Hard News by Russell Brown

Excellent. Great journalism is such a joy.

Thanks Prudence! It's actually a fairly demanding gig but I'm loving it.

Well thank you fishing village. firstly...for your jury service and naval gazing. thank you RB for gettn the last interview. Thanks Helen for "being there"...and special thanks to hon peter dunne, a one man party.... in a fishing village...and of course joknee coleman...for being a doctor

Legalising dope is one of those issues that polarises people. It's not hard to see why. If you go to small towns around NZ (the north of the North Island, in particular) and walk their main streets at the quiet times, you frequently see some pretty stoned people walking around. Usually very fat and brown. Often unclean and malodorous.

This is the public face of dope smoking for many people. They don't like it and won't vote for it.

Never mind drug policy as put forward by the Greens is rational and founded on solid evidence. Doesn't matter. It just can't compete with these images from everyday life.

To that extent, it's a shame that progress on every OTHER policy should be crippled by public attitudes to this one. A party could be forgiven for simply refusing to do anything about this because it's a loser issue.....and they have other priorities. I'm thinking of Labour here.....but they won't be alone.

Hey, what do Labour really have to lose at this point -- could they possibly make themselves more unpopular with the public? The bigger problem for them is that it would expose party disunity: their current MP roster includes some social conservatives who would be vocally against any such policy.