Thirty days hath September, April, June, and… this coalition negotiation, so far. Today is the 30th day since the election, and still no sign of a government.
Ok Ok, a couple of points no doubt on that opening, so let’s get those out of the way.
Firstly, some might say - Nick, only ten of those have been since the specials were announced. To which I’d say - yeah, nah.
The outcome we have was always the most likely one. So if ACT and National spent the first three weeks after election night focussed on the much less likely outcome, whereby they didn’t need anyone else, that would indicate great incompetence and a huge waste of effort.
Which would be kind of ironic as a first step considering both parties campaigned on eliminating that sort of behaviour. Not to worry, I’m sure those commitments were meant for other people. Still, if Nicola is going to off the number of public servants she wants axed before Christmas, they best pull finger.
Actually that conjures up images of old uncle Winston chasing young Seymour around the negotiating table, asking him to tug upon the offered digit. While Luxon pretends unconvincingly to be amused and Bishop roars with laughter.
Secondly - Nick, quite a few of those days were weekends, and not working days. Which is a double yeah nah. A yeah nah yeah nah, even!
Luxon demanded that the special votes be counted 24/7, and he’s made a big deal about how hard his team are working. So nah, you can’t boast of heroic effort and then say, actually you didn’t get it done because it was the weekend. Mind you, it doesn’t stop them trying.
Yesterday on Q&A Gerry Brownlee took issue with Jack Tame referring to how many days it had been since the final results were in. Gerry highlighted that only five of those were working days, before proceeding to say that the team were working through the weekend. Seemingly oblivious to the fact that his second statement rendered his first one completely irrelevant.
Mind you the media don’t seem too bothered with the length of proceedings, politely saying little about it. Although I imagine a few will be a bit tetchy if it carries on for another couple of days and impacts their APEC junket.
Actually the way the media are behaving suggests that maybe another election could be a possibility. Look at the way they continue to attack Labour, and are now promoting a narrative that if National can’t form a government it’s because Winston and Seymour ganged up on Luxon. The scoundrels.
I’m not even talking about the obvious suspects, Jenna and Jessica guiding the news, Claire and Audrey always on message, or any of the other multitude of media people who earn their living slagging off the left, from Andrea to Luke, or even Ken and Barbie over on ZB. Yesterday you had to go no further than a seemingly innocuous Q&A article on the West Coast.
It was as if TVNZ had travelled to the electorate to ask the disgruntled, and those with vested interests, why they hated Labour. Presenting it as if there had been a landslide to National when the electorate contest was only won by a thousand votes.
Some of the locals didn’t even make sense. Like the Grey District Mayor, Tania Gibson, who while talking about the strong economic performance in the region said, “we kind of don't want to shout too loud that we are doing well, especially when we're under a Labour Government because of all those regulations that were hanging over our head or the proposed no new mining on DOC land”
Or to put it another way, my words not Tania’s, “we didn’t like to say our economy didn’t actually need any new mining, that it was rocking along just fine under Labour, in case you said we should leave the precious in the ground. The precious.” Or something like that.
All a bit weird really. What could an everyday mayor like Tania, who posts things like anti Three Waters messages from Groundswell, which use deeply unflattering images of Jacinda Ardern, possibly have against Labour? I guess we’ll never know.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the platform Mayor Tania is appearing on in the photo above, here’s what it says on Wikipedia:
Counterspin Media is a far-right, anti-vaccine, and conspiracy theorist New Zealand online media platform that was founded in May 2021.
Counterspin Media has opposed the New Zealand Government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic including COVID-19 vaccination policies. In early 2022, the group played a leading role in the 2022 Wellington protest. Newsroom journalist Marc Daalder has described Counterspin Media as “one of the largest platforms for conspiracy theories and far-right ideology in New Zealand”, while Stuff journalist Charlie Mitchell has described it as New Zealand's equivalent of the US website InfoWars.
Nice one Tania, you seem like a good judge of things. And then Maureen “people don’t cause climate change” Pugh, appeared on the screen…
Australian mining company TiGa Minerals and Metals are applying for consent for an open-cast sand mineral mine. Asked about the concerns raised by locals Pugh said, “we could lock ourselves away and not do anything or we could open ourselves up to some of this stuff.” Do we get to choose Maureen?
When asked if she'd be against further milling of native forests, Pugh said: “I can't answer that today.”
