It was the fish that summed it up for me.

The Infrastructure Commission report was profound in its nature this week.

Chris Bishop was dead right on this programme when he talked of its importance and, yet, its dryness.

Big picture, infrastructure building and planning and funding isn't sexy. It never has been and that in some respects is why we are where we are.

And what a place that place is.

We, in parts, are a broken down, tragic, second-hand little nation that has let ourselves go.

We were fighting fit once. We paid our way, had cash in pocket, did the job properly and had big dreams.

In 2026 we are in hock up to our eyeballs, bitching, moaning and complaining, wanting everyone else to wipe our bums and solve our problems.

But the fish is your real clue.

The fish is in Rakaia and it's the town's mascot. It was in the news this week for being defaced and yet, in another irony, that wasn’t actually the story, or it shouldn’t have been.

The other problem with small-minded, myopic New Zealand is a defaced town mascot is what passes for news these days, when the real story was the fish that was defaced had just had a $200,000 renovation job.

$200,000 thousand dollars to polish up a fish?!

Now, if Rakaia has perfect water and footpaths of gold and record low rates and a spare few hundred grand lying about looking to do luxury jobs, no problem. But guess what? It doesn’t.

It will be like a lot of small-town New Zealand; in the hole with big picture issues that have been ignored for years.

Yet a group of people who clearly aren't up for the real work thought it was appropriate to rejuvenate a fish.

Did they have the dough? No.

Was there a shed load of proper work to be done? Yes.

But all that can wait because doing a fish up is easy, it’s a headline and you can bang on about civic pride.

Until of course it gets defaced, at which point the media can't get hold of it fast enough and you can complain some more about crime and the irony that you now need even more money to fix the fish up again.

When fish are the news the country's real issues don’t stand a chance.

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Mike's Minute: This is why the real issues get ignored

The Mike Hosking Breakfast