All together now: We love John Key!
Mary is a mother of three who lives in Flagstaff, Hamilton. She is eating off a lead plate, with lead cutlery.
The knife is bendy, but she perseveres. ‘‘I don’t like being told what’s a neurotoxin and what’s not by busybody environmentalists. If I want to put lead in my paint, or my petrol, or my plate, I damn well will.’’
Mary is a Key person. ‘‘He’s a great man. He’s got the talking good thing of Churchill, the niceness of Christ. He took a selfie with me. I’m a fan.’’ She makes whooshing noises with outstretched arms to prove the latter point.
Does it matter that the prime minister has repeatedly refused to answer media questions about the claims made in Dirty Politics? She chews her fork into a ball and swallows. ‘‘They’re all dirty. At least John has a cheeky grin and fetchingly thinning hair. I’d rather him running the show than the Green Taliban, with their jihad of sustainability and clean energy.’’
Asked how she would vote given irrefutable proof that the prime minister was a sentient collective of spiders assuming a human shape, she says ‘‘Well, that’s politics!’’
Then she bangs her head repeatedly against the brick wall of her three-bedroom home.
‘‘That’s very good,’’ Mary says, happily. ‘‘That’s refreshing. It’s like a nice beer. You know who I’d have a nice beer with? Nice John Key.’’
Mark McMarkson, of Te Kauwhata, is a dairy farmer and dramaturge. We catch up with him as he checks his tractor to make sure the tyres are still attached. ‘‘They’re good,’’ he says. ‘‘The tyres, not National.’’
Mark says that National’s asset sales programme concerned him a bit at first. ‘‘Yeah, it concerned me at first,’’ Mark said. ‘‘But then John sold all the assets, so it didn’t anymore.’’
Current issues worrying Mark include child poverty, and the increasing price of housing.
‘‘Yeah, the property speculators, they’re the ones driving it up, eh. Hard for ordinary Kiwis to get a go. I do like National’s idea of building a few thousand new homes at entry-level prices – that seems pretty good, eh.’’ That’s a Labour policy, we say. Too bad, says Mark. ‘‘I don’t like the look of David Cunliffe. I look at the guy and I just don’t like him.’’ Then he takes a cheese grater and rubs it vigorously all over his face. He sings as he grates:
‘‘Hurt so good / Come on baby, make it hurt so good / sometimes love don’t feel like it should / you make it hurt so good.’’
‘‘That song is for John Key,’’ Mark says, bleeding. ‘‘The man who looks like a prime minister.’’
Joshua Drummond is a freelance writer and illustrator who would like the election to be over soon please. His website is cakeburger.com.