Baby You're A Rich Man
Henry's whine; Seymour's climb; Brooke says c'mon in - the culture's fine.
“How does it feel to be
One of the beautiful people
Now that you know who you are
What do you want to be
And have you traveled very far?
Far as the eye can see”
Yesterday the ACT party faithful were regaled with craven boasts, sneers, and demands for even more at their annual rally.
That when it comes to cuts, New Zealand’s just getting started. We need more than the short back and sides received so far. A cut throat razor is being prepared and the Barber of Epsom is desperate to wield it widely. There is more to do.
A weaselly, snivelling, unpleasant little man stood before the crowd. The kind only a mother could love. He smiled, bathing in their adulation, in their delicious shared disregard for others.
No, not that guy. The weasel I speak of was not David Seymour.
When it came to Atlas acolytes, encouraging their worship of the self, the crowd received two for the price of one. Not one smarmy, sniggering creep - but two!
The key note presenter - none other than Paul Henry. More over-confidence and entitlement than a night on Viaduct Charlie. The crowd inhaled deeply.
Henry told them how terrible the country was after Labour. “Broke and in disrepair”, he lamented, “deeply in the shit”, he gurned grotesquely. This was not the Paul Henry stand up routine, he snarled. What followed was indeed nothing to laugh about, yet it was quite comical.
In an oddly backhanded compliment he described ACT as being “the last cab on the rank heading in the right direction”. Henry said if things carried on as they were he’d have to go and live somewhere else, but before then, he leered, we should at least try and sort it out.
Or something like that, to be honest I was mostly thinking if he hates the place so much then why doesn’t he just piss off like he’s threatening to do? There didn’t seem to be any downside to that solution, other than for his new neighbours perhaps.
If you’d forgotten who Paul Henry was, my congratulations. If you’d like to be reminded you can check out this clip of the segment he’s most remembered for. It’s a fair while ago. Actually it’s so long ago that Peter Williams was the sane one in the room - and there were other people in there!
I’m not going to cover Paul’s speech, it was nasty, spiteful, and full of things that simply aren’t true. The sort of repugnant ugliness you’d block if you encountered it on social media. Still the party supporters seemed to like it.
Looking at the crowd I was struck by how different they looked than the people on the March for Nature the previous day. That large group on Saturday was diverse in every way, there was little to no diversity in ACT’s crowd. The people on Saturday were my Aotearoa, these were something else.
A much wealthier crowd no doubt, theoretically pleased that their party’s in power, but they didn’t seem particularly happy.
There seemed to be more joy from the protestors saying “stop this madness, it’s too much” than there was from these vultures complaining “it’s not enough, we want more.”
Perhaps they were just miserable due to the quality of the speeches - it was grim stuff.
David Seymour told the crowd of 500 supporters, who’d each paid $50 in order to discourage protestors from interrupting proceedings, that he wanted ACT to hit 15% of the vote at the next election.
Almost twice the 8.6% they got in October. A full 75% increase in votes. One wonders where they plan to find them? I can’t see them drawing much support from those who ticked Labour, the Greens, or Te Pāti Māori in October, so presumably that means they’ll be targeting those who voted for National and NZ First.
Given that the Good Ship Coalition is likely to be taking on quite a bit of water by then it’ll be akin to rearranging the deck chairs on one of Nicola Willis’ cut-price ferries as it slides beneath Cook Strait.
Or to put it another way, a Battle Royale on the right. The coalition parties outdoing each other to win over voters where they share common ground. A fairly unpleasant, and somewhat racist, piece of common ground, if the last election is anything to go by.
“We have lost our confidence as a country because we've forgotten the spirit it was founded on,” Seymour said. “We've forgotten the importance of each person flourishing in their own way, on their own terms, free from government overreach and fear of what others will think and do.”
Like many on the right Seymour confuses America’s creation myth with our own. There may’ve been a certain amount of flourishing by our arriving colonists, but it was very much at the expense of others. The indigenous population they stole land and resources from, the lowly paid workers exploited for the benefit of a few.
It’s funny how much things stay the same…
Maybe what David was really saying, when he recalled that pioneer spirit, was that he wants a return to opportunity unfettered by rule or regulation. Allowing the few to prosper at the expense of the many - even more than they already do.
Ahh the good old days. Before environmentalists, and pesky unions. Not to mention those woke bastards who tell you what you can joke about, or how you can treat women. More on that last bit shortly.
Emulating Trump’s habit of making silly schoolyard insults Seymour said that Chris Hipkins needed to stand for something, that Marama Davidson had “checked out”, and he said “Te Pāti Māori are bringing shame to the word Māori”.
Pardon my French, but…
Which translates as you’ve “got to be kidding” for non French speakers, and um… something rather less polite for the rest.
Sadly for ACT when it came to TV coverage of the rally the news media were more interested in their scandal du jour. It seemed as if some of the rocks that Seymour had been throwing at other parties, from inside his glass house, had met their inevitable, yet unintended, target.
The Party leader looked mildly uncomfortable, but mostly bemused, when asked about the resignations of two senior volunteers over women being treated badly during the last campaign.
In the tradition of men behaving badly everywhere he promised that the party was committed to improving its culture. As he prattled on about the party being “a good place for women” his deputy Brooke stood behind him, literally, broadcasting the fact that she would be no good at poker.
To be fair none of the women behind David were smiling, although it’s hard to know whether they were being silently contrite about the alleged behaviour or experiencing traumatic flashbacks.
Later on Brooke denied the situation, “I'd say it's impossible to say that ACT has a problem with women when it elected a 27-year-old young liberal woman as their deputy leader.”
The same logic that ACT use when claiming that they can’t be anti Māori because some of their MPs are Māori.
It’s about as logical as saying that ACT cares about renters because David Seymour doesn’t own a house.
Brooke said that some volunteers simply move on to do other things, perhaps having children. She really said that.
David looked like he was playing on his phone. Meanwhile Nicole McKee appeared to be utilising ACT’s new safety strategy, planned for when they bring back banned guns that can kill more people faster - “if you can’t see them, they can’t see you”.
As I said earlier the contrast in the people present, and those giving the speeches, at Saturday’s march versus those at the ACT rally yesterday could not be greater.
The earlier event brought out thousands of New Zealanders who want to protect this place for future generations. The latter, an audience who demand more for themselves and want safety nets for nature, and for people, relegated to the past.
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Thanks Nick, Many aspects of Act's gathering raise questions for me. Do they need money? Given the size of their 'war chest' for the election it seems they could have found sponsorship and registration would keep protesters out. Not surprised some have found the culture toxic. Why would Brooke deny it? Better to investigate. Most of all Paul Henry??? Who thinks he could possibly have anything relevant to say? The whole thing just gives me the shivers as do most things Act say and do.. Thanks for reporting this Nick. Certainly not my tribe.
Morena Nick. In the midst of our political turmoil, it's worth remembering that NZ First and ACT have licence to trash our house only because Luxon courted them to share the master bedroom. Generations hereafter will judge him harshly for his unprincipled quest for power. Kia kaha.