touch and go at times, but the government helped me, trained me, and allowed me to make something of myself.
The suckers.
9:57 am
Some people accuse me of not caring about the plight of the poor, the frail, or the deprived. They say I lack compassion and have forgotten all about the help I got given when I was in the same position.
Well I have a message for all those people. I didn’t forget about all the help I got given when I was struggling. Yes, I remember well the assistance I got, the same assistance I am busy taking away from others.
You see, people have got me all wrong. They accuse me of having a bad memory when in fact my ability to recall the past is excellent. What I don’t have is empathy. It’s my only failing, apart from a taste for leopard print and that whole breach of privacy thing I’ve got going on.
10:34 am
Look, it’s another poll.
I love it when the political polls come out. If we get a good one I know my job is safe for a while longer, and if we get a bad one John rings me up and says “do something, Paula!”
And then I get to play my favourite game. Think Whack-a-mole, except where the moles don’t pop up again, but instead slide back into their hole and fester in their own drug and alcohol infested misery.
12:08 pm
I believe in taking a stick and carrot approach to welfare reform. I have taken all the carrots, and if anyone tries to take them from me I will smash them with my stick until they are bleeding from both eyes and ears.
2:46 pm
I haven’t forgotten my roots. I’m a hard-working authentic Westie who’s all about attitude and giving it heaps. They love me here in West Auckland. Every time I walk through the streets of Henderson I have to fend off the mobs of people screaming and trying to grab at me. This must be what it was like to be a Beatle.
3:24 pm
A quick trip to the doctor for my annual health check-up. It’s so important as you get older to look after your health.
4:13 pm
These Cabinet papers are hard work. Why do they have to make the font so small? I’ve been staring at them for hours now, and I can’t make sense of any of them. I don’t see why government has to be this complicated. Just give the punters what they want and they’ll keep you in power. Right now they love it when I get the whip out and lash a few beneficiaries. Every time they do a poll on welfare the overwhelming response is that we’re too soft on those lazy bludgers.
I remember when I was young and on welfare how horrible it was being judged by people more fortunate than me. They told themselves that they had got where they were through hard work and application, even though in most cases it was plain good luck that they had escaped a life of poverty. God, I hated those people!
And now I am those people. People often ask me how I can sleep at night, but it turns out that when you earn a fat ministerial salary you can buy a very comfortable bed.
Imperator Fish 
Crikey! its a galactic phenomenon, a gravitational field has formed around a human mass for the first time ever!
Astronomers have advised that no one should move in case it suddenly collapses from its own super colossal mass and lack of combustible fuel (chop suey patties) to keep it whole.
In other news, the Waitakere vote is expected to be interesting in 2014. Meanwhile on the backside of the world, plans are afoot to microchip pre-schoolers.
That’s just nasty, don’t you think Scott? Certainly no satire. You must be aligned to the Nasty Party.
BTW Paula is not a Westie. She’s from Taupo.
smttc
Brilliantly written, Scott. You’ve nailed it perfectly!
roflmao
Agree with Anonymous. This is nasty, not funny. Scott your posts are usually much better than this.
She kicks people who are down, and you worry that I’m being nasty. Heh.
Shortly after lunch: reads negative post on Twitter by someone who she suspects may have been on some benefit at some time or another. Has staff ferret about in said individual’s records and is handed a failed drug test report (poppy seed muffin) which she then releases to the media.
I can’t believe anyone would defend this pig, btw. If I were PM and she released someone’s private records, she would be sacked before 5 pm and a complaint laid with the police as well as the Privacy Commission. No one is above the law. John Key is a thug for letting her get away with this shite.
This is nasty, not funny.
Smttc and NZBlue 2017, what Scott and phil.aznz said. Demonising the unluckiest portion of society is nasty. Releasing private records when challenged (had you forgotten that?) is unconscionable at best and more akin to thuggish bullying.
Scott’s not the only blogger who deplores Bennett’s action. Here’s Brian Edwards in the NBR
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/confessions-sentimental-socialist-and-unkind-thoughts-paula-bennett-ck-142943
…The juxtaposition of Paula Bennett’s past and present lifestyles has inevitably invited criticism. The former beneficiary of government support now earns a base salary of $260,000 a year plus a range of perks and allowances amounting to tens of thousands of dollars more. ‘Comfortable’ would be an understatement of her position. She now lives a life of considerable privilege.
She deserves, I would argue, recognition and praise for what she has achieved.
Yet there is no-one in Parliament whom I hold in less regard.
Under the guise of reform in her portfolio areas, she has, in my submission, revealed herself as a punisher rather than a defender of those at the bottom of the social heap, of the very group to which she herself once belonged. The irony of her position is inescapable.
Someone told me that during the last general election, one of her billboards in Waitakere was defaced with the words ‘class traitor’. If the story is true, the words were ill judged. Bennett is, it seems to me, a traitor not to any class or social group but to her own past. And the damage which that inexplicable treachery has done, and continues to do to the lives and happiness of thousands of Kiwi men, women and children who have fallen down in life or broken the rules, is substantial, and will continue and get worse.
This is satire (you can look up what it means on the internet, its really easy), if he was being nasty he would have mentioned that she looks like what you would get if you crossed a Teletubby and an Oompa Loompa.