Obsessive housekeeping

First published in Column 8 on the 2^nd December, 1992 

Jenny has been in the news rather a lot lately. In fact one day last week she made the headlines three times.

Her by now infamous statements on how to budget have received considerable comment – indeed, Jenny herself had the foresight to say: ‘No doubt I will have my head shot off my shoulders.’ Unfortunately a Minister of Parliament in New Zealand is unlikely to receive such just desserts – only in a country known for revolutionary proceedings would she be literally right.

I have a suspicion that Jenny’s got a bad case of the Obsessive Housekeeper disease. This obsession makes the person see housekeeping as the be all and end all – at considerable cost to those around her (and him, in some cases).

The Obsessive Housekeeper never allows dust to remain for a moment. In fact, the dust doesn’t often get a chance to settle, but is caught in mid-flight.

In the house of the Obsessive Housekeeper the windows will be washed and polished every day; there will never be a speck of flour in the floor after baking; rings round the bathtub, if they managed to get a head start, would bring such wrath upon the culprit, that he or she would have to wash outside in a tub – in cold water – for six weeks.

Magazines on the coffee table are there for decoration; neither are they to be removed, or altered from their artistic arrangement. They must never be placed anywhere where it’s convenient to read them.

Woe betide those who live in such a house: their lives will be misery in at least two ways. First, they will never be allowed to leave anything out of its assigned place, from dirty clothes to newspapers to plates. Secondly, if they do manage to commit such a mortal sin, they will never be allowed to forget it. Unlike God, who delights to forget our mistakes, the Obsessive Housekeeper takes pride in remembering the minutest details of our human failings.

So why call Jenny the Obsessive Housekeeper? I get the impression she sees New Zealand as a large sprawling mansion and can’t cope with all that untidiness. And of course the most untidy people are those who are on a benefit; they haven’t learned how to behave in the house of the Obsessive Housekeeper.

Not only can’t they budget their benefit to pay for mortgages and rents, for food and clothing, and perhaps electricity, they argue that they should be allowed to have one or two pleasures in life. These pleasures might consist of salt in their gruel; toilet paper; enough hot water to fill a hottie (which water they will naturally recycle for washing next morning). They might wish for a board (from the demolition yard) down the middle of the bed to avoid any likelihood of producing more disorganised New Zealanders.

You see they haven’t been educated in life skills. If only they could be, and quickly, there would be no more problems. They would then quite happily live without the lights on in the evening; televisions and telephones would be things of their bourgeois past; a car would be something people who managed their well-paid budgets would drive – in fact the beneficiaries would wave to the occupants out of respect. And going barefoot would become a sign of self-esteem.

I think Jenny believed her benefit cuts would make everyone good and righteous – and tidy. I think she believed people would implicitly understand she had written an eleventh commandment: Thou shalt grind down the poor until they no longer cry for mercy.

Unfortunately for our Obsessive Housekeeper Jenny, her commandment stands in stark contrast to everything the writer of the other ten ever said.

AI reminds me of the history of this period:

In 1992, Shipley was forcing through incredibly unpopular cuts to the welfare state and restructuring the public health system. As a result, she faced intense public anger, weekly protests, and literal death threats.

When she spoke to journalists outside the debating chamber or during press conferences that year, she frequently used blunt, battlefield language to justify why she was marching ahead with the reforms despite the backlash.

The specific line you quoted from the news was her frequent warning to reporters (and to fellow National MPs who were getting cold feet):

"If you stick your head above the parapet, you have to expect to get your head shot off."

Because she repeated this specific metaphor to the media throughout 1992 to describe her political survival, the press heavily associated her with the imagery of ‘getting her head shot off.’

It appears that I ‘distilled’ (as AI tells me) her famous 1992 news media phrase into the slightly more dramatic, direct quote I used at the beginning of this column.