If the NZ political spectrum was a solar system, Labour and National would be the two largest ‘planets’ with their ‘moons’ Greens and ACT in perpetual orbit around them.
Then you would have proto planets like NZ First, TOP and the Māori Party within the asteroid belt that could re-enter the inner solar system whenever they win an electorate seat or gain 5%.
Then, way out beyond the Kuiper Belt, you would find the bat shit crazy world of NZ’s sudden crop of fringe political parties.
Why we have this influx of insanity on the fringes isn’t clear. I suspect social media narcissism is to blame. Every crack pot with 10 000 Facebook views automatically thinks they are some oracle whose broadcasts of truth are just another $1000 in Facebook advertising away from total domination of the narrative.
This election we have crazy right wing religious parties in every shade of schism alongside total bat shit crazy conspiracy parties, alongside fronts for China, alongside vanity projects.
It’s all hilarious and deeply damaged, what it says about us as a people isn’t clear but it sure as Christ is quickly becoming a reason why we wouldn’t want the MMP threshold to be reduced lower than 3%.
50 shades of right wing Christian
The real power of Colin Craig was his benign Christianity. His old Conservative Party preached a faith that was friendly and charitable without all the witch burning and late night hangings. His Slater-Jordan Williams inspired implosion and subsequent #MeToo poster boy status on how to be portrayed as a sleaze in 5 easy defamation retrials meant his genial brand of God squad was open for every crazy with a bible, and so it has come to pass.
New Conservative Party: Strip away any rationality, compassion and gentle sensibilities within Christianity and you have the New Conservative Party. Hateful of abortion, solo mothers, gays, solo mothers, cannabis and solo mothers, the New Conservatives love guns, patriarchy and more guns. Paranoid and frightened of any idea post the Renaissance, the New Conservatives would represent a great leap backwards for New Zealand. Its political thinking is so inbred, I suspect they would want to relax laws around cousins marrying. Banjo playing with your toes and burning books is mandatory to be a candidate. I suspect Solo mums are not allowed to vote for the Party.
Vision NZ: Hates all the same things as the New Conservatives but hates Muslims most. Brian Tamaki claimed yesterday at his central Auckland protest that Labour will make NZ a ‘Socialist country’ and I’ve NEVER been so excited & happy in my life. Reading through their policy, you suspect they consider eclipses to be inspired by Satan and believe Jacinda is the daughter of the Devil’s third cousin. I think Libraries and clitorises would be banned if Vision NZ came to power.
One Party: Now, you would have thought Vision NZ and the New Conservatives had covered off the entire spectrum of right wing crazy Christian, but lo and behold, there’s another schism and it’s the ‘ONE Party’. They talk ALOT about ‘The Kingdom’ which is bizarre for a democracy. Under ONE Party, I think Jesus becomes the Constitutional Head of State and God has to personally sign off on legislation. The NZDF would be given spirit spears to fight Satan with and anyone caught working on Sunday is put to death. I think under The One Party, Gay Conversion treatment is mandatory for anyone who watches Glee. I think electricity and any singing that isn’t praising Jesus is also banned.
Vanity Project
Alongside the Christian far right we have a couple of vanity projects as well.
Advance NZ: Desperate for political relevance, Jami Lee Ross, the former Machiavellian Svengali of the National Party, has started his own Party for the advancement of Jami Lee Ross. Under Advance NZ, Jami Lees Ross advances his own interests and anyone who wants to donate vast sums of money to the right while being recorded for it. Advance NZ wants freedom, sovereignty and independence for Jami Lee Ross. Think of it as a really expensive public rebranding exercise so JLR can get a job in Banking somewhere.
The Integrity Party: Revolves around the leader who left the Sustainability Party. Wants to be the kingmaker of politics with lots of middle of the road opinions. It’s that ugly blue green colour you have when environmentalism gets hit by capitalism. Has the kind of Māori buzz words you get when Wellington Bureaucrats are opening a sustainable pet crematorium.
Chinese Government Cheerleaders
Just as NZ finally manages to expel a Chines Spy trainer from inside the National Party, Chinese political power brokers have clearly decided trying to buy the National Party is too much effort and with war brewing in the Pacific, they need a direct vehicle to espouse how wondrous the Chinese people are.
