Garth George: Left, right, city, country - rifts are nothing new

So National didn't win the election as I hoped it would, and I doubt that the situation will change after the special votes are counted.

If anything, the Nats are likely to lose a seat to the Greens when that dreadlocked, pot-smoking Rastafarian Nandor Tanczos sneaks back in.

Since a lot of the special votes will come from young Kiwis living for one reason or another in the Northern Hemisphere, I suspect the Greens will pick up enough of them to gain another seat.

The environment is in a lot worse shape up there than it is down here and consciousness of that could well lead the timid and naive to buy into the Greens' scary scenarios for the future.

Whatever, it would be a shame to see Mr Tanczos sink back into obscurity for he is a genuine eccentric - and there aren't nearly enough of them around in New Zealand today.

There was a time when every city and village had its "character" but they are few and far between these days in a society that has become so boringly conformist.

It seems that the eccentrics of old - Barry Crump, for instance - have all died, and few have stepped up to replace them.

Mr Tanczos is our most nationally visible eccentric, and in this part of the country the only bloke who comes anywhere close is Te Radar, whose columns invariably provide a highlight of my newspaper-reading week.

But back to the election. In spite of National's failure to win the right to form a Government, there is much comfort to be had in last Saturday's result.

The greatest comfort is that irrespective of which party ultimately knits up a government we will now have one strong party in Opposition, something we haven't had for too long.

And that means that any government is going to have to watch its Ps and Qs and lay off any unpopular legislation.

If the opposition is National, then we can expect it to stymie the worst excesses of Labour's propensity for social engineering and tax and spend economics; and if by some miracle it is Labour, then National's propensity for turning a blind eye to laissez faire capitalism will have to be kept under tight rein.

With National in the wilderness, Helen Clark's Labour-led Administrations have been able to bulldoze through unpopular social legislation and impose usurious taxation without a second thought.

Had the makeup of the last Parliament been that which is predicted for the new, the Prostitution Reform and Civil Unions Acts would never have become law.

And in the new Parliament, Larry Baldock's Gender Clarification Bill would bolt in, except that Mr Baldock isn't in Parliament any more.

I have no patience with those who talk and write about "a deeply divided nation". They are talking poppycock.

Politically this country has always been divided to one extent or another, and just because half the population voted Labour and the other half National doesn't mean the divisions are any deeper than they have always been at election times.

Sometimes the nation has been divided 60:40, sometimes 70:30, and it just happens that this time the election day division is roughly 50:50.

Yet the way some commentators are taking about this election you would think it was 1951 or 1981, when there were some really deep and intensely painful divisions that took a long time to heal.

They point to the fact that the election graphics paint the major urban areas red and the rural areas blue.

So what's new? There has generally always been a difference of opinion between city and country - and it isn't confined to politics.

All that has happened is that in the rural electorates traditional National voters have returned to their roots, because after years of dillying and dallying National again had something worthwhile to offer them.

And in doing that they have served on Helen Clark and her offsiders final notice that she and they better pull their PC heads in for their third term and remember that we are not the sheep that so overwhelmingly outnumber humans in Aotearoa.

The other great comfort to come from the election was confirmation that New Zealanders will have no truck with religious parties in politics.

As I predicted, the two blatantly Christian parties, Destiny and Christian Heritage, brought barely a blip to the election-night screen.

In view of the nauseating Graham Capill affair Christian Heritage should have pulled the plug.

But it would be only too easy to underestimate Destiny's contribution to Saturday night's result.

With the media coverage attendant on its marches, its uniforms and its chant of "Enough is Enough!" Destiny raised the public's awareness of the dangerous moral path down which the Labour-led Government seemed determined to lead us.

And that, I believe, contributed more than a little to National's showing, as those of us who are genuinely concerned about such matters voted for the principal established party whose members had in the main opposed such things as prostitution reform and civil unions.

There is a way for Christians to infiltrate the political system; it isn't by forming political parties.

And while my Christian brothers and sisters in Destiny and Christian Heritage are trying to figure that one out, let me remind them - and Christians in general - of a wonderful piece of wisdom uttered by St Francis of Assisi: "Preach the Gospel always, and when necessary use words."