It is that time of year again where the events of the year are reviewed and what was notable, noteworthy and notorious.
And what a year it has been. January 2022 seems like a decade ago.
Who can forget when earlier in the year a group of protestors borrowing the language of various progressive rights movements to claim that what they were campaigning for was right and virtuous while at the same time publicly calling for the execution of various politicians and public servants?
They are the recipient of the inaugural tinfoil hat award given in recognition of their bizarre take on reality and in particular because some of them were actually wearing tinfoil hats.
They also win the cry baby award for thinking they could turn up and occupy Parliament’s grounds, make actual threats of violence against the PM, MPs, Journalists, shop workers and anyone walking past and then complain about the slightest activity by the police in trying to keep order. I am all for a good protest but really?
The award for the biggest misuse of allegations of conflict of interest goes to Simeon Brown whose continuous attacks on Nanaia Mahuta ended up with a report exonerating her stating that it found there was “no evidence of favouritism, bias, or undue influence”.
But the award for the biggest actual example of conflict of interest goes to National MP Barbara Kuriger who used her position to continuously attack MPI officials for successfully prosecuting her son on animal cruelty charges. How she still remains in National’s caucus says much about its hypocrisy.
Brown features heavily in this year’s awards. The award for the spokesperson who understands his or her portfolio the least again goes to him for his potholes campaign. The problem clearly is a consequence of cutting budgets back during National’s last reign and climate change, neither of which should be blamed on this Government.
The Bermuda Triangle award goes to the National Party. What happened to the Sam Uffindell report and what happened to National’s promises of openness and transparency?
Obsequious media article of the year was a hotly contested area but this piece from Fran O’Sullivan could not be beaten. I challenge anyone else to watch the actual video and form the same positive conclusion that O’Sullivan reached.
The misspeak award can only go to one person, National leader Christopher Luxon. Who else in one year could come up with such clangers as calling poor people bottom feeders and claiming that South Auckland Garages were breeding grounds for gang membership? He also wins an award for worst apology of the year for saying he was sorry “if anyone was offended”. All this coming from someone who confused Hawaii with Te Kuiti suggests that accuracy and sensitivity are not Luxon’s strong points.
Luxon also wins the complete lack of self awareness award for his performance in this interview with Jack Tame about climate change where he railed against the Government for working in “bumper stickers and headlines” while National has absolutely no policies or targets of its own to talk about.
The Marvin the Paranoid Android award for being utterly depressing goes to the National Party Caucus.
All year they have been on a real downer. No matter what the Government has done National has been utterly, utterly negative about it. Labour could have discovered a universal cure for Cancer and National would have complained about the cost.
Check this out if you need proof.
I get that this is what an opposition does but are they happy about anything?
The Taxpayer Union you really need to check this out award also goes to the National Party for using Parliamentary Services resources to fly to Australia to campaign. Maybe they were hoping we would not notice? In any event the Auditor General should be checking this out.
The Out of Touch award goes to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who as part of a publicity stunt worked in a soup kitchen giving out food to the poor.
He was caught on film asking Ben if he worked in business.
Ben replied that he did not work and that he was homeless.
There are so many questions arising from this. Like are there people who work in finance who frequent soup kitchens? And why did Rishi ask Ben, who clearly looked like he was homeless, if he worked in finance? Are there people who work in finance who look like they are homeless?
And the most precipitous descent into chaos award, last awarded to National in 2020 goes to the UK Conservative Party.
Who can ever forget the chaos of the Boris years, how he broke every rule in the political book as well as at least one law, or his final week where Ministers were racing each other in who was going to resign first. He was then replaced by Liz Truss. She campaigned on a right wing wet dream policy of tax cuts. Having been elected she then found out that the market has a brain and even it did not think that unfunded tax cuts would achieve everything.
The most use of the word Woke in a political blog award has a clear winner, Martyn Bradbury! He also won this award last year. This is a rare feat.
I don’t get how someone nominally of the left buys so readily into a right wing attack phrase. These debates ought to be happening on our terms, not theirs.
The nu fone who dis award goes to Gaurav Sharma. Remember him?
Putting aside what happened earlier the level of shitfuckery involved in doing a confidential text dump on social media at the very time your leader is giving a post cabinet press conference is exceedingly high.
Despite what he had done the Caucus decided to give him one last chance. There are some very gentle souls there.
And the genesis of his original complaint was his trenchant disbelief that the Whips stepped in to stop him from bullying his staff. He then claimed them stopping him from bullying his staff was of itself a form of bullying.
He decided to let the good people of Hamilton West decide on his ability as an MP. And they did this giving him less than 10% of the vote.
The runner up for this award is Sharma’s new party named Momentum which unfortunately for him lacked that particular characteristic its name suggested it might have. It has since disappeared without trace.
The Arrogant Prick award goes hands down to David Seymour. But he also gets the Right Winger who actually resembles a human being award for his signing with Jacinda Ardern of the Hansard record of the exchange which was then auctioned for charity for Prostate Cancer. That an Arrogant Prick chose to do something for Prostate Cancer says something about New Zealand politics.
Quiet achiever of the year award goes to Carmel Sepuloni who has been methodically implementing the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. One statistic that may amaze you given the vitriol sent her way is that up to March 2022 and since 2018 benefits had increased by 40% above the rate of inflation. Sure recent high inflation rates may have affected this but I cannot think of such a sustained increase ever happening before.
Another statistic that should give you hope is that in 2021 66,500 children were lifted out of poverty.
Of course some still complain these steps are not enough and we still have too much poverty in Aotearoa but can I invite you to think about the alternative. If there was a change of Government on day one it would be announced that there was a budgetary crisis. And then after that either through actual cuts or letting increases slip behind the rate of inflation the real level of benefits would decline and poverty would increase. This is the inevitable order of New Zealand politics.
The award for the politician who burned up the most political capital to achieve something good goes to Jacinda Ardern. John Key burned up political capital on a grandiose flag referendum. Jacinda burned up political capital keeping us alive.
And the opposition has been utterly disgraceful on the issue. Leading the country through a once in a century global pandemic takes a lot of skill and when you look at the body count New Zealand did remarkably well.
Even Japan’s death rate is now higher than us. Singapore is the only western country whose statistics can be trusted who is doing better than us.
The continuous attacks on New Zealand’s response by opposition MPs trying to score political points is getting really tiring. This latest article by Act deputy leader Brooke Van Velden is typical. She talks about the benefit of hindsight but still says that the Government should have loosened things up last Christmas. At the time when Omicron was surging overseas.
The one thing you can say about these wannabe leaders is thankfully they were not in control during a time when cool heads and real leadership were required.
And the award for the best performance by a politician this year goes to …
drum roll …
Michael Wood for his achievements in getting the Fair Pay legislation passed, for guiding transport through a rough period and for making fundamental changes to the way that Waka Kotahi operates so that sustainable transport is more of a focus, for handling Immigration with care and for generally walking the talk on living by Labour Principles.
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