“No, venal isn’t the right word.  That means bribable.  If anyone was going to be venal as a result of this, it would be the New Zealand public,” I heard a columnist say as I walked into the press conference last week.
“Um, what about a bloody cheek?” said one of the assembled journos.
“Beeeeeep!” said the columnist.  “Lawyer-unfriendly.  Next?”
I inserted myself into the conversation, and discovered they were trying to find a word to describe Trevor Mallard writing an iron-clad contract to fund Team New Zealand’s Americas Cup shenanigans even though he was no longer in Government.
“I mean, $30-odd million promised four years ago…venal must be the word,” one of them said.
“Well he is full of cockalorum with a tendency to snollygosting,” I said.  “His pettifoggery is well-known.”
One of them turned to me. “What?  Who are you?”
“Me?” I said.  “Why, I’m David Carter, acting economic development minister, and I’m here at this press conference to help you understand that Labour are a bunch of Machiavellianistic omphaloskepsists particularly as it relates to locking us in to a rather large contract for a yacht race in San Francisco.”
“You do use an awful lot of words that we probably wouldn’t be able to condense into a 15-second soundbite,” one said.
“Yes, I do,” I said.  “Benefits of a classical education and knowing that I’m really on a loser with this topic, so I’m hoping that by using these big words you’ll all find it too hard to write the story and it will sink.  Excuse the pun.”
“Surely,” one of them asked.  “You must be able to find an exit clause in the contract.”
I explained that there had been a lot of trichotillomania going on in the Beehive after this $36 million gift was discovered, and while the Prime Minister and Treasury wanted to tergiversate on the contract, it was in reality something we had to just subject to peristalsis.
“If you don’t start talking properly,” said one editor, “the only quotes in this story are going to be from Trevor Mallard saying how great it is for the marine industry.”
“Exactly,” I said.  “You’re on to it.  I don’t want to have my name anywhere near this.  Hence my pleonastic approach to this entire issue.”
“So the Government’s position is to say ‘we have nothing to do with this’?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want anyone to say I was hypengyophobic about it…”
“Eh?  What the hell are you on about?  Are you going to the Americas Cup?  Handing over a cheque?”
I was running out of words.  “Hemidemisemiquaver,” I said softly.
I quietly noted with some pleasure that pens were being put down and tape recorders turned off.  My work here was almost done.
“Ah, this is just the sturm and drang of political life. Thanks to those filius nullius on the other side of the House…”
Things had gone so swimmingly I was looking forward to holding on to the portfolio, and as I headed back to the office, I daydreamed of having to go and represent the Government in San Francisco.  Perhaps Owen Glenn might invite me on to his superyacht.
How typical, then, to discover the headline for most stories was “Minister Calls Labour Bastards.”  How was I to know what those words meant?  I mean, one has to be able to trust one’s research unit.  What a brobdingnagian mistake that was.