High jinks down under!

New Zealand always seemed to me a fairly dull place, perhaps a bit like Linlithgow in the 1950s. Sure, they have great rugby players and beautiful scenery (neither of which you could attribute to Linlithgow), but nevertheless it was not the place to go for excitement.

But its politics seems to have become more interesting by the day. The Independent reports:

"For seven years, he has been the man married to the woman who runs New Zealand, an unassuming figure at Helen Clark's side as she claimed a succession of election victories.
Now Peter Davis has been thrust into the spotlight that he shuns, with the quietly spoken sociology professor at the centre of a political sleaze scandal engulfing both main parties.
Ms Clark was forced to take the extraordinary step last weekend of denying that her husband was gay, after photographs were published of Mr Davis being embraced and kissed by one of the couple's oldest friends, Ian Scott, an Auckland MP who is openly homosexual.
The Prime Minister said the clinch was entirely innocent - Dr Scott, who was "reasonably boisterous and drunk" at the time, was one of hundreds of supporters who attended her post-election party at Labour Party headquarters last year."

If this was not enough, read on:

"She made plain who she believed was behind the smear campaign: the opposition National Party, and its leader, Don Brash, who is fighting for his own political life amid allegations of an extramarital affair.
...
While Mr Davis is the last person that New Zealanders would expect to see caught up in a gay sex storm, Mr Brash is an equally unlikely lothario. The 65-year-old was governor of the country's Reserve Bank before entering politics in 2002, and - despite revealing that he was a conscientious objector in his youth and demonstrated against visits by the South African rugby team - he has struggled to convince voters that he has much charisma.
That all changed last week after Mr Brash was challenged by one of his own MPs in relation to rumours circulating about an affair with a wealthy Auckland businesswoman, Diane Foreman. The National leader refused to confirm or deny it. But after the discussion was leaked to a newspaper, he took two days' leave, saying that he hoped to sort out "difficulties" in his marriage."

Then, rather disappointingly reverting to type, we learn of this unedifying detail:

"Mr Brash ... used to boast that he washed his own laundry in his hotel room basin during taxpayer-funded overseas trips on Reserve Bank duties.."

Still there is some good material here for a proper scandal. How unlike the prosaic lives of our own Scottish politicians...