Important election details you might have missed
Ihave seen my share of pre-election walkabouts. In a shopping mall in 1984, I watched people climb over each other to touch incumbent Australian PM Bob Hawke, as though he was the Messiah and they’d be healed by close proximity.
There was no hint of a second coming when Judith Collins took her stroll down Ponsonby Rd this week and nobody mobbing her, just a handful of party faithful planted there in advance, some of whom could count the outing as part of their actual jobs (but when put on the spot, did not).
The whole scene was like watching your little brother get turned down by his teenage crush. What’s really stuck in my mind, though, was how the National leader chose to explain the decision. If she really wanted us to notice how empty the Ponsonby shopping strip was, why then would she deliberately put more people on the street? Surely, if she wanted the cameras to capture evidence of the current Government’s lack of regard for the survival of small and medium-sized business she would have... oh, never mind.
It’s all we’ve been talking about for days: the walkabout and the debate. And the church. This election campaign has been pockmarked with bizarre moments and, like watching an inexperienced telly presenter gesturing their way through a weather segment, it can be really distracting.
Things have happened in the past week and a bit that did not take place in church or in the doorway of a fancy optometrist; things you actually need to know but might have missed. Here’s a quick list.
‘ What happens in the booth, stays in the booth’
Public opinion on cannabis law reform, if you believe the polls, has been up and down like a Yomega X-Brain (a little late-90s yoyo revival culture reference there, for all the late Gen X-ers/early Millennials, you’re welcome).
Those who support replacing the current gang-owned, illicit market that thanks to a structurally racist justice system, still hands out convictions to young brown men – and I definitely do – were a bit down in the mouth in August, after one poll showed support for legalisation at 39 per cent.
That’s bounced to 49 per cent according to a study this week from The Helen Clark Foundation. On The AM Show, a US academic who studies the sector said that’s normal; some people don’t want to tell pollsters which way they’re going to vote ahead of their moment in the polling booth. Polling showed low support before reform votes in Washington and Colorado in 2012, but on the day the populace chose to reform. It’s likely that will happen here too.
Early voting
Oh yeah, did I mention, most of us will have voted well before polling day anyhow? More than half a million had already done so by Friday, and those in the know are saying that 60 per cent of us voters could go early.
This appears to have been driven by three factors: number one, we are just more comfortable voting early this electoral cycle; last weekend early voting numbers were up 125 per cent on the same time in 2017.
Number two, we are all a bit worried about Covid.
There’s a number three, but I can’t recall because I’m so bored by the whole palaver. Oh yeah, that’s it! This election season feels like it’s been going on for months, not weeks, and all but the truly on-the-fence want it over, thanks, so they can concentrate on the intense anxiety wrought by a global pandemic.
ACT’s will-he-won’t-he game
I couldn’t even tell you whether this happened this week? It feels like a year ago? Oh nope, it was September 29 when Auckland City councillor Richard Hills thought voters giving ACT the eye should get a quick reminder of what the party stands for.
The policies he named on Twitter: cut the minimum wage then freeze it for three years; charge uni students interest on their loans; dial back gun laws; abolish the Human Rights Commission, the Best Start payment for folks with babies, the KiwiSaver subsidy, the Zero Carbon Act, winter energy payments, and the billion trees programme. There’s more but that sentence is already way too long.
When tackled on this by journalists, leader David Seymour said that, despite all of these policies being easily found on his website where, I don’t know, voters might go to find out what the party believes, he had decommissioned two of them (or quietly stepped away from them or perhaps wished they weren’t there at all). Cutting the minimum wage and putting interest back on student loans were no longer ‘‘active’’ policy, Seymour waffled bafflingly, but he remained ‘‘interested’’ in them. If this is politician-speak for I’ve-changed-my-mind-for-expedience, it’s a new one on me.
Better voting, everyone!