Oh how I yearn for the good old days of the wooden ships and the iron men when governments were decided like horse races - first past the post. Surely everyone’s political leanings were satisfied with Labour and National, just like the Americans are happy with Democrats and Republicans and the United Kingdom with Labour and Conservatives. But no, we had to go and throw out a perfectly good system of governance and now look what we’ve let out of the bag.
Despite bring a dyed-in the-wool conservative I’ve never really minded whether I was ruled by Labour or National, but some of these newer entrants scare the living daylights out of me.
Take the Greens - actually I wish somebody would - here is a disparate cabal of wannabes led by the most unlikely pair you could ever imagine appealing to the New Zealand public.
Metiria Turei, formally a member of the Random Trollops performance troupe, first entered politics as a candidate for the McGillicuddy Serious Party in 1993. In 1996 she jumped ship to stand for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party. Again unsuccessful, but determined to become an MP, she teamed up with the Greens in 2002. Not winning a seat – no Green candidate ever has – she came in on the list and became the co-leader in 2009.
The other half of the dubious duo is Russell Norman whose foray into politics started when he joined the Socialist Workers Party in Brisbane. The Socialist Workers Party is described as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist organisation. We despise communists and don’t like being bossed by Australians, and yet we are arguably on the cusp of electing a coalition government made up of the Greens and Labour with Mr Norman likely to demand the Minister of Finance portfolio.
Green voters are generally decent folk who care for the environment, but caring for the environment is a two-edged sword. Mother Nature has a toxic side and we have battled over many centuries to keep her tamed.
Green-style policies have often had disastrous outcomes. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring written in 1962 caused environmentalists to rise up and ban the use of the pesticide DDT. It is now believed that this caused the deaths of millions of people worldwide because DDT was used extensively to kill the malaria-carrying mosquito.
Modern environmentalists now want us to ban 1080 despite the fact that it has been declared perfectly safe by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment after extensive peer-reviewed studies. The widespread use of 1080 has all but rid the country of bovine TB and has hastened the return of our native birds.
Concerns over poisonous substances used to preserve our wood used in timber framed buildings were raised by environmental interests and as a result New Zealand houses were built for more than a decade with untreated timber. The resulting leaky homes saga has cost the government and local bodies over $12 billion to date with many more claims in the pipeline.
Even scarier is the Internet-Mana party. Hone Harawira is a racist who wouldn’t want his daughter to marry a Pakeha, Kim Dotcom is a German fraudster who hoards Hitler memorabilia and by his own admission once hacked the German Prime Minister’s computer and caused him to lose his credit rating and Laila Harre has jumped more ships than Metiria Turei. Add foul-mouthed Pam Corkery to this mix with John Minto hovering in the wings and honestly, what is there to like?
Back in March Hone wanted the purveyors of legal highs to be executed; now the Internet division of his party want to decriminalise cannabis. We also find out that one of the major backers of Kim Dotcoms Mega website was apparently using laundered drug money to buy the shares. Don’t tell Winston, but this man is an Asian.
Winston of course intends to be the king maker. He will be looking for the baubles of office and will accede to the highest bidder. His party has never paid back the $158,000 they owe us taxpayers from two elections back, but that doesn’t worry Winston, nor it seems the electorate.
Words fail me to explain the reaction to Nicholas Hager’s book. Rupert Murdoch’s people at the News of the World have quite rightly been hung, drawn and quartered for publishing information illegally gained by hacking into people’s private emails and phone calls and yet here in New Zealand the news media are Hager’s willing tools and are wreaking havoc.
This will change the whole gamut of how we communicate in the future and NZ Post should be rethinking their downsizing plans as I suspect letter writing will once more become fashionable.
To be perfectly Frankenstein first past the post didn’t always mean we only had a two-party system. There was the rather oddball Social Creditors led by Bruce Beetham and Bob Jones formed the New Zealand Party intending to and succeeding in getting rid of Rob Muldoon whom he considered to be a closet socialist. The end result of that exercise was that David Lange’s Labour government was elected in 1984 and ushered in the most right-wing economic reforms ever embarked upon.
Back in the 1950s a worker’s chant was: “Joe for King and a protestant Pope.” “Joe” was Joseph Stalin.
I suppose politics have always been a bit weird.
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