.It was revealed today that a new trough will need to be constructed at a public cost of $345 million. A spokesman for the construction company doing the build, a Mr Hone Haraworry, said that the old trough was only 30 metres long and could no longer accommodate the huge numbers now slurping from it. That aside, it was obvious that the old nails holding it together had been sucked out due to the massive suction forces bearing down on the old timbers. Huge snouts had now deformed those same timbers and some of the gravy had spilled out onto the ground where “some of the common people had unfortunately found access to the spills. “Sharing was not what troughing was all about”, he said, wiping a large, thick, congealing dribble of gravy off his chin.When asked as to why the cost was so high, Mr Haraworry explained that it was now built from carved native timbers (of course), it had to be both glued and screwed together, it had to be another 20 metres long and much wider to accommodate the ever increasing girths of the jowls of the troughers. In addition to that it was now placed on a chest high plinth so stomachs could fit into the capacious spaces underneath. But the bulk of the cost, he indicated, came from the need for a renewable energy source, a small wind farm and geothermal station in fact, to heat the gravy and pump it from the public collection vat and thence into the trough.Another spokesman, Mr Wiley Jerkoffson, said that the trough was in fact very good value and would serve Maori and other politicians with like ideologies until an even bigger one was needed. That could be as early as next week.A little later in the day the minister for Anti Democracy, Nono Myhooter, said that a law had just been passed under urgency to retain the trough just for Maori. “This was an initiative, by Maori, for Maori, to Maori and showed abundantly clearly what could be done with the advantage of a Maori world view on troughs’, she said.The PM, that night issued an apology to Maori for having to suffer the indignities of inadequate troughage, announcing with a brow furrow that went right up to the hairline that a new initiative on the matter would be in place as soon as the various committees, sub committees, working groups, advisory panels and formative consolidations were put in place to facilitate an in depth enquiry.” This enquiry would of course”, she said, “be by Maori, for Maori, to Maori.”