What’s the collective noun for a coalition? A concussion of coalitions? There are certainly enough dire predictions about possible coalitions to give an electorate a cracking headache. Fancy a coalition of fear? That would be an unholy alliance of National, Act and NZ First, according to the Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, who, while condemning the prospect of a fear-inducing coalition, was doing his utmost to whip up fear at the prospect. How about a coalition of chaos? That would be an equally unholy alliance of Labour and the Greens, according to the opposition.
Hipkins was spoilt for alliteratively named coalition choices. National and Act would also be the “coalition of cuts”. They were pretenders – climate change? Let’s pretend it ain’t happening – and meddlers – tinkering with superannuation – and slashers – of spending on public services.
Labour know a thing or two about cutting their own wrists. In the cases of their long-anticipated wealth and capital gains taxes, they got in before themselves and cut them dead before they could even be announced. Choppity chop.
Act called a Labour/Greens prospect a coalition of chaos. A National and Act alliance would amount to a coalition of colonisers, said Te Pāti Māori.
How about a coalition of cock-ups? At least such a meeting of what might loosely be called minds would be a non-partisan pick’n’mix. So, take your pick. Act list MP and Northland farmer Mark Cameron has apologised to leader David Seymour for nonsense he’d posted on social media, including calling believers in global warming “nutjobs”.
In 2019, he described then-prime minister Jacinda Ardern as a “feckless wench” and “vacuous teenager”. He has said, just in case we were in any danger of confusing him with a politician, that he was a “civilian” at the time. Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) slogan could be appropriated, he posed, wittily, to stand for “Make Ardern Go Away”. In his mugshot on the Act Party website he is wearing a camo sweatshirt. Which is an appropriate costume for a former civilian.
He was enthusiastically endorsed by Seymour: “I’m not sure what he means.” Neither does Cameron: “I don’t know what was going through my mind five years ago, any more than what was happening the year before last.”
You really don’t want to know what’s going on inside politicians’ minds. Seymour has said that Act’s vetting process for its candidates has been thorough, but that some had “slipped through the net”. No, they hadn’t. They’d slipped down some rabbit hole into la-la land.
Act’s Rangitata candidate, Elaine Naidu Franz, resigned after comparing the Covid-19 vaccine mandates to Nazi concentration camps.
National’s Tim van de Molen was censured and found to be in contempt of Parliament for “threatening behaviour” towards Labour MP Shanan Halbert after a select committee meeting.
He apologised but opted for the weaselly defence: he had a “different recollection of some aspects of the incident”. He was stripped of his spokesmanship roles but this was not a sacking offence, according to National leader, Christopher Luxon.
You wonder: When Luxon was CEO of Air NZ, if he found an air steward standing over a pilot in the cockpit in an intimidating manner, would he have chucked the steward out of the emergency door without a parachute?
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi was named and suspended from the House for 24 hours for behaviour described by the Speaker as “grossly disorderly”. Waititi had referred, in the House, to a case currently before the courts, which may have breached court suppression orders, although nobody can say so because that would constitute re-breaching suppression orders.
Waititi was not in the House when suspended. He was in Auckland, walking the runway at NZ Fashion Week. Does that count as grossly disorderly? Or just really cheeky? Anyone for a coalition of cranks?
The joke’s up
All of this coalition talk is terrifying. Anyone would think any form of coalition was tantamount to some sort of terrorist organisation. Watch out! A coalition is coming to blow you up. Oh. No. That’s just David Seymour lurking outside the Ministry for Pacific Peoples. He has still not apologised for his silly quip about his fantasy to send Guy Fawkes into the minstry – which was interpreted as wanting to blow it up.
He is not going to apologise for making a joke. Libertarians, presumably, can make whatever unfunny jokes they like, just because they can. You want to make bad jokes? Feel free.
Seymour must have a fantastically active fantasy life. It is a life in which he ranges freely, all right. Perhaps atop his magical unicorn. His latest flight of fancy involved Nelson Mandela.
In a speech in the Tasman District, apropos of God only knows what, he postulated that, if Mandela were still alive: “I daresay he’d be campaigning for Act.” How could he know? Perhaps he had held a séance.
Mandela’s grandson, Kweku Mandela, emphatically put the kibosh on that bonkers notion.
He wrote, on social media: “My grandfather definitely loved the people of New Zealand and I can say categorically he would not campaign for this today or any other day in the past.”
Seymour, who has a propensity for digging a hole and then putting his head inside it, and going on digging, like a big ninny-headed upside-down ostrich, responded: “Far be it from me to question any of the great man’s grandchildren, but Nelson Mandela did say ‘all people are born equal, with each entitled in equal measure to life [and] liberty’.” Righto. So Nelson Mandela, in the afterlife, is an Act voter and a Libertarian. Which would surely make you spin in your grave.
Mullets matter
Image of the week: That chap with the mullet stuffing his face with hot chips at a New Zealand First rally in New Plymouth. Fair enough. Winston’s speech was an hour and 20 minutes long. To sit through that much Winston would require some serious sustenance.
The chap with the mullet was wearing a T-shirt which read: “Vote the Mullet”. He later gifted one to Winston. Two questions: Can we please see a picture of Winston wearing his T-shirt? And where can we get one?
One last question: The election. Are we there yet? Not even close. We’re going to need to pick up some hot chips along the long and increasingly weird way.
