Smoke and mirrors? You want aisle 4.

Watchers eagerly sifting through the piles of pre-Christmas junk mail in search of Warehouse or Briscoes' bargains may have carelessly tossed out a cheap and cheerful little eight-page blue and white flyer from the diVision Mega-store.

Like any good marketing manager, Vision pamphleteer Helen Lawrence has put together a relentlessly positive spin-sheet offering bargains galore and promising nothing short of ratepayer heaven for those queuing for the diVision buy-election special once-in-a-term Mega Sale.

A front page heading says it all. Council draws praise, gushes Helen. There’s a spread of mugshots of the new boy network appointed to attend to back-office functions at the Vision Mega store and smiling councillors looking exceptionally pleased to be sales assistants for the brand. (Well, Cr Ray Stevens actually looks like he’s about to bring up his breakfast and what a ten-month old baby is doing in the middle of this lot is a mystery but perhaps diVision Mega is also stocking disposable diapers).

There’s a range of special summer promotions ranging from film premieres to rock concerts to, yes, the council chambers upgrade. (If this was a real retail emporium and subject to fair trading rules, we can only wonder what the Commerce Commission would make of the yet-again-repeated crock that the chamber makeover came in under budget, when in fact a big chunk of the proposed work was quietly buried).

Watchers fighting off bargain fatigue may find themselves even more confused by the Referendum '05 projects update section covering the Splash Centre and City Waterfront development, both of which are in line for special Christmas windfalls of borrowed cash.

Helen tells us all about Project Splash's fundraising "initiatives" and also that "funding is in place" for the waterfront development… and not a word about the fact that the ratepayers are now in hoc for an extra $2.6 million for these two projects. But then of course that wasn’t mentioned either in the cute wee paragraphs that Helen and her boss cooked up to con the punters into voting for them at the referendumb.

We do note that Cr Randhir Dahya made his distaste for borrowing to cover these projects clear at the initial Admin and Finance "discussion". He then went on (but was not reported in the Chron) to suggest at the subsequent council meeting that a new referendumb item covering this borrow-and-build frenzy be put to the punters in February. But as his was the only hand that went up the punters won’t be getting any chance to have their say on this nasty little about-turn.

Now, even our truly horrific credit card bills are required to tell us (albeit it in very fine print) about something called the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act. As the Diva’s favourite minister, Judith Tizard, opined on the introduction of changes to the Act in October 2004:

"The Act allows credit providers considerable flexibility in how they go about disclosing key information on credit products to consumers, provided that the disclosure is clear, concise and likely to bring the information to the attention of the borrower. The manner of disclosure must not be likely to mislead a consumer."

Alas, ratepayers sold a pup by the diVision Mega store don’t have recourse to anything as sensible as fair disclosure provisions. For them, another year of smoke and mirrors lies ahead, we fear.


Update (9.20 pm): In response to a commenter who asks for a new poll with the "real" candidates - yes, such a poll will occur just as soon as nominations close on the 23rd of December. Unfortunately, the polling software can't cope with having names added after the poll is created, so we're waiting till the nominations close. And anyway, you might precipitously cast your vote for candidate A today, only to find that you'd rather candidate Z, who left his or her nomination till the last minute.

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