Spare Room Be our guest…

By Kirk MacGibbon

The lowest turnout in a general election for 20 years is not a ringing endorsement of Key’s pulling power, but after nine years in the wilderness one cannot accuse the Nats of tardiness in wanting to get their backsides on the Treasury benches.

Three coalition agreements signed and sealed and then in what almost appears to be unseemly haste, Key is out of the country and being prime ministerial in Lima. When you have the personality and attraction of a warm beer, I guess you’ve got to seize every opportunity to put yourself on centre stage, and quickly, so that you can impress the kids back home. Mind you, there was nothing prime ministerial about Key walking about like Casper the Friendly Ghost in his mud coloured poncho. And in the picture of Key meeting G. Dubya Bush, he resembled Frodo, the Hobbit.

It’s going to be interesting to see how Key develops as Prime Minister. At the moment he is very much a blank canvas — I imagine that’s how he might be depicted in a Doonesbury cartoon — either that or a dollar sign. But we can’t be too hard on him, and should let him enjoy his honeymoon period. Certainly the mainstream media are now covering his every utterance with what seems like breathless anticipation.

But first things first. In this, my first post-election contribution, I feel that I must apologise to the Maori Party on a couple of counts. First, for suggesting that their consultative hui would take weeks; instead they deployed incredible organisational abilities to complete the process in a matter of days. It was not what I expected. I am sorry for slipping into a nasty stereotype.

And secondly, I have to apologise for pouring scorn on their suggestion that they could actually do a deal with National. There are, obviously, clear risks in getting into bed with ‘the white man who speaks with forked tongue’. But they have done their time on the outer — and the Greens stand as testament to the fate of parties that paint themselves into corners.

The Maori Party is taking a gamble that at the end of three years they will be able to point to positive and tangible benefits delivered to their constituency, which by the way, differs significantly from the 50 per cent of Maori who stuck with Labour. The Maori party represents a less ‘tribal’, younger demographic, unburdened with any notion of blind loyalty to Ratana or the Labour party. And Goff’s admonitions are all the more ridiculous when his own party ignored the Maori party for six years.

Turia and Sharples have proved themselves to be pretty canny politicians, and if the gamble pays off they could well set themselves up as a permanent coalition partner, regardless of which major party is in power. And for John Key, having two coalition partners with such deep mutual suspicion of each other won’t hurt in the horse trading stakes.

Which brings me to Act and another little man, Rodney Hide. Why did National feel it had to give this anachronistic, idiotic and completely irrelevant party any sort of deal at all? Where was Rodney going throw his toys? What leverage did they really have? If they brought down the Government, the electorate would ‘Winston them’ in a flash. Who else could they have supported but National? Labour showed what you do with a party that shares the same broad ideology when they refused to let the Greens into their tent for nine long years.

The Act party today resembles one of the far right political parties that exist in the nether regions of the Western European democracies, or the communist parties of eastern Europe: They are slightly embarrassing and speak of grandiose dreams that seem to appeal to small, wacky and delusional pockets of society. Like the people of Epsom.

With current events graphically illustrating the catastrophic effects of unregulated and unrestrained ‘super-capitalism’, it is absolutely beyond me how anyone can take seriously a party that would mould society around similar, deregulated principles. It is also hard to believe that a party can still believe in good conscience that individuals acting out of self-interest will benefit society as a whole — there are probably a good few trillion reasons why that argument is fatally flawed — let alone suggest that individuals will behave rationally in deciding how to spend money on things like education and health.

I once got into a spot of bother while tutoring at University, when I suggested to my students that ‘socialism bred fat, lazy people.’ Given today’s obesity rates I should really be being hailed as a visionary — but I had to apologise. At the time I thought that was over the top, but first year politics students weren’t, apparently, ready for such gross generalisations.

My point is that ideologies in today’s political and economic climate are (thankfully) becoming little more than familiar and recognisable accessories that most parties only really wear to help their increasingly disparate memberships find their way home after they wander off and get lost.

Except Act. And now Rodney has been joined by Grandpa Munster (another little man), preaching yesterday’s news. I can’t think of any other party founded on a more discredited or less relevant ideology than Act. Just because the National party has no discernible ideology underlying its policies and approaches does not mean that it needs an Act.

The National party deliberately chose not to do anything to scare the horses. It is so centrist it’s hard to see any great things coming from them (although Key had better start becoming a little more positive about the world being able to address the financial system meltdown. As US President Jimmy Carter found out, voters don’t like being told things are sick. They want people who are positive and optimistic, not pessimists. They do pessimism themselves).

Ideologies are out. Pragmatism and active intervention are in. Key’s swanning about trying to build gravitas suggests a man who is overly concerned with his image and a little insecure about himself (check out his ‘poncho walk’ at Apec for a start).

Who cares about the Queen and Gordon Brown (he’s dog tucker anyway). Key needs to get back to his own backyard and start actually doing something that really matters. Or the honeymoon may be a lot shorter than he’d like.