‘‘When Parliament returns, these careerists will return to business as usual. Politics is the only business that doesn’t suffer in a recession.’’

OPINION, SUNDAY POLITICS, LETTERS & SHARON MURDOCH’S CARTOON

Don’t be mad. But I don’t vote. Never have, and judging by the choices on offer at this election, probably never will. As a political writer and columnist here for a decade, I felt like my voice was already loud enough. It also makes professional neutrality easier.

In my home country of Northern Ireland, voting during the sectarian strife was a dispiriting pick between the angry and entrenched, or the bitter and immutable.

And as a new immigrant to these shores, I felt uneasy making choices that affected the future of a country I might not live in for long.

This ballot feels different. To call it the most important election in a generation is hackneyed: it’s a trope repeated in campaign seasons around the world.

But we are in the middle of a generational emergency, our economy sucker-punched by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. We publicly tout our success, comparing ourselves to other nations, while quietly passing on the cost on to future generations.

The planet is ravaged by our over-population and rapacious consumption.

Like frogs slowly boiling in a pot, we are wilfully ignoring the pace of our changing climate.

The wealth gap between New Zealand’s richest and poorest families is widening: Data from Stats NZ shows that between 2015 and 2018, the gulf between the net worth of the top 20 per cent and the bottom of 20 per cent of all New Zealanders increased by $226 billion.