Look Who’s Back…

Return of the Figurehead.

Sharp and open, leave me alone
And sleeping less every night
As the days become heavier and weighted
Waiting in the cold light
A noise, a scream tears my clothes as the figurines tighten
With spiders inside them
And dust on the lips of a vision of hell
I laughed in the mirror for the first time in a year

Songwriters: Laurence Andrew Tolhurst / Robert James Smith / Simon Gallup.

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Yesterday, the man who is officially our Prime Minister returned to work after his regular vacation in Hawaii. The weather must have been nice, as he was a darker shade of Gammon than when he left.

He conducted a round of softball media interviews to assure us that he and National still exist, despite the individual who should not be named having stolen all the headlines while he was away.

For example, even though Nicola Willis has theoretically been working on the price gouging we see from our Supermarket duopoly, while achieving precisely nothing, Mr Seymour decided that if there was credit to be received for making pronouncements with no follow-through, then he’d have a bit of that.

He blurted out some nonsense about Walmart being able to set up a whole series of stores in one go with Fast Track approval, which will come to nothing, adding nothing to the initiative, and grinned, so par for the course for that guy.

Perhaps he just wanted to stand for something people actually want, for a change.

I listened to Luxon being interviewed by Heather du Plessis-Allan (HDPA), not for pleasure obviously, but to see what bilge the other half of the population is being fed.

In right-wing radios around the nation, including, I’m sure, some in Tasman that were running on batteries where power remains unavailable and there is mud through the house, or on the back of tractors as farmers survey their livelihood being washed away.

The figurehead, whom HDPA insisted on calling “Chris” through the interview, despite his well-stated preference for “Christopher”, burbled to the nation about his holiday.

He’s been swimming and reading with Mandy, presumably different books, although I’m sure she helped him out with some of the trickier words. Generally, in such a setting, you might expect the interviewer to enquire about which books he was reading, but clearly HDPA knew that books were not a topic of interest to her listeners, so she ignored him.

Image: BeFunky.

They discussed the flooding in Tasman, and I couldn’t help but wonder if many of the listeners in the region were particularly pleased with his statement that it was too early to determine what support would be required.

At this point, it’s probably worth noting that Labour set up the Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) in 2021. The fund was established with an initial balance of $4.5 billion for Aotearoa’s climate spending, proportionate to the size of the proceeds from the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Then, in last year’s budget, this government redirected $2.4 billion in previously ring-fenced climate spending into other spending.

Maybe he had to get Nicola’s approval before committing any money? As wildly optimistic as assuming there won’t be future climate-related disasters, even though they’re happening every year, was Willis’s budget that tried to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear by leaving essentially no contingency for unforeseen events.

I thought the whole thing was grotesque. Luxon looks vaguely sympathetic while gushing about his Hawaiian holiday. When did we start having PMs who thought living the lifestyles of the rich and famous were good for their image? Under Key obviously.

I remember as a kid seeing clips on the news of Muldoon at a fairly basic holiday home, mowing the lawns himself, not entirely dissimilar to many Kiwis of the time. Now we have a leader who, at a time of high unemployment and a high cost of living, jets off for a luxury holiday in the sun.

It’s pretty gross, Christopher, but I guess it appeals to the aspirational Newstalk ZB set who I assume think that if we punish the poor hard enough, then they’ll be having Hawaiian Holidays as well. #Spoiler - they won’t.

Then they moved to Fast Track consents, and “Chris” made a bit of a faux pas, if you can imagine that. I cut the clip out and posted it, it was shared a lot, but in case you didn’t see it…

Perhaps he was relaxed after his holiday, as he inadvertently described the Fast Track legislation accurately as “a National Party/New Zealand First corruption.”

It’s a fair call, someone could no doubt write a book detailing the links between donors to the two parties and Fast Track approvals, although it would only be the latest volume in the history of corruption from NZF.

Heather laughed it off. She looked more interested in fiddling with her nose.

Luxon claimed his unintended honesty was a result of jet lag, which is absurd, as Hawaii is only two hours ahead of us. It’s akin to a trip from Sydney to Auckland in terms of time difference. Besides which, imagine doing that in any other job.

“Yeah, sorry about that, boss. I didn’t mean to go on national radio and announce we were corrupt. My bad, must’ve been the jet lag.”

A shorter one from me today, hope you enjoyed it.

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Ngā mihi,
Nick.

To end today, here’s The Cure with The Figurehead.