Tea Party: Fresh from his tilt at the Auckland mayoralty, John Hong, NZs most active cheerleader for China, has formed his own Party and is aiming at the enormous Chinese diaspora in NZ to propel him into Parliament. For all the tea in China, I’m not sure the Tea Party has read the tea leaves here. If the Tea Party syphons off votes from National and they don’t reach the 5% threshold, Hong damages National and wastes all that vote. It’s a win win for the Left, so I for one say, ‘Keep going Mr Hong’.
Bat shit crazy
Finally, we have actual bat shit crazy.
NZ Public Party: I love this Party, sure the Chinese puppet party is funny, various religious right wing nutters are entertaining and the vanity projects are a great self deluded laugh, but for pure insanity, the NZPP can not be surpassed. Their policy platform are a bunch of QaNON conspiracies all rolled into one vast narrative. The Covid-19 virus is a bioengineered weapon spread by 5G technology that is aimed to bring about a shadowy one world Government inside the UN. I can’t satirise this, because it seems to be what they actually believe. The existence of the NZPP is an indictment on our public education system.
Conclusion:
Bless democracy, as it throws up all kinds of ideas and we should be grateful that there is plenty of voice to go around, but as a progressive voter who only cares about seeing Labour+Greens in power, this clusterfuck of madness on the fringes is heaven sent.
The religious right vote that might have gone to National will fracture amongst the New Conservatives, One Party and Vision NZ while John Hong will pull Chinese voters away from National as well. The Integrity Party also takes blue green voters away from National and the NZPP just serves as a cautionary tale against sitting too close to the TV and getting pregnant near microwaves.
This all combines to mean National lose votes, and the wasted vote of these 7 fringes all gets recycled to help Labour and the Greens go up in the final MMP math.
It’s just all so glorious and counter productive to the Right that I think this unintended consequence might actually prove there is a God.
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Weirdly I have come to like Jamie Lee Ross like some distant flawed cousin who wanted to be a bad arse but who deep down was a pussy cat.
This guy was sucked in at a young and very impressionable age by a bunch of spiv suited wide boys and badly wanted to be as menacing a National MP as they were. He wanted to please and be accepted by a group of crooks barely straddling the law, much less morals and ethics. And he was their bag man and earned his stripes. But I think young Jamie was a better man than all of that.
His recent apology to Clare Curran I think was heartfelt, it mattered not a shit if he did or not but he did. His epiphany I think was real. He has exposed the very party he thought he belonged to and they near drove him to suicide because of it. Who can forget Paula’s superbly timed media releases nudging him along back then?
The political world is a more interesting place with Jamie Lee in it. And tactically to keep Christopher Luxon out may be a long term good thing!
Is he starting to get regrowth of his hair? I remember him looking rather bedraggled and quite bald a while back.
I don’t believe God exists. I believe God is was invented by ignorant humans who didn’t have the technology to understand how the world works. They were smart enough to recognise and record the movements of celestial bodies, but not smart enough to recognise the Earth wasn’t at the centre of everything. They were smart enough to recognise the intimate relationship between humans and nature, and between humans and other humans, but went on to attribute much of what they saw to outside forces. And then went on to fabricate complex sets of rules to appease the gods (or the one god) when things went badly.
Most modern humans have escaped from the gross ignorance and blatant contradictions that religious systems foster. But an awful lot of humans have degenerated into hopeless, helpless, non-thinking automatons who will believe anything if it can be linked to an ancient scrap of paper or some marks chiselled onto a rock thousands of years ago. Indeed, with the petroleum economy having kept alive a large number of humans who would otherwise have died (having close-to-zero survival skills) and with dumbing-down by the advertiser-dependent media, the case can be made for humans never having been so stupid or so helpless.
This dismal state of humanity was summed up by the parody movie ‘Idiocracy’, in which the US is populated by almost complete fuckwits, and some of the stupidest people became leaders. The producer subsequently said that, though it was set 500 years into the future, fuckwitism had proliferated and he realised he was portraying American society in the present.
Thus, in NZ we witness the emergence of batshit crazy political parties, founded on absurdities and funded by destruction of the future [via the burning of fossil fuels].