It wasn’t clear why. Perhaps she hadn’t yet been instructed what to say, it was somehow dependent on the coalition negotiations, or maybe, if you were cynically inclined, you might suggest that the cheque hadn’t cleared yet.
One person replied to my tweet saying, “that smug, supercilious grin from Maureen Pugh National MP while neither confirming nor denying the prospect of more destruction of native trees on the West Coast is both chilling and shows her utter contempt for Climate Change!”
Another said “I'm appalled at the blatant greed to access DOC land, the bullshit take that miners are environmentalists and will return the land to ‘better than it was before’ - never mind the damage wrought in the process. No thought to the endemic birds, lizards, insects affected.”
We seem as a country to be more and more willing not only accept, but even to celebrate, being poorly informed. As if electing someone with the scientific understanding of an intermediate aged child somehow means they’re a good representative of the people. I’m kidding of course, kids have a far better understanding of this stuff than Maureen.
Q&A then gave the mining lobby a very tame interview. Josie Vidal, CEO of mining industry advocacy group Straterra, said “we want the Government to say: 'Hey, we're open for business. And there are minerals here we are happy to mine.’”
I’m sure you do Josie, but why the hell is TVNZ giving a pretty much unchallenged platform to mining lobbyists to tell us what they want? For goodness sake as the state broadcaster they could at least ask for some money in return for advertising services.
Apparently the future is bright and shiny, and everyone sang in perfect harmony “we don’t want to mine the conservation estate, don’t worry, you can trust us mate. Oh wait a minute, yes we do, we don’t want to mine the National Parks, how about you?”
Meanwhile over at NZME someone took a look at the work TVNZ were doing to make Labour look bad and said “hold my beer”.
The Herald reporting that “the Act Party wants former Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta to explain why she disagreed with a draft tweet concerning Hamas’ October attack on Israel.”
So just so we’re all clear on this, at a time when out TV screens are full of images of Palestinian children who are injured, terrified, or dead, the ACT party’s priority is to demand answers from Nanaia Mahuta. A person who is no longer even a member of parliament, having lost her seat four weeks ago, over the draft wording of a five week old tweet!
Nanaia has already acknowledged, all the way back on the 9th of October, that her language in the tweet could’ve been stronger. Here’s the tweet that was sent, which so greatly concerned the ACT party that they neglected to even mention the deaths in Gaza, while expressing their moral outrage:
To be honest it seems pretty reasonable to me. But then what do I know about how an ACT MP’s brain works? What I do know is that they’re spectacularly failing to read the room as millions of people around the world took to the streets this weekend to demand an end to the killing. Including thousands here in Aotearoa.
Decent human beings who are appalled by the murderous actions of the Israeli government must always prefix any criticism by acknowledging the Hamas attacks. As if it were somehow possible to pretend at this point that Israel was still the victim, and not the aggressor. So how come it doesn’t work both ways?
I don’t want to hear Brooke van Velden say another thing about the conflict unless it includes acknowledging that the vast majority of ongoing deaths and destruction are being caused by Israel. Why should we speak of the Hamas actions without also acknowledging the disproportionate response from Israel?
Brooke declared that Nanaia could not “make clear moral judgements” and she’d had the option to “denounce barbaric aggression”. All while opting not to denounce the actions of the Israeli government, responsible for the deaths of thousands of Palestinians.
It seems some in the media have both been so worked up trying to remove Labour from power, that someone needs to send them a memo saying the election is over.
Ahh maybe I’m being too cynical, perhaps the explanation is simply that they have KPIs to achieve. C’mon, Labour isn’t going to kick itself while it’s down, is it?
I saw those interviews, and also felt utter dismay. After six years of a government that made mostly rational decisions about the way forward in the face of climate change, even though the delivery was frequently inadequate or delayed, it comes as a shock to think how quickly that could all change. Whatever these coalition negotiations bring us, one thing is certain. It won't be good.
Wholeheartedly agree with all of the above Nick. This media crap is getting very worrying. The uptick in aggression and vitriol is very disturbing. Beyond just distracting from the clownalition "negotiations". Hard to see what the end game is ffs. The fear of new election is a possibility, in which case the level of targeted nastiness is huge overreaction.
Maybe it's a 5 star alarm because they know more than we do about the shambolic "3 leaders" korero?
I'm still deeply suspicious of Key in China. Kiwifruit transgressions, right at this time, seems a total smokescreen. The master puppeteer taking the undemocratic lead on behalf of property investors everywhere seems strangely more likely. Aue. Maybe I've become a conspiracy theorist 😅