This weird and wacky election campaign gets stranger by the day.
I cannot work out if it resembles 2005, when weird events surrounding the Exclusive Brethren ankle tapped National or 2014 where it seemed that even Dirty Politics could not shake people’s voting decisions.
The optimist in me thinks 2005. National has stalled and is going backwards and Labour has had a good couple of weeks. In 2005 the final Colmar Brunton poll had National on 44% and Labour on 38%. The final vote, after the good people of South and West Auckland and Porirua turned up in their droves was Labour 41% and National 39%.
A similar sized swing would see Labour in the low 30s and if the Greens and Te Maori Pati hang onto their current indicated support this could be a majority for the left.
But the sense of weirdness this campaign is growing.
Take for instance NZ First. Winston’s clusterfuck of an interview with Jack Tame should spell the end of his party’s chances.
The problem is that with MMP 90% of the country would agree that he was a diabolical mess, 5% will disagree and think he was the man and the other 5% will have no opinion. For a party operating at the fringe those sorts of figures are fine.
And further disclosures about NZ First candidates causes one to worry about the operating model a National-Act-NZ First coalition would adopt.
It has been revealed that New Zealand First’s number eight Tanya Unkovich is a member of the Nuremberg Trials channel on Telegram. The channel is full of people who think that the mandating of the COVID-19 vaccine was akin to the Nazis’ war crimes.
When asked about the calibre of one of his people who could make it into Parliament Peters said:
I’m not here to waste the public’s time by answering your inane, stupid questions.”
Way to be transparent Winston.
Not to be outdone Act candidate Ash Palmer has also been shown to have posted rather bizarre stuff on social media. From Newshub:
In 2020, the ACT candidate commented on a Facebook rant about the ‘New World Order’ that it “sure f***ing sucks to be basically a pawn in a grand game we have no control over”.
“We back him 100 percent. The idea that we are going to start witch-hunting and judging people on ancient Facebook comments when we’ve got an economy to fix, that doesn’t stack up,” Seymour said.
These people could be part of a Government very soon. Be very afraid …
Meanwhile National continues to run this bizarre line that its change in the way that benefits are calculated that will save the Government $2 billion over four years is not a cut to beneficiaries’ payments.
This is bizarre. It is clearly a cut. National intends to apply the savings to other areas such as tax cuts for landlords.
Here are the amounts from its fiscal plan.
I am still struggling to understand how Luxon can claim that beneficiaries will be better under National given that even National’s figures show that the proposed changes will reduce benefits and also claim to be a Christian. Christianity has fairly strong rules against telling fibs.
And Luxon struggled to explain how the comrades at Goldman Sax were wrong in claiming that National’s policies were inflationary. When Beneficiary advocates and Goldman Sax attack your policies at the same time you know you are doing something wrong.
To top things off Luxon possibly created history by travelling from his home in the Epsom electorate to the Botany electorate to cast a special vote presumably for Paul Goldsmith who is National’s Epsom candidate.
And National scored a huge own goal by refusing Labour’s offer of a rescheduled Press leader’s debate. Now the minor parties get to hog the limelight and the country will be able to see how toxic the David Seymour and Winston Peters relationship is.
Chris Bishop needs to have a chill pill. He is becoming increasingly angry about everything.
His claims about the debate and his claims about Labour lying have been shot down in flames.
His latest effort is to claim that Chris Hipkins will be rolled after the election so that Labour can pass a wealth tax.
Focusing on this issue is rather bizarre given that there is overwhelming public support for this tax if it pays for public goods.
Equating a MP indicating a personal belief that a policy should go further with a subversive conspiracy to roll the leader takes mental dexterity that only few of us are capable of.
There is a poll out tonight. I suspect that things will tighten further. If so we are in for a hell of a couple of weeks.
Stay tuned …
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