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RantyKiwi
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Opinion
A month or so ago I commented here that “The party I will be most likely to vote for at the next election doesn’t exist yet”.
Last Thursday I commented there that “Today is the day that democracy died in New Zealand”.
Two statements, scant weeks apart, one correct and one (thankfully) wrong.
Democracy didn’t die, but not because the government backed down.
Democracy stayed alive because the police grossly exceeded their powers, were filmed doing so and had to back off before a riot of their own making ensued. I am extremely proud of the protesters who held their tempers and didn’t wade on in and take the police to task.
If that had happened the police would have been able to justify any and all excessive actions to break up the protest. One only needs to look back to their arrival on Friday morning tooled up with “Minto bars” to see what the outcome they were trying to engineer was.
Once the police saw sense and backed down I commented that “The New Zealand political landscape has changed forever”. That comment was followed by the rise of Chantelle Baker as the new media, Matt King’s resignation from National, and Rodney Hide giving ACT leader David Seymour a tune-up. I honestly believe those three events are momentous in New Zealand’s political history and will see the birth of a new political party. And I expect that will be the party I will vote for at the next election.
Rodney Hide may want to re-enter politics about as much as he’d like to catch a dose of the clap and that’s fine, but I’m sure he will be a
driving force, even silently, behind the new option for voters that is
guaranteed to arise out of the events of the last few days. I predict
that option will be the ACT of old with a charter based on personal responsibility, small government, freedom, and equality. And
I’d like to make a few suggestions to them as to how best to leave the
baggage of the past behind and start with a clean slate that will
have broad appeal:
- Stand behind the protests. Support freedom, abolition of mandates and letting Covid be treated as endemic.
- Eschew the IPCC and the Paris Accord. Use the savings to do some good at home.
- Develop green policies, and mean them. Steal the true environmentalists from the watermelons – they are actually good people with good ideas.
- Move slowly back towards the centre. Voters will panic if presented with an abrupt lurch rightwards. As the Mainland Cheese advertisement says, “Good things take time”. Be mainstream, but centrist mainstream you will slowly be able to metamorphose towards the centre-right. A country isn’t changed in a single electoral term.
- Recruit the MPs who are a bad fit to the dripping wet National and ACT parties. They have name recognition – that is invaluable. But they will have to stab their former parties in the back on their way out the door and expose the bullying, external influence, and corruption on which political parties currently thrive otherwise they will have zero credibility.
- Distance yourselves from Judith Collins. Personally I support her, but one only needs to see what happened in the polls after she was rolled to realise that years of MSM smears and baseless attacks have forever tarnished her reputation to the stage that she has become a political albatross. You can’t afford that.
- Recruit some ex-MPs who have been forced from their parties despite excellent polling. They may not contribute much in future, but as long respected candidates in their electorates they should deliver results. (Nick Smith is a good example – he has in the past won the Nelson seat despite the party vote going against him, and any man who yells “What sort of a Nazi establishment is running the place, seriously?” when being escorted from the House for standing up to Mallard is worth a punt in the current climate.)
- Only write cheques you can afford to cash. Don’t go promising tax cuts and unicorns for everyone. It’s going to take time to balance the books after Robbo’s $65M printing spree. Be honest about that – present a long term plan, and explain why it has to be long term.
- Support the new media, and shun the compromised MSM. Use the rising stars like Chantelle Baker, The BFD, and Karl du Fresne to get your story out there. Don’t trust the established players who will white ant you. That includes most social media.
Matt King, Leighton Baker, Rodney Hide – whomever, and all of, you who kick this off – be humble, be vocal, and remember that you need to not just win the biggest proportion of the vote, you need to win enough that a grand coalition of Labour and National can’t keep you from becoming the next government. Ardern may have been the only one so far to have won an outright majority under MMP but you can be the second. Good luck and Godspeed.
