‘‘In a global pandemic, there is no need to invent a moment... The decisions made in September will reverberate for a generation.’’
Oh for f...’s sake. I really don’t care if the f-bomb slipped from the lips of Judith Collins. Nor am I particularly exercised about the baseball cap Todd Muller once displayed on his shelves.
And I could give zero f...s (as Judith might say) about whether the PM wore socks, visited a cafe or gave a celebratory boogie.
The mini-controversies of Nikki Kaye’s diversity gaffe and Paul Goldsmith’s anachronistic turn-of-phrase are worthy of little more than a passing mention.
What actually concerns me is that these incidents got far more attention than they deserve.
New Zealand politics is often accused of being boring. Certainly, we’ve largely escaped the instability and chaos of post-GFC politics seen elsewhere.
But, currently, we seem to be living through one long silly season, where we fetishise the trivial and elevate the faux debates that provoke fury on social media.
On their own, each story is a harmless titbit, worthy of attention. But taken together, politics becomes a feedback loop of trivia, and very real problems are forced from the public’s attention.
A once-in-a-generation confluence of crises will shape September’s election.
Talking up the stakes of the significance of a vote is a tired cliche´ : journalists do it to retain interest, politicians, to encourage turn-out. (Every
US presidential election since the 1960s has been described as a once-in-a-generation encounter.)
But in the midst of a global pandemic, there is no need to invent a moment.
For an election to be historic, it must offer genuine choice. There will be two competing visions for how the country gets back on its feet, how to reform the health system and deal with climate change.
The decisions made in September will reverberate for a generation.
But nothing gets cut through quite like trivia. And none of us are blameless in this obsession with minutiae.
It’s much easier to be drawn in by the entertaining, rather than the complex and grim problems facing us in a postpandemic world.
As voters, we crave authenticity but turn away from those who seem stolid and dull.
Candidates are regularly reduced to the sum of their inconsequential mistakes, the substance of their campaign largely forgotten.
In this hypercritical environment, politicians avoid controversial issues and shun big risks, like wealth taxes, retirement age policies and bold health and welfare reform. The result is paralysis. Disappointment accumulates and further undermines trust in politics and its institutions.
Since trust is necessary to gain consensus for significant reforms, this diversion to trivia matters much more than it should.
In the midst of a global pandemic, there is no need to invent a moment... The decisions made in September will reverberate for a generation.