Jarring note from Jaffa
If politics is nothing but a lolly scramble, then jube poll may be perfect measure.
IN REMUERA, the man in the street is middle aged. But by narrowing one’s eyes, the boy he once was may be glimpsed. He has a belly, jowls, a worry line for the mortgage, two for each boy and three for daughters. Though, defiantly above them grows a bottlebrush of spiky hair; the last remnant of punk. I picture him, wasp-waisted, pogoing to the Specials while freeing Mandela and standing down Thatcher.
I’m a TV journalist and part of my job, at this time of the electoral cycle, is to get people to indicate who they are voting for by anonymously dropping a lolly into their preferred candidate’s jar.
A giant Jaffa is placed in the hand of Epsom Cool Dad.
‘‘I used to vote National. But I feel really disillusioned with John Key. A lot of things are happening I don’t agree with,’’ he says.
Gesticulating towards the jars, each bedecked with a beaming candidate’s face, he is urged to cast his orange-choc vote.
‘‘OK, who is the National guy, then?’’ the man asks, before dropping the stonking Jaffa into the jar adorned with the face of Paul Goldsmith, National candidate and the suburb’s most charismatic tax historian.
Politics is not a rational business. Those who think it is are destined to be disappointed. How the country’s prized undecided voters finally make up their minds on polling day is an inexact science. In East Coast Bays, I was almost run down in a stampede of pensioners desperate to show their love for Murray McCully. Some of them knew his name. Others called him ‘‘Murray McCullough’’. It didn’t matter. They loved whatshisname regardless. But in Epsom – for me – it was hard going.
I recorded fewer than 50 votes in three hours; many weren’t into it. So, with a deadline rapidly approaching, I confess I simply doubled the number of sweets in each jar.
ACT candidate David Seymour came by and tutted that the results were ‘‘unscientific’’ (perhaps not having read his party’s policy on climate change).
The secret shame of jube-based election fraud hung heavily over me until last Sunday. It was absolved when the Colmar Brunton
Nicky Hager’s book has arrived at just the right time for the Government. A dangerous situation was developing – the Opposition was about to connect with National’s rural heartland over Chinese investors buying our farms.
poll commissioned by TVNZ’s beltway comment plaza Q+A recorded an almost identical result, free of charge with a couple of dozen sweeties.
Of course the soothsayers of the political classes – the pollsters, editors, advisers, spin doctors and ex-prostitutes – will all claim that what we are watching is a contest of ideas from which the best and most able will emerge victorious.
But let us look at the facts. A campaign primarily about jobs has, ironically, begun with satire being made redundant. This week, before Dirty Politics dropped its feculent load and gave us a memento of the election in almanac form, we were occupied with the vexed question of whether Winston Peters’ ‘‘two Wongs don’t make a white’’ joke should attract censure. The New Zealand First leader said a Chinese guy had told it to him in Beijing – and therefore he was only in the joke recitation business. Naturally, the Prime Minister’s opinion was canvassed: ‘‘It was just Winston’’ he said, looking uber-relaxed. So we all relaxed.
In fact Nicky Hager’s latest book has arrived at just the right time for the Government. A dangerous situation was developing – the Opposition was about to connect with National’s rural heartland over Chinese investors buying our farms. If things had kept going, the Opposition just might have got the ear of the Prime Minister’s audience. Instead, he could now resume his place centre-stage, dismissing Dirty Politics as a loony-tunes conspiracy theory. Which bit was particularly baseless? Well, all of it, it would seem. Roswell stuff, like meeting a yeti on the chairlift at Snow Planet. His right-hand man, Steven Joyce, said it was nothing to be ashamed of anyhow. Opposite story. But no matter.
They’ve had lots of experience at running interference, the most recent after a small lift in the polls for the left. National’s bloggers trotted out videos of Kim Dotcom leading a merry round of ‘‘F... John Key’’ at an Internet Party shindig, and attempted to link a prime ministerial effigy burning to him. The desired message was the world is full of wackos, so: ‘‘vote Key’’!
This is the reason Dirty Politics may not jump the gap and erode support for the Nats. Deep down, conservatives don’t vote for politicians because they are nice, or terribly pure. They don’t secretly believe Judith Collins is at this moment baking for the destitute. Instead, for them, their way of life is precious but also precarious. An election, then, equates to the choice of the best guard dog.
Yet the greatest number of us are those without this fear, and without a tribe. Those who might think Whale Oil is something the Japanese sell, and may have heard the name Nicky Hager, but have never met her.
Most of us are like Epsom Cool Dad, starry-eyed young punks who, once upon a time, stuck it to the Man, but then got a job with him and now are consigned to an eternity of muttering helplessly under our breath.