James Griffin: Bad jokes

New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters. Photo / Richard Robinson

Historians agree that the shameful events of the 2014 New Zealand General Election started on Sunday, August 10, when Winston Peters, in his speech at the NZ First campaign launch, used the classic "two Wongs don't make a white/right" gag, the Racist Joke of the Year in 1847.

Although of increasingly little significance electorally to everyone except himself, Peters' influence over his fellow politicians cannot be denied. When he managed to shift the media/public fallout from the Wong joke away from the xenophobic nature of the joke (and of NZ First) to whether or not the joke was funny, other politicians sat up and took notice. Humour, they collectively decided, was 2014's way of avoiding the tricky questions.

Humour and joke-telling quickly spread, like a virus, through the smaller parties. Within days of Peters' quip Colin Craig, of the ill-fated Conservative Party, was opening his Grey Power rallies with a knock-knock joke. "Knock knock," Colin would shout at the old people. "Who's there?" "The Conservative Party." "The Conservative Party who?" "The Conservative Party who stand for common sense, decency and family values!" Then Colin would laugh maniacally, his eyes glistening with delight.

Internet Mana, meanwhile, showed their unity on the humour issue by going in completely different directions. Hone Harawira started dressing in a black singlet with a towel round his neck, to invoke the memory of Billy T James, while telling many of Billy's best jokes but without any comedy timing. Leila Harre caused mirth (inadvertently or otherwise) wherever she campaigned with her attempts to explain her understanding of the Internet and just what the hell she was doing in bed (politically) with a man from the complete other end of the political spectrum. And Kim Dotcom attempted to ride the humour wave by naively hiring all the comedians from 7 Days to write gags for him, not realising that they would take his money and disappear to the pub with it until after the election, as is the way of the comedian.

Even Peter Dunne, of United Future, tried his hand at comedy in a speech with a joke about some people of varying nationalities who walk into a bar and then hilarious interaction with the bartender occurs. Unfortunately Dunne got lost in the middle of the joke and couldn't remember the punchline, so any humour that did arise from the telling was: (a) entirely incidental; and/or (b) to do with his hair. Act, meanwhile, continued to amuse just by continuing to exist.

With the minor parties making funny at every opportunity it was only a matter of time before the media announced humour was the biggest issue of the 2014 election. This was the signal for the larger parties to get in on the hilarity. John Key increasingly turned to vaudeville routines to avoid the big questions, rather than his traditional forgetfulness; while David Cunliffe started to liberally pepper his speeches with Monty Python references, to show his comedy chops. Only the Greens, after much internal debate, stayed true to their political beliefs of not being funny.

By the time of the televised leader's debate, hosted not by Mike Hosking, as originally planned, but by Rhys Darby using a bewildering array of silly voices depending on which politician he was addressing, things were spiralling well out of control. Cunliffe answering a question about how Labour proposed funding its election promises by quoting the entire "Spanish Inquisition" sketch seemed to set the table for Key to behave as he and his comedy advisors pleased, and for the tragedy to follow.

In hindsight, the decision by Key to answer Darby's question about the Christchurch rebuild by having an MP sitting on his knee pretending to be a ventriloquist's dummy, while he drank a glass of water, although in the spirit of the debate (especially after Cunliffe had pulled out the "Dead Parrot" sketch in relation to the education system), was not a wise one. With the gift of hindsight, to have that MP be Gerry Brownlee, was certainly most unwise.

All New Zealand remembers the sound of the chair cracking, heralding the disaster. We all can still hear Key's girlish scream as the great weight bore down upon him. The vision of Key's face, disappearing under Brownlee as he topples backwards to the studio floor, to the soundtrack of Darby's manic cackling, is indelible. If not, we have YouTube to remind us, where the clip has gone viral many times over. One of New Zealand's proudest moments.

Do two Wongs make a right? Or even a white? We will never know, and if we are wise we will never care. Because what we can take away from all this is that when humour and politics mix, dignity is the price that will be paid.