Internet MANA Auckland road show at Kelston – what the media are missing

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The Town Hall in Kelston yesterday was packed well before the start time of 2pm. What many welded to Wellington in the Press Gallery don’t understand about Internet MANA is that its energy and flaxroot mobilisation is far larger than their  view from Parliament can see. John Armstrong has enough regular contact with Auckland to get what’s actually happening on the ground

If any spies from the Labour, Green or Maori parties infiltrated yesterday’s Internet Mana rally in West Auckland, they would have come away with very worried looks on their faces.

The Maori Party, in particular, should be afraid, very afraid. The main hall of the Kelston Community Centre was packed to the gunnels. There was not so much a buzz of excitement as a raging ferment of noise as the audience waited patiently for proceedings to begin.

Say what you like about Kim Dotcom. Say what you like about Laila Harre’s initially hard-to-understand decision to team up with the internet tycoon – all that paled into utter insignificance yesterday. There was instead a hint of history being made. The chance to fund and build a new movement of the left is not an opportunity to be squandered. The likes of Kim Dotcom do not come along very often. Neither is such a collective of credible activists always on hand to run such an outfit as is the case with Internet Mana.

Hip-hop artist King Kapisi, who is also the party’s youth ambassador, had been designated the task of warming up the 300 or so present. He did a brilliant job but he hardly needed to have bothered.

The party may be feeding off Dotcom’s millions, but money cannot buy the kind of raw energy that pervaded the room. The mood of exuberance and anticipation topped even that at the weekend’s Conservative Party conference. It left New Zealand First – also holding its annual conference – for dead.

…Armstrong is right. The energy and passion of those who have been attracted to Internet MANA is real and building. When I say Internet MANA will gain 3.5% plus I mean 3.5% PLUS.

Many pundits and journalists are missing what’s happening here and the final result will surprise them.

Hone was on fire at the meeting. His standing as a leader is only growing and his confidence is soaring. He took a huge gamble in leading a merger and it has paid off significantly. He has never had rooms so packed before, he has never had so much positivity coming back directly to him via increasing numbers of supporters and he’s never had the resources at his disposal that enable him to front foot it with every other party. Internal polling shows there isn’t any hope for Kelvin Davis to win Te Tai Tokerau and once Hone starts appearing more in the media, his oratory powers and increasing confidence will snuff out any chance of a Labour victory.

Annette received standing ovations. She is one of NZs most brilliant legal minds and having her in Parliament could be one of the most significant progressive wins the Left have ever had in NZ.

John Minto was brilliant as usual and drove home economic justice policies. The likelihood that Minto will be an MP grows every day.

Laila Harre was of course another star performer. Her list of fights and victories for progressive movements means her re-entry into Parliament is one of the most welcome returns since the resurrection of  Christ.

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Kim himself has become even more confident and feels he has people who have his back now. He had the Hall in fits of laughter as he explained his rational for hacking NASA was to find out if Aliens were real and his hacking of CitiBank was so that he could reduce a politicians credit rating to 0.  His speaking at these events has lifted his own performance skills and sharpened his delivery. It’s difficult to not enjoy his speech.

Pundits on the right scream this party is a joke and pundits on the left write it off as a sell out, if Internet MANA is the difference between forming a Government and not forming a Government those pundits will be left terribly quiet on September 21st.

Nothing matters now util 7pm 15th September. The Government via Whaleoil and Kiwiblog will throw the remaining baseless smears they have at KDC but those are explainable and won’t remove anything from the growing number of ticking time bombs about to be detonated against Key and his Government.

 

The September 15th Town Hall meeting will be live streamed on The Daily Blog.

6 COMMENTS

  1. This rally was politics as it should be, great buzz, every speaker complimented the other and Te Hamua’s stand up engaged without condescending. The leaders and lead candidates actually seem to like each other and enjoy a bit of the love that they have long deserved from the wider community.

    Agree with Martyn’s piece, (John Armstrong is on gardening leave as we type–just kidding) but would add that imo the Sept 15 Town Hall event should be seen as a tactic not a strategy in itself.

    As for the far left critics of the parliamentary Internet Mana, be more specific, there is a use by on the box. Mana Movement will continue on regardless of elections.
    Where should revolutionaries be–by the bookshelf or with the people?
    Lenin himself wrote “Left Wing Communism an infantile disorder” which is a pretty strong reproach to leftists too pure to mix it with social democrats. Mana Movement and Internet Mana are actually hybrid new groups rather than traditional social democratic third wayers.

    Join in with Internet Mana and “delete John Key and the Torys”.

  2. Despite main stream media commentators saying this election is as good as lost for the Left, campaign volunteers from Labour to the Greens to IMP are pressing ahead, not out of pig headedness in the face of the odds, but because they BELIEVE in what they are standing for, and they ABHORE this government. I would say that the number of politicised citizens in New Zealand is now way higher than when this government came to power. They feel they have no choice but to act because there is so much riding on this election.

  3. Thats it,…a collection of ongoing incidents that have been downplayed by the media which, over time , have been quietly politicizing many New Zealanders, ..

    Add to that the shocking wages and cost of housing , food,-Im talking the most basic things of all , and ramifications of the TPPA , TSA, .. in a nutshell……….poverty .

    Internet Mana has its fingers on the pulse…and that’s why there’s never going to be a lack of strong following for them. They are winning the ‘hearts and minds ‘and engaging the common people who are being affected by these issues.

    They have a job to do. And I for one am so glad that there is at last now ,.. a legitimate and dynamic party to contest issues that are not in New Zealands best interests …indeed …to stem the tide of political/financial treason that has beset this country for more than 30 years now.

    All power to them!

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