These are ‘interesting times’, as so many nations with big populations succumb to the effects of overpopulation, high-density living, coronavirus and money-printing.
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Screen%20Shot%202020-07-11%20at%2010.35.07%20AM.png?itok=D26L3nKY
Oh no!
I was an unbeliever until converted to an imminently peaceful and logical church with a growing switched on younger flock.
https://www.spaghettimonster.org/
Its true I have seen it on the net, tasted it and lived.
I’m sure some people way back recognised what power and control god could be enlisted to wield for them over the other humans right from the beginning. In fact he will have evolved from the which doctors of primitive tribes. We need an explanation for life and death, and if we can’t find one it has to be invented.
But it is strange that the ideas arising from the knowledge of the world thousands of years ago have not been able to evolve since with all we now know. God lives on in defiance of reason even in the minds of highly intelligent and educated people. And does’nt he do a great job for American democracy.
D J S
When will your, and The Standards, plan to campaign on ‘party vote Green’s’ kick off Martyn?, how many polls showing them at 5.5% or lower before the panic sets in?…..New leaders needed? Marama has been a millstone to the party in getting support higher and Shaw has been so quiet it’s like he just isn’t there.
Best they get 3-4% then take next year or so to regroup and get rid of the front bench…..sorted!
Gee ‘Im righ’ no ; your’e not right now ; – James Shaw was on today’s nightly news so I I will send you his speech to correct your inference that “Shaw has been so quiet it’s like he just isn’t there.”
See here; Talking up the greens new policy released today on plans to vastly reduce oil use by 2030.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/122107489/green-party-wants-coal-boilers-banned-and-solar-panels-for-state-homes
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/green-party-proposes-clean-energy-plan-focusing-fossil-fuel-free-aotearoa
Wonder if Hong’s Tea Party promotes incarceration of ethnic, religious a those opposed to totalitarianism. We won’t mention the torture, organ harvesting and genocide by other means. That’s a bit in -politically correct.
Bruce Moose,
Excellent points Bruce. The answer is yes to every question but that’s in the manifesto not so well hidden from view. The party of Hong is by light-years the most concerning of all on the above list.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300054428/parliamentary-inquiry-hears-evidence-of-chinese-political-interference-in-new-zealand-political-system
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/05/08/575479/anne-marie-bradys-full-submission
They are doing this world wide.
Invading by stealth
They are like a parasite
Yes and let’s not forget where the damn virus came from.
First of all we can be thankful there is no violence and we do get that kind of fringe white supremacist violence with tweaks and cheekiness and we often don’t know whos responsible and the left doesn’t want anything to do with because open hostilities is in fact good for the right. and police violence doesn’t come from no where.
Long live Social Credit.
Yep Mike I’m with you there.
Social Credit was my father’s preference they have good policies.
100% Mikesh
To my mind, those batshit crazy parties are more like the Moons of Planet Key. Designed to produce tidal influences on Planet Key, and with a bit of luck, kick it way out of orbit
How about erecting a “climate change party” as the others have forgotten the next pandemic to hit us within five years; – and Covid 19 will still be around us then silently killing us slowly – thanks to the World Health Organisation/Chinese collusion…..
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53342806
The World Meteorological Organisation says there’s a growing chance that global temperatures will break the 1.5C threshold over the next five years, compared to pre-industrial levels.
It says there’s a 20% possibility the critical mark will be broken in any one year before 2024.
But the assessment says there’s a 70% chance it will be broken in one or more months in those five years.
Scientists say that keeping below 1.5C will avoid the worst climate impacts.
CG
If we stopped all fossil fuel use today then the temperature will still rise beyond 1.5 degrees and keep climbing for some centuries.
The methane released from the permafrost is accelerating at present temperatures.
It is already close to 2 degrees rise now in some parts of the world.
CO2 is approaching 420ppm and climbing. All promises of cutting emissions have been ignored.
Yep John you are correct there, it seems that all political parties have dropped the ball on climate change sadly.
When they are voted in for three years then promises are easily made.
