Board the Waiheke Island ferry out of Auckualoafa today and chances are you'll see a little fella with thumb pressed curls and gleaming pearly whites wearing starched white shirt and a pin striped, double breasted suit.

He will be mixing it with all the other pensioners taking their free ride to the luxurious vineyards on the island. Although if he does board the ferry chances are he will be mobbed by Zimmer frames and hearing aid wearers who are his main fan base.

Luigi Peters became a pensioner yesterday qualifying him for a weekly pay cheque of just over three hundred bucks which of course will come on top of the generous pension he earned for the many years he battled away in this place. He will also qualify for the SuperGold card which entitles the bearer to among other things free rides on public transport.

Luigi's living testimony that you can enjoy life to the full, have the odd cigarette with a nice bottle of red in a restaurant in the wee small hours and the next day still look as though you have just stepped out of the dry cleaning closet.

The New Zealand First leader has spent much of his career looking out for the elderly and they have repaid his hard work buy traipsing into the ballot box every three years and giving him their tick. Even though he out polled Rodney Thick Hide and the the actors last time round he could not do the trick in Tauranga so was sent packing.

He will be back with a vengeance next year though hoping to cash in on the issues being thrown up by the Tories. Their grimace at the gravy train gold card and their fiddling with the foreshore and seabed is all grist to this political pensioner's plans.

By the next campaign he will be sixty six and out will go the bingo hall call, all the sixes clickety click, do the trick, give me the tick!

Barry Soper

Political Editor

Newstalk ZB