Pirates. Petulance. The Prefu. Who’d have thought the first official week of Campaign 2023 would deliver the makings of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical.
With the curtain finally up, the most anticipated all-singing-all-dancing act was Treasury opening the government books. This is known, rather boringly, as the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update, or Prefu – an acronym pleasingly close to Snafu, or Situation Normal: All Fucked Up. The books have to be opened before a general election so that an incoming government doesn’t get a terrible shock when they open the fridge of our nation’s scungy flat to find that all it contains is a half-eaten pottle of yoghurt with somebody else’s name on it.
People get terribly excited about the Prefu. No, they don’t. RNZ’s business editor, the wry Gyles Beckford, could barely contain his lack of excitement at the prospect of his forthcoming trip to Treasury offices. Morning Report co-host Corin Dann asked: “Do they give you lunch?” There may have been a snort. A free lunch in these fiscally straitened times? Don’t be daft. “No. You can bring your own coffee sachet and they’ll give you a splash of water,” said Beckford, hardly bitter at all.
In an expert analysis, then, the Prefu amounted to not quite a Snafu or a half-eaten pottle of yoghurt. The big news seems to be that the country will probably avoid recession. The deficit, meanwhile, was up to a whopping $11.4 billion from the forecast $7.6 billion in May’s Budget. Interest rates may rise again. Only economists, Treasury wonks and doomsayers have a clue what any of this means. Maybe, probably some time in 2026, we will be able to afford a whole pottle of yoghurt.
Cringe factor
Just as this election campaign couldn’t get more like an interminable and not very entertaining musical called the Pirates of Petulance put on by Te Puke’s am-dram society, who should pop up on stage but Long John Luxon, the Leader of the opposition, playing at being a pirate. Depending on your tolerance for watching a grown man ‒ one who wants to lead the country ‒ playing dress-ups, you will have found his performance either a bit of a laugh or the most cringeworthy thing you’ve witnessed since your 90-year-old grandma did a tap dance at your wedding while wearing a tutu. We’ll go with the latter.
Luxon made an appearance at the Ellerslie Fairy Festival and Pirate Party. At least he didn’t go as a fairy. Instead, he dressed up as pirate and took on another bloke dressed as a pirate in a sword fight. “Come here, you blaggard,” growled his foe.
There was pirate trash talk: if Luxon wanted to win the election, his opponent said, he needed to get a wig. A ginger one. Luxon’s kids are gingers. As is his political foe, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.
Luxon, it hardly needs pointing out, is as bald as an egg. He mock-complained of his foe being “mean”. Of course he was. He was a pirate.
There was trash talk coming from the crowd, too. Somebody shouted: “Who’s got a parrot for him?”
National’s leader appeared about as relaxed as an ironing board. He really shouldn’t attempt being playful. “What’s the trick?” he asked before the fight. “Don’t get cut,” he was told. He managed that all right, but you couldn’t help feeling he’d been stabbed in the back: the sword fight was held near a shop called Stitched Up. Oops.
As campaign clangers go, it’s not quite up there with that 2020 press conference Rudy Giuliani used to make wild, false claims about Donald Trump not losing that year’s presidential election. To widespread confusion, Giuliani spoke outside a landscaping joint near a crematorium and a sex shop.Luxon got off lightly.
Hipkins, meanwhile, went electioneering at the Centre for Automation and Robotic Engineering Science at the University of Auckland. We don’t know why. He tickled a robot. The robot giggled. Did Hipkins want to see the robot dance? As long as he didn’t have to dance with it, he said. Unlike Luxon, this old campaigner wasn’t about to make a tit of himself on TV. Instead, he announced Labour’s economic priorities should they be re-elected. We don’t know whether the robot approved.
It’s safe to say that neither party leader will be invited to audition for the lead role in Te Puke’s next am-dram production.
Sabre-rattling
See if you can guess who dished up the week’s dose of petulance. Far too easy. In an interview on RNZ with Dann, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters also turned up swinging a pirate’s sword. He has once again claimed that Māori cannot be indigenous because they come from Hawaiki. Also, that they are somehow Chinese. Or something like that. He couldn’t believe that this had become “controversial”. Yes, he could. Controversial gets news coverage. So does deeming media querying of his claims “drivel”. Which is what he accused Dann of.
Peters is not interested in debate. He’s interested in browbeating. He could be eligible for the title of New Zealand’s most peppery politician ever. Except for Gerry Brownlee. You have to concede, grudgingly, that Peters can turn on the charm when it suits. This is a trick, of course. You never know which Peters you’ll get.
And why, by the way, are our male politicians allowed to be snippy and grumpy when our female MPs have to at least pretend to be nice and polite? It’s obvious. A snippy, grumpy female politician is a bitch. A snippy, grumpy male politician is merely combative and hence, somehow, manly.
Meanwhile, on Planet Madness, it’s all aboard Big Pinky. This is what Act has named its enormous campaign bus, and yes, it’s big and it’s pink.
It isn’t just the outside of Big Pinky that’s a bit bonkers, it’s pretty nutty on the inside, too, with five of Act’s candidates down the road in the past two months, mainly for previous controversial comments about Covid vaccines and former PM Jacinda Ardern.
At the unveiling of the bus, Act candidate Mike McCook was asked whether he, too, had skeletons in his closet. “Oh, I might have punched one or two people on the rugby field,” he said. He was joking. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that he might actually have punched one or two people on the paddock.
If you happen to find yourself trapped on Big Pinky with David Seymour and co, you will definitely need a few jokes to help pass the time. Here’s one: how many conspiracy theorists are standing for Act in this election? Do your own research.
