Key+ popularity= power

John Key has done the math and he knows Collins is a good investment

ON TUESDAY, I found myself once more on the election trail. It’s not a physical place, like the Ho Chi Minh trail or the Silk Road. But it exists wherever there is a politician and a camera; wherever that camera gets switched on, a demon-summoning circle is immediately created. As if by magic, they appear.

I, on the other hand, work with a camera and sweets; summoning the time-poor, energy-deprived voter. During the election campaign, Campbell Live is conducting a series of polls, and with the help of myself and a bag of sugary treats, 100 passersby in key battlegrounds get to drop a lolly into a candidate’s jar to indicate who they are voting for.

This week, it was on the main street of Papakura, Judith Collins’ electorate, where Vina Anderson, a five foot-tall ball of fury in trackpants stomped up to me. She took the jelly whale from the jar and, instead of exercising her quasidemocratic right, gobbled down her vote.

‘‘I’d ask for it back if it wasn’t halfway down to your stomach,’’ I complained.

‘‘It’s all the way down!" she bellowed. ‘‘It’s not going into these jars. I have no confidence in any of them. Do you think we get lollies here all the time? This is a low socio-economic area!’’

I think what Vina was trying to say – between mouthfuls – was that she felt alienated and let down by democracy.

But how could that be? MMP offers a stage groaning under the weight of a slew of colourful characters. There’s the former singing weatherman, the world’s first transgender MP, a couple of former tobacco company PR men and a German internet tycoon on the run from the Feds. What’s not to love – or at least sort-of like?

And yet there are still 800,000 characters missing from the national drama. The voters who simply did not bother casting ballots last time round. For some reason, the issue of turnout is mourned for approximately 30 seconds after each election before it’s promptly forgotten. That sort of wholesale non-engagement makes Vina Anderson’s sugar-fuelled fury at all politicians look like public service.

That didn’t stop a couple of

Key is our first postmodern Prime Minister.

ladies from the Electoral Commission from trying to sign up the apathetic. Both they, and I, had the choice of brisk walkers – off to the bank, picking something up, no time to stop, or others who mill around and seemingly never move on. Quite by chance, one of the latter had recently appeared on our show.

The hand of central government had already reached into the life of ‘‘AS-R-G’’ Neho earlier this year, removing legal highs from shelves. No more Diablo, Choc Haze or Giggle. Then, he and a friend had been collared by the electoral commission just that morning and were under the influence of something new and exciting.

‘‘Vote for the Bro,’’ the newly enrolled Neho and his mate Reon call out to passers-by. The ‘‘Bro’’ in question was Labour’s Jerome Mika, but their efforts were, unfortunately, greatly skewing the already volatile sample. ‘‘He’s going to increase the benefit. He’s going to make us rich!’’

Just then Mr Mika arrived. The circle was complete. The hopes and dreams of struggle-street, enumerated with a flourish for a passing TV journalist.

It reminded me of a few years back, when, on state-house-lined McGehan Close in Mt Albert, residents received an unlikely visitor – one with a holiday home on a place called Success Court. His coming had been foretold. Not by the stars, but by a phalanx of TV crews and microphones that had appeared magically near the jungle gym.

When the man – who had said he was going to save them from desperation – arrived, he was neither short nor tall, young nor old, but wore a powder-blue polo and chinos. One of the mums giggled behind her hand that he was ‘‘handsome.’’ Though not everyone rolled out the welcome mat.

‘‘We’re not the underclass. Go to South Auckland – they’re the %&$ing underclass! You’ve got a cheek, you prick!’’ yelled one malcontent.

So began John Key’s untrammelled assault on the summit of New Zealand politics. Because it worked, it is easy to forget how audacious the whole thing was. Two young people who lived on the street had recently taken their own lives. The deaths had made the nightly news. Nobody wanted to see another camera. Yet four days after expressing concern at a growing ‘‘underclass’’, and naming streets where kids had ‘‘nothing more to read than a pizza flyer’’ in his first speech as leader of the Opposition, he went there.

Millions are not made on the markets by people who can’t do a quick cost-benefit analysis. Through the eyes of an experienced trader, the angry mob might be viewed as futures bouncing on the NASDAQ. A quick calculation weighs the boon of walking into Helen Clark’s electorate and telling her audience, the urban poor, Labour doesn’t care, versus the chance the urban poor could smash you in the face.

Currently, that famous Key calculation-gauge is being used again. He has invested very heavily in a commodity called Judith Collins, and is refusing to cut his losses.

Weighing against her is a year’s worth of bad headlines and unanswered questions. But in her favour: furious private polling that is telling Key what he wants to hear. Viewed from the outside things appear to be in suspended animation.

In this way, John Key is our first postmodern Prime Minister. Sometimes, he acknowledges no facts; just opinions, in a floating world with a single law of physics: everything = popularity. Democracy in its crudest form.