But to implement those promises they will loose votes so nothing happens.
thank you for this.
you did forget to mention the racism being put forward.
the new conservatives have a treaty of waitangi policy that is basically to disestablish the waitangi tribunal, maori seats, and reference to race based co-governance or consultation requirements….. etc…
ouch!
you missed the 1NZparty.org.nz which has a research paper on its website proving that the english draft of the treaty held at Te Papa is a fake and the real one has been suppressed by government. and of course it says that maori have no power to be maori.
and the DIRECT DEMOCRACY party. its not enough for them to ensure maori have no voice because the country will be run by majority rule referenda, they also will declare that Queen Victoria’s Royal charter of 1841 to be the founding document of our nation.
and the REALNZPARTY whose wesite is down but was set up by David Moffett who was new conservative briefly. he has a facebook page asking for your vote.
it makes me sick that these people want to destroy any advances in race relations that have been hard won over the past few decades.
In 2020, shouldnt it be unlawful for political parties to advertise their racism so blatantly?
I am currently trying to get my head around western philosophy of mental illness, starting with the ancient greek philosophers.
this morning i found this: apparently Aristotle said something like the ” ‘sick and deranged’ can, much like small children, hold bizarre ideas, but no sensible person would take them seriously or start arguing with them, for they are known to be unamenable to reasoning.”
Ha ! That’s a funny post right there @ MB.
I think we should dose them all up on LSD then drop them off in the middle of South Westland. To the victor the spoils, I say. ( It will be reported that herd of ugly human-moose babies were found grazing beside a grabbled, scribbled note in jamie lee ross’s handwriting! )
When I watch my dog waddle past these days with arthritic hips, cloudy eyes and is now almost completely deaf, I know there’s no god flying about in the clouds smiting wrong doers. Otherwise, why smite a beautiful old thing like my dog, God? Hello? God? are you there? Yoo Hoo?
The only God I can comprehend is the collective ‘we’. Humanity, as a collective, is the God.
What can one then say of those who espouse individualism? The neoliberals who preach the $acred text$ of the devil?
“No need for silly old unions. No need to vote either. We’ll take good care of you. We’re going to be billionaires so you can expect money to trickle down to you.
But I quite like it that, shall we term them politely as eccentric parties having a go. It’s like putting salt in the spuds. We need eccentric’s. Even if they’re mad, mean and greedy. Fringe parties have a certain balance mechanism within them which helps shape our society, I think.
Brian Tamaki should start a nice line of Snake Oil while that other ding a ling peddling bleach as an antidote to c-19 could be right if death was considered a cure for a disease.
Mandatory voting?
Otherwise….
RNZ
“Anand Giridharadas: Beware of billionaire ‘do-gooders'”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018754514/anand-giridharadas-beware-of-billionaire-do-gooders
Martyn, these people are looking for something and you would be a lot better off welcoming them to your world view than just writing them off.
The growth in minor parties (although they have always existed) is sign that New Zealander’s faith in the system is falling apart.
The growth in interest in conspiracy theories is a sign that less and less people believe the mainstream media. Unfortunately they’re just putting their faith in alternative source of information rather than using their own judgement.
As for this being a failure of the school system, Id say the opposite is true. School and (especially) universities teach you to distrust your own judgement and to refer to an authority figure for your opinions. The daily experience of both is of genuflecting to authority and it’s a much more powerful lesson than the things they teach through mere words. Sadly all that is happening here is that people have left one source of authority and flocked around another. The best thing any of us can do is to help people learn to have faith in themselves so they don’t need this dependency
Whaaaa??? No Interstellar Visitors Party??
Deep disappointment 🙁
With that amount of diversity (including all kinds of craziness), it makes Jacinda’s success in unifying us during the lockdowns as one ‘team’, …close to miraculous.
The “unifying” effect of Jacinda’s leadership depended on her obviously intelligent approach to presenting her information and following good advice from her PR advisers.
For many its a rational understanding of what good leadership has made possible but for many others its an emotional reaction to being well parented.
It would take very little to shatter the emotional support Jacinda has fostered and so change her poll numbers.
That’s where dirty tricks comes into play.——————
following good advice from her PR advisers.
John, Where are your specific referenced links to whatever you’re referring to?
Thanks.
