Days on from what was possibly the most enthralling election in New Zealand memory, I still find myself giddy with excitement in the wake of an outcome which even I, a hot-tempered right-wing realist, could not have imagined better.
John Key is back in power. Not just the watered down, weak as piss MMP version of power either, oh no – should he have chosen it, Prime Minister Key and his team of cronies won a sufficiently commanding majority to effect total control of the nation. Yeah, turns out that if Mr Key was at all disposed to fascism we could now have a dictatorship on our hands. That’s just how much trust we placed in one man.
Fortunately our incumbent Prime Minister is not a crazed megalomaniac from Germany with nothing more on his mind than the absolute control of a nation directly resulting in his own personal gains regardless of consequence…
Kim Dotcom is gone. Departing with him is another mentally questionable political radical, Hone Harawira. Curious that after being unceremoniously dumped from the Maori party for his frenetic behaviour some years ago, Harawira was able to quickly push through parliament another political party, Mana, which by its second year of existence, despite having strikingly similar policies to his old haunt, was eliciting more support than the Maori party; showcasing if nothing else, the mightily fickle nature of politics.
Interesting to note also that while the well known minor parties were busy earning their 1.2, 1.7, or the most pitiful, their 0.7 percents, Colin Craig’s heavily mocked and very much maligned Conservative Party won more votes than all those minor parties combined; still, at 4.5%, it was too little to break through that staunch parliamentary threshold.
Sorry, who said democracy was fair?
Russell Norman’s party was literally decimated – by which I mean one in ten NZers voted for them. I have zero sympathy for this man, with all of his criticisms but with no adequate solutions; with all of his arguments but with no willingness to compromise; with all of his fiscal plans but with no financial knowledge; with all of his ideas for a brighter future but with no pragmatic forethought into the prosperity of the nation.
What about Winnie though? Who can recall, several elections ago, having lead his party to humiliating defeat, Winston Peters, ever so graciously and with all the dignity of a lifetime politician, fledgling alcoholic and pack a day smoker, bowed out of politics altogether? Of course it wasn’t long before he was back, stirring up acrimony among his contemporaries and unrest in the public arena, slandering those who didn’t share his views and of course, making reckless allegations about things of which he had little knowledge.
Speaking of little knowledge, with the election result officially recorded for another term, all talk among environmental lobbyists appears to have swung back to Climate Change. They’re teaming up in their thousands, equipped with multicoloured banners and pun-tastic catchphrases, walking through cities around the world, all chanting in unison, just chanting, chanting, chanting about how somebody needs to put an end to climate change…
I would have thought they of all people should have understood that any sort of impassioned chanting promotes excessive emission of carbon dioxide – the leading gas responsible for this supposed climate permutation.
How about shutting your bloody mouths and instead of complaining, try doing something productive..?
Article by Tim Walker
Edited by Polly Tishan
Photography by Nash Nahl