Rankin file

Happy-go-lucky New Zilders usually manage to blunder through their lives without killing anybody and on the whole, aside from buggering up the environment, not doing too much damage. Occasionally, of course, one or two of them will go off the rails or "up the boohoi"  as local peasantry put it and then there is a lot of shouting and hitting and blood.
The esteemed "Riddled" readership is at this stage saying "But surely in the Socialamist Republic of Kiwistan there are government agencies who bring hope and caring and money to help folks whose boohoi has been well and truly got up". And, indeed, in days of old such worthy institutions may have existed briefly their fine efforts snuffed out by the next Area District Oberleutnant who wandered past and thought "Woah, new carpet in the waiting room!".
In these days of changing ways, so called liberated days (Gaak, Rod Stewart timeslip, turn off the flux capacitor Smut!). In these modern days we have a group of folks called the Families Commission 
who, one imagines, look after families and the like and hardly ever go home early.
But, for the porpoises of this look at teh whirling dervish that is NZ politics we merely note that the Families Commission was set up as a deal between the then labour government and everybody's favourite flunky MP, Peter Dunne. As the renowned political scientist Herr Dr. Bimler has stated of P. Dunne "would-be Eminence Gris of NZ politics who somehow ended up as Eminence Grease instead. Recognised as the hagfish of the  party-political ecology, not just for the slime production, but also for his ability to batten onto other minor parties, merge with them, suck out their votes, and then move on when the host dies." Mr Dunne has very famous hair, just sayin'.
One of the Commissioners of the Fambly is well known amongst those of us who can manage to stay awake in front of TV news in New Zild, a Ms. Christine Rankin.
Rankin became a Family Commissar in circumstances that were thought odd at the time but are becoming more familiar to us all here in the Shaky Isles as the National government pays off real and imagined political debts and tries to stack whatever vacancies occur, anywhere, with the 'right' people.
Ms. Rankin is assuredly of the right people and has never met a Right-Wing talking point she did not want to take home, love and squeeze and call George.
A fairly thorough backgrounder on Rankin is behind this HTML. It is terribly bad form to say 'here' and 'here' according to the Jonah Gludgeberg Big Book of Internetz.
Now, Rankin had an awful childhood and got terrible treatment from the NZ Government when she was fired, IMO.
However she has overcompensated for that since then and seems to be about as polarising as your average Quasar. She has remained active in conservative circles and blurts out the usual RW line on occasion to remind everyone who will listen.
Still, there she was commissioning families and the like slowly disappearing under paperwork and generally we were all better off for it.
She had a run at getting on the Auckland City Council and managed to con 12,000 or so people into voting for her promise to ...er...well.. look after old buildings, I think.
This, of course, did not assuage her longing for politically powered meddling in other folks lives without all that legal mumbo-jumbo holdin' decent folks back. Now she is off tilting at non-existent moral decay and wanting to impose conservatism on unsuspecting New Zilders.
She is now the CEO of the Conservative Party of New Zealand.It was announced in the perkiest Press Release you may ever  see that begins

 "Hi Everyone, I am so delighted to be here at headquarters as the Chief Executive of The Conservative Party."

The Secret Headquarters? It would be irresponsible to speculate.
An interesting part of the CNZ wackyloonapedia page states

although Ms Rankin is a Soka Gakkai Buddhist and not an evangelical Christian.

Now why that be in there? Well, the CNZ is largely based in the fundamentalist milieu and spends a lot of time banging on about family values whilst proving that they are true conservatives and know the worth of nothing and the value of nothing also, too. How these family values are going to travel with Ms. Rankin who is in her 4th marriage we can only pop corn in anticipation of. The latest marriage had a whiff of scandal about it .

New Families Commissioner Christine Rankin is facing fresh criticism after revelations she married a Wellington man just months after his previous wife took her own life. 

A bit suspect but actually pretty average in the Conservative world-view. 
 There you are Americans we are getting as populated with weirdos and as dodgy in government appointees as you are. 
It's a brave New world citizens!!