Otherwise you are simply perpetuating the false narrative being put out by the NZ vested interest media propaganda machine.
Kheala.
All parties have PR advisers and Leaders learn from them. Without knowing the PR traps it is easy to walk into them. Also in planning policy and election campaign a party has to know about possible weaknesses they may expose them selves to and what switches people on.
Jacinda is careful and seldom gets caught out so some PR savy is more than a coincidence. I believe she is honest and intelligent and without those qualities would never had the powerful effect we see and NZ would be much the poorer.
So no propaganda as far as I am aware.
I could inquire as to what PR advisers Labour has but they are doing well without my inquiry.
Jonkey used PR advisers extensively hence is teflon coating.
Hill and Knowlton was used by the Govt to promote NZ tourism. They also jacked up jonkeys interview on the David Letterman show.
Hill and Knowlton also turned the public opinion in the USA from being against war to giving Bush senior the green light to invade Iraq in operation Desert Storm. PR is a very powerful weapon and an important defense.
If you have time and haven’t viewed the now dated BBC production then I recommend picking up what ever you can from it.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAD989035A4E8883D
Nifty footwork there, John. Nice evade and avoid.
I noted Jacinda’s innate ability to unify diverse people, including an entire nation, while leaders of many other countries have tried and failed tragically.
You replied that she was mainly just “following good advice from PR advisors”. (and then did your nifty pivot.)
Well if those nameless, brilliant “advisors” are in need of a payrise, I hear there’s a few employment opportunities in the NZ Nats at the moment 🙂
I do not disagree with the thrust of what you are getting at but sincerely would never put Jacinda’s policies or statements down to PR advice alone or even mainly PR advice.
” The “unifying” effect of Jacinda’s leadership depended on her obviously intelligent approach to presenting her information and following good advice from her PR advisers.”
So the PR advisers I suggest are in addition to her own careful considerations.
I believe JA is a careful and thoughtful thinker and speaker but will still have speeches written for her by skilled speech writers as well as writing much of her own material.
No pivot intended and I think no pivot attempted.
Political leaders have strategists and sometimes a team sharing that job.
If you think that Jacinda’s appeal and her success are to any degree down to her “speechwriters” and “p.r. advisors” then I disagree with you.
It’s her very immediacy and spontaneity through multiple crises, and her own personal presence that have won the hearts (and votes) of AO/NZ.
Correction: That should read, “to any significant degree.”
When I saw the title of this article I thought you were referring the Greens new ‘green energy’ policy
I wish them along with NZF and act all the very best in splitting the right vote in electorates and party vote. I hope they all get about 2-3% and no electorate seats but take enough votes from national to turn blue seats red…. I mean, us Lefty’s have split our vote enough so it’s good to see if potentially happening to the right, truly it would be amazing for act to get 4% of the vote but lose Espom.
I do hope NZ f gets in again but that they aren’t needed , parliament would be boring without winston and the environment is ripe for winston to go all Hillary’s emails on national over the leaks.
As for JLR again I hope he wins his seat, because it would mean multiple future national party leadership hopefuls dreams would be crushed in one election. He too should get all Trump about leaks and party loyalty to NZ.
Whatever happened to Yangs laptops? Surely that was an intelligence job or a blue on blue crime…. Hopefully we have a file dump or two to look forward to during the campaign
The more i see of Jamie Lee and with the latest disclosures, the more i think he was right about systemic bad practices in the national party.He should join NZ first..
We need to have a stronger system in place to
1. Prevent foreign govts interference in our elections and in our own government
2. To prevent out-and-out crazies moving into our govt
Stronger standards are needed, for who can stand as a candidate (citizenship? background checks? etc)
The USA and UK have been interfering with out elections for decades,
Who owns and controls MSM.
How do you control MSM when it is itself controlled by right wing off shore interests.
The govt of labour don’t even have a news outlet. RNZ is controlled by right wingers.
Control what people believe and you control the govt elected.
Control what people believe and you control the govt elected.
Exactly right.
The govt of labour don’t even have a news outlet. RNZ is controlled by right wingers.
Yes. They don’t even have a news outlet.
