It’s a sad day when your “change the gummint” party turns into a karaoke party singing Tom Waits and Nick Cave songs about killing yourself, but that’s what Saturday night’s outcome has done for me. Yes, I know its not all over yet, but still: another 2-3 weeks of waiting until we find out the date of our execution is a fate almost as bad as Christa Pike.
Still, I have a question or two that could do with answering. Luxon et al said “Stick to the Plan” while ACT clamoured to “Unlock New Zealand’s Potential” and Labour promised us that “Better Starts Now” and Qiulae Wong presciently stated that we need to “Expect Better.” Meanwhile, aging dinosaur and the Fist party just blatantly outed themselves as racists and xenophobes with the Trumpian “Let’s Take Back Our Country.”
I know it is all just advertising gimmicks, but as far as telling us what any potential political party might promise us, it is all just plastic bland platitudes. Better clearly is not starting right now. And I ask of Luxon “What fucking plan?” You have been running / ruining this country for 3 years now and you never once mentioned a plan.
Sure, every chance you got, you ran your mouth off blaming the previous gummint while your thankfully newly-departed henchmen and henchwomen merrily sacked yet another tranche of several thousand hard-working gummint people. But you never said there was a PLAN, and if anyone knows plans, it is us Architects, draftees, pourers of concrete and hammerers of wood. Did anyone see a plan? Was anyone working to a plan? Was anyone looking at a plan, reading a plan, or taking dimensions off a plan? Was there a plan?
Answer: There was no plan.
Nicola Willis confirmed as much from day one, when she did two monumentally stupid things, under the command of her shiny pink-headed leader. One, destroy over a billion dollars worth of NZ capital by cancelling the ferries, and Two, give landlords around the country a tax cut, because clearly they are the most important part of the entire economic cycle – except now, with the benefit of hindsight, both those things are wrong.
Still, there is no doubt in my mind that there is just one person who really won the Election advertising battle. Apparently an 81 year old with a big ladder and a high sense of moral rectitude won the internet when he scaled up the side of a billboard telling blatant lies and made some small corrections. On the side of the motorway to the Hutt, presumably in the middle of the night, he corrected this sign. Bravo my fine sir, you win.
