A part for every party?
It’s two months before the next New Zealand election and there’s a flotilla of political parties and promises coming into the harbour hot and heavy.
Like foiling America’s Cup catamarans with 20 knots of hot wind in their sails, every political party suddenly has direction and speed. It’s going to be a crowded finish line.
So far I’m voting for four political parties – that shouldn’t be a problem should it? The promises being promised are filling me with promise. There shouldn’t be any problem implementing said promises should there?
Even the government of the past nine years seem to have found a new reason to exist. Suddenly they seem to be offering solutions to problems that were once not only not problems but were signs of success, and most certainly not signs of crises. Such is the workings of election year.
So the promises are big and the future is bright and the approach is fresh.
‘‘You’re gonna have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost, and it’s going to be so easy,’’ said the world’s biggest political winner last year. This year…well, we’re working on that one folks. Stay tuned.
Overpromising and under delivering seems to be the name of the political game. When the under delivering comes to fruition, get yourself another messenger once you’ve fired the last, and blame it on fake news for good measure. Why do we reward it? Here in New Zealand the most obvious insult thrower to the messenger is Winston Peters. He’s managed to stretch the insult throwing for a distinguished 40 years.
Despite being a foundation pupil to the political scene in New Zealand for as long as I’ve been alive, he still washes his hands of it all every three years, ready to start anew.
‘‘These shiny bums in Wellington and latte sippers in Auckland think the people in the regions are thick. They think their BA in social sciences means their opinion is better than that of a tradesman or woman,’’ he said at last week’s NZ First party conference.
Which leaves me all kinds of contradicted.
As an Auckland boy with a BA in social science who has lived in this region for half my life and who tells his kids they should become tradesmen and women, Winston’s insults have me confused.
I prefer my coffee black and the only shiny Wellington bums I see come from politicians’ polished backsides when they spend too long in the Beehive for their own good. Winston continually distances himself from all that has happened during his time sitting in some of the most powerful political chairs in our country: ‘‘Everybody that is voting for NZ First knows this, that the present economic system and social system is going to change and is going to change dramatically… And were not going to go along with this 33 year experiment, economically, that has seen us plummeting down the OECD.’’ enough rope to go and hang themselves, figuratively?
Gareth Morgan’s TOP seems to have some very interesting ideas for young people and a UBI. Why not give that a go and measure the heck out of it for the next three years.
The ACT Party, New Zealand’s flagship neo-liberalism party, seem all hot and bothered about crime and punishment. Let them run prisons and judge them on that in three years time. What could possibly go wrong?
On second Cerco thoughts, perhaps we should just give ACT charter schools to play with instead. Oh, done that one too? other than their rhetoric.
Politicians would have to work together. They would work harder. Some of them, Todd Barclay, might be more gainfully employed by the taxpayer. They would learn more. Policy ideas would have far more real life case studies to draw from. We might actually discard a few ideas rather than forever regurgitate them up every three years. Pipe dreams I know. Meanwhile, the election is on September 23. Two more months of aspirational promises left to endure. The future is always so bright or so full of despair at this time of the cycle.