What we have now is a disgrace!! Two teaspoons of “news” a day if you’re lucky. And nothing in them – couple of headlines – that’s all you get, folks. Bread and gross circuses, sugary crap and soap. Nothing of any substance whatsoever.
They need someone in charge of this Ministerial position who is fully switched on, who is actually awake, and aware. We need the news!! – What are they so afraid of that they have made it disappear?
More than $100 million dollars were dished out to go shoot up wallabies (already burnt to endangered in Aus, some of them) and the majestic Tahr. And the vile 1080. If it were not for the election just ahead, I’d be screaming. $100 million plus… and busy keeping New Zealanders news-free, living in a news desert. (Ok, rant over… back after September.)
Where is NZ First in all this? A Winston vanity project surely, with its own slew of batshit policies (even if they are just saying no to anything the Green Party wants).
G’day Hans, It was Winston who gave Labour and the Left our chance. He has also lent gravitas when it was needed at times, eg when right wing radio jocks tried to dismiss Jacinda as bing an “airhead” and having no substance. And, he is still paying for it in a way – the Nats have a particular malice towards him for having given governance to Jacinda. For all this, I for one am quite ready to forgive any apparent craziness their policies may have.
Whatever happened to the Legalise Pot Party? And the Anti 1080 party that has a surprisingly noticeable presence down here on the West Coast. I guess the right wing types might like some divisive high profile character like Donny tiny hands, Orban, that Turkish president whose name escapes me and others to solidify their support behind.
[Now Press Send and await mandatory jokes about rogering sisters, council funded banjo orchestras, road kill sausages and six fingered mittens]
And the Anti 1080 party
One of the sanest political parties in AO/NZ.
It is an indictment on all of us that they are needed.
that has a surprisingly noticeable presence down here on the West Coast.
I wish that their candidate on the Coast would be voted in by a landslide.
I would prefer they were voted in, than anyone else on the West Coast.
Which area of the coast are you in.
The coast needs a lot of support as extraction industries have hauled many millions out and put little back in.
Even the basic family foods eaten on the coast come in from outside and cost more than most other places.
I’m not on the Coast now, though I lived in Greymouth for a year.
It’s the vile 1080 itself that I’m most concerned about, though I do care about the beautiful, magical West Coast.
Apparently the NZ Public Party are thinking they need security to protect them from the forces aligned against them. Their videos are getting weirder and weirder.
Thinking this matter [of batshit crazy political parties] over, I realised I have not pointed out that all major parties believe in infinite growth on a finite planet -which is clearly batshit crazy. And they worship the ‘god’ of GDP growth, and bow down to the high priests of neoliberal economics -which is just as batshit crazy as the looney beliefs already mentioned in regard to fringe parties. What is more, these GDP-worshipping loonies are quite comfortable about rendering the Earth largely uninhabitable for humans in a matter of decades, i.e. in their children’s natural lifespan or even their own lifespan if they are relatively young – which is more batshit crazy than some of the bizarre beliefs highlighted in the article.
AFKTT
Agreed.
The problem is most have no idea or what lies ahead and spend little effort in coming to grips with what finite means.
Its too unpleasant for them so they take hope from fools who reassure them with talk of magic or technological miracles when it is technology that got us into the mess we are in, swimming in over population, runaway climate and with starvation not far away. Sure NZ will be buffered for a short while but not for long.
Afewknowthetruth, I agree with just about everything there that you’ve written. But this is the world in which we live at the moment, and these are the systems within which we have to work, if we are to bring about change for the better.
Brilliant satire Martyn. Gees, those New Conservatives are what you get when you cross gun-toting, bible-banging technocrats with the cult of the Branch Davidians. In this case, the Branch Bakers. What a scary lot.
I hope you’re right in saying that the proliferation of vainglorious, right-wing Christian nutter parties will reduce the Tories’ tally on election night.
You forgot Sue Grey and her INJT nutters
Its good to see a few Social Crediters about. They do have policies no other party does (The right of a Sovereign state to create its own money supply). If the media gave them the exposure that their policies deserved, they would get a presentable vote.
Agree, Bonash. They’ve been around for a long, long time, too.
mana not running.
Hone has expressed support for the renewed maori party and their new faces.
exciting to watch their reinvigoration of the movement.
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