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Opinion
Opinion pollsters when conducting focus groups try to encapsulate the opinions of everybody taking part into a simple sentence: often not the easiest thing to achieve, but if you can, the results can be devastating. The most amusing example of this was across the Tasman in 2004.
The Australian Labor party had elected a man called Mark Latham as its leader. He was initially quite popular, until “middle Australia” got to know him, at which point people developed huge concerns. Liberal party pollsters conducting focus groups distilled the ‘sentence’ about Mark Latham into: “He reminds me of the creepy Westie guy my sister used to date who later ended up in Long Bay.” (Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, but I can’t help it.)
Whenever Lynton Crosby had a room full of ordinary Australians, he’d hold up a photo of Mark Latham and read out that statement. Everyone from truck drivers to bank clerks to elderly ladies would get immediately animated and say, “That’s it, that’s who he reminds me of!” And the rest is history.
The National Party, wanting to avoid another Sam Uffindell (or future Mark Latham), have gotten enormously paranoid when it comes to candidate selection, as evidenced by the current search for a candidate for Hamilton West. In order to be a National candidate or MP, you have to be squeaky clean, apparently. Except nobody actually is. Such a person rings huge alarm bells for me; it’s not so much that they’re squeaky clean, as excellent at concealing their bad qualities. Which begs the question as to what else they may seek to conceal if a cabinet minister in a few years, for instance.
A better course of action, one which has worked fairly well for nearly a century, is to select the best candidate/MP and it all comes out in the wash. You get the occasional ‘character’ (like Norman Jones) or the occasional nutter (John Banks), but also lots of excellent MPs, which is why the National Party has governed New Zealand well for decades.
What I also find it a bit rich from the National Party, especially when it comes out of the mouths of Chris Bishop (Captain Virtue Signaller, I call him) and Nicola Willis, is this twaddle about wanting more ‘diversity’. It is rather like the usual vapid talking point of wanting ‘affordable housing’; in reality that means cheaper housing – so who is volunteering to sell their house to a struggling family for $200,000? or what about an ‘Affordable Housing Act’ declaring that every house is henceforth worth $200,000? Any takers? No? Fancy that.
Getting back to ‘diversity’: the easy way to solve that problem is with high party list placings. Those seats currently held by Bishop and Willis spring to mind, along with Woodhouse, Brownlee, Reti, Pugh and Goldsmith and all the other diversity drum bangers. All should step aside and try and win electorates whilst those placings are taken by these supposedly ‘diverse’ people. Any plans for those named above to be ‘electorate only’ candidates? Not [jolly well] likely.
Being just a simple country boy, I find the logic which suggests that coming from a third-world background makes you eminently qualified for governing New Zealand somewhat confuzzling (like many other ‘city slicker’ things).
I am also presuming ‘diversity’ doesn’t mean including more farmers in the caucus.
