Tommy Kapai: Sideshows can devalue your vote

National will romp home alone and the rest will be outside looking in, throwing rocks and pointing the bone of blame at anyone but themselves, says Tommy Kapai.

So who sprinkled fairy dust up on the Kaimai Range last Tuesday? Was it Papatuanuku - our Earth Mother - or was it a once-in-a-lifetime act of God when he shows off to remind us who is in charge?

And if we are to believe who is boss up on the Kaimais, then who is in charge down below?

According to the billboards all over Tauranga Moana, it is National and Internet-Mana followed closely by Labour.

Or in the case of the new de-TECT-ive elected on to the TECT board, Peter Blackwell is the best news a billboard could deliver to the lost and lonely of Tauranga.

Some would say this election is wide open, wider than Colin Craig's eyes, or a Christchurch airport security door.

But is it? The elections I mean?

If we could sprinkle some of that Kaimai fairy dust on to a Bavarian yard glass borrowed from the big fella in the black onesie, what would we see on September 21, the day after the election?

Same old same old, I suspect, with the gap between the rich and poor getting wider by the day.

Nothing changes when nothing changes in politics, just the billboards get bigger and brighter and the promises more like icing sugar than snow on a Kaimai mountain range.

Or as Barry Crump would say about politics: "It's all bullshit and jellybeans dressed up to take your vote away and put it in their pockets for the next three years."

So will the onesie party drop a drone and send National nigh-nighs on September 15, just five days out from the election?

Could Kim reveal that Big Jerry slipped through a side window at his Coatesville mansion and whisked Banksie away in a Black Hawk for a cup of tea, just before Winston could come through the front door with a box full of wine or a wine box full of whispers - all of it sub judice?

It certainly is great theatre and the big fella has added a big blob of wasabi to a very vegan election.

My pick is they will all front up at the town hall on September 15 to drop a drone that will be about as game changing as Steve Hansen bringing on Buck Shelford to win us the next World Cup. The only difference is, instead of Buck wearing a footy jersey the Mana/Internet players will all be wearing black onesies like their big boss from Berlin or wherever it is in Germany he comes from.

I wonder what the boys from B Company in the Maori Battalion are thinking about now when they see Maori being led down the garden path by a co-leader with the whakapapa.

Still the banners and the billboards are bright and flash like a mega uploaded free-of-charge promise, and the profile of digital democracy has been raised to where it belongs, opening up a pathway for a new generation of voters to follow come the next election in 2017.

However, history tells us there is no such thing as a free feed or upload, nor can mana be brought by money.

For my two bob's worth of fairy dust and Barry Crump jellybeans none of the flash billboards and big boy's toys is going to make a dot com of difference.

National will romp home alone and the rest will be outside looking in, throwing rocks and pointing the bone of blame at anyone but themselves.

Unless Kim pulls a red-hot rapiti out of his potae and not just a cold hangi stone, the Maori vote will be spread thinner than the snow last Tuesday up on the Kaimai Range, and the only thing keeping the Maori Party at the table or inside the tent, is the promise John Key has made to take them with National should they be in a position to govern alone as they most likely will be.

And that is something all Maori voters need to think about before they let the billboards and icing sugar coat their conscience, and take away their voice inside Parliament.

Tommy Kapai is a Tauranga author and writer.