I’ve said it before, and I’ll no doubt say it again, that I am lucky to have one of the most interesting jobs there is.

Take a 24 hour period last week where I got to address two quite different groups in two very different places.

On Monday night CEO Peter Kelly and Community Development Advisor Rebecca Williams travelled to Oturehua to join the monthly community meeting in the Town Hall. 

There was around 20 people there and we had a great chat about goings on in the village and the wider area and got to hear what people’s concerns were. 

I love these sorts of meetings because firstly you get to spend the evening with a great bunch of people and hear the exciting things they are doing and secondly because they are one of the best ways to get a sense of where the community is at on various issues. 

Meetings like these are much more effective than meeting an interest group because I get to hear a balanced range of views, rather than the aligned views of one particular group.

Former District Court Judge Rosemary Riddell chairs the group and by chance she was sitting in the aisle across from me on a flight to Wellington the next day. Small world huh? 

I was heading to Wellington under the invitation of Local Government New Zealand to address the new National Party MP’s on localism and, more broadly how Central Government and Local Government (LG) can work better together for the people we mutually serve.

I still get a bit of a thrill when I go to Parliament and given I was one of only two LG leaders addressing the MPs it was going to be a challenging assignment, and that turned out to be the case. 

We faced many questions that came from the 15 MP’s and by the time it was over I felt like contestants at the end of the two minutes of the final Chase except that we had around 20 of it. An enthralling challenge that I thoroughly enjoyed, and one that I took every opportunity to push home rural issues and to keep hammering home that Wellington does not always (or often) know best.

Parliament itself is a great place to get to wander through; stacked with New Zealand history along the corridors and with the leaders of today wandering along doing their thing. 

I have been asked on numerous occasions if I see myself wanting to be an MP one day and my answer is an emphatic no. 

I wouldn’t be able to handle having to hold a party line I don’t agree with in the first place, but the other thing is the insane hours they work and the effect it would have on a work/life balance. 

Parliament was sitting under urgency when I was there, which meant that when the MP’s finished their dinner break with us, they had to go back to their offices or the House and keep working until midnight. 

I don’t know about you, but I am not much good for anything other than sitting in my fat pants watching telly after about 9pm and I do wonder if some of the muddle we seem to be in may be due to sleep deprivation from our leaders on all sides of the House.