Poll Dancer by Keith Ng

Dear Thatcher-humping liberals,

I'm a firm secularist and I believe that the state is there to provide public good, not to dictate private mores. Funnily enough, my biggest philosophical objection to liberalism is the idea of objective, absolute human rights. As an empiricist, I wouldn't know what to do with them, but I remember reading somewhere (er... every text on liberalism ever written?) that liberals like human rights. Lots.

And you know what? I like liberalism. It's a nice, logical system, and at it's heart, it's driven by rationality and the desire for just society. That's nice. I even like a lot of liberals.

But you know why everyone thinks you're racist, fascist, baby-killers? You know why everyone hates you, calls you fuckface, and throws mud on your best tie?

The National Party. That's why.

There's already been a lot said about Wayne Mapp making an arse of himself, but let me offer a subtly different view: He didn't simply say the wrong things - he laid bare the true sentiments behind National's "one-law-for-all" rhetoric; he explicitly articulated what National had previously only dared to imply.

You know how you were all saying "we're not racists - we're just liberals"? Well, Wayne Mapp, on behalf of the National Party, is on his hands and knees, begging to differ.

In his National Radio interview, he started talking about powhiri and other Maori religious observances that are becoming institutionalised by the Government. He pulled out the great S of Secularism, and said that: "in a secular state, all beliefs should be treated equally, because that's what secularism means. Instead, this Government puts it into law that one set of values has a preference."

So Sean Plunket asks if he wanted to get rid of the Lord's Prayer at the start of each Parliamentary session. "No, I think that's part of our history," says Mapp.

Who's history? "The nation's history. The nation's history."

There's no mistake - he wants the majority, with its boundaries drawn along culture, class and sexuality, to take control of the very instruments that you claim are intruding into your lives. Listen for yourselves.

It's time to face facts, dear liberals. The National Party is not interested in building a modern secular state, it's not interested in a colour-blind society, it's not interested in reducing the role of the state in individuals' lives.

The National Party is about reasserting, in state institutions, the dominance of the cultural and moral norms of an idealised white majority.

It's about linguistic, cultural, moral, religious control of and by the state. It's the very kind of nanny-state bullshit that you hate, but in White-Middle-Class-of-the-50s flavour.

Go join ACT - hell, join the Libertarianz - but christ, stop deluding yourself that National is a party of liberalism, of freedom, of modernity. They are using your ideals as cover for their old-school, telly-ho-let's-shoot-some-peasants brand of conservatism.

They are pissing on your ideology in the processing of trying to piss on everyone else.

Winston Peters. Winston Peters. Winston Peters. Like everyone else, I can't stop talking about Winston Peters! Winston Peters!

He really has been having a tough time with the media at the moment, with SST's Anthony Hubbard's explicitly putting him on trial, even. It's a great read, but although it was insightful, sharp, pointed, and applied forcefully in a downward, stabbing manner, it was like a silver sword through a vampire's chest - it went in, you saw it go in, but somehow, it just didn't do the damage it was supposed to.

I've seen - and been wowed - by Winston in front of a live audience. The Winston doesn't take form unless he is being watched, but when he is - whether it's an audience of thousands, hundreds, or a dozen - his powers grow as he feeds off the attention. My hypothesis is that Peters is only vulnerable when he transforms into The Winston, and he is hit with a massive dose of public humiliation. Or delta radiation.

Or not. He's in politics for the love, for the status, for the glory - especially the glory of being persecuted. The more he's being attacked, the more he feeds off it and grow stronger. Perhaps one more blast from the media's Why-Do-You-Keep-Lying-to-Us Ray will finish him off? No, he just soaks it up.

I thought the delta rays were finally getting to him in his interview on Agenda. Hell, he actually got flustered! Usually, whenever he is stumped for an answer, he just bellows outs "I WINSTON! MEDIA WRONG!", and by sheer force of will manages to make everyone else seem wrong. In this interview, he stumbled at even this - though it was only a temporary lapse.

To Winston's credit, though, the odds were well-stacked against him. Garth Bray was good on the attack, but he was also flanked by The Scientist (Jonathon Boston) and The Overcompensatingly-Angry Heroine (Gillian Bradford from ABC). Having the journos tag-team Winston was a bit unsporting, and to some extent counterproductive, too.

I thought that sharpest, most piercing observation came from Boston:

The issue that concerned me yesterday was the statement by his deputy leader that New Zealand First was an opposition party not a government party. Now I think this is really pushing the limits of logic.

You cannot have the leader of a party representing the country internationally as the Foreign Minister, claiming at the same time that it is an opposition party. The only way you could realistically maintain that position would be to decouple the leadership of the party from the party, that in effect would mean Mr Peters leaving his party.

Unfortunately, Bray didn't give Winston a chance to answer that, and went straight to Bradford instead. It's something I'd like answered: Is he first and foremost a Minister of the Crown or the Leader of NZ First? Does his loyalty belong to NZ First or to Helen Clark's government?

(Oh, and yay Agenda for putting up transcripts!)

Went down to Parliament yesterday to try to "catch the vibe" of the new Government. All I caught was the scent of tequila, and that was coming from me.

There really isn't much happening down there at the moment. It's been a bit of a ghost-town since the election, outside of those (metaphorically) smoke-filled rooms, and even that's done now. All the Ministers have gone home reading up on their portfolios ("Is immigration the one with an 'e' or an 'i'?" "Whaddya mean the Minister of Racing don't have any powers over boy-racers?"), and all the staffers are busy brushing up their CVs for the upward game of musical chairs.

Will be interesting to see who takes over as Labour Whip, after Jill Pettis stood down. As my learned tequila-buddies were saying this afternoon, there will be a lot of big egos in the Labour caucus this term, and a lot of maneuvering - subtle or otherwise - in preparation of the Dear Leader's ascension from the Beehive. Caucus discipline will become an issue and the Whip could be the key to the stability, and/or a strategic rallying point for the leadership battle.

When everyone gets bored with picking the next National leader, I'm sure it'll be ripe time to start putting odds on the next Labour leader. Heard David Parker's name mentioned twice today. Never met him myself, and don't know much about him, but as one of the new Favoured Ones to be brought into Helen's loving embrace, I understand he's going to get a fair bit of the spotlight on him soon enough.

Ah, the sun is bright and warm, the air is clean and crisp, the politicians are consensus-building and commentless. New Zealand: what a country!

The dark clouds will gather over Wellington again before long, no doubt, but until then, there's absolutely nothing political that we need to concerned ourselves with. Except for the coalition negotia-

LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!

Nope. Nothing at all.

I saw on the news the other day that, apparently, the election is now over. I guess that means I should probably stop with the whole election commentary thing. I doubt that there will be anything to say even when a new government is formed, because every permutation will be unstable, and that instability will be the new Government's salient feature. It'll certainly be interesting to see whether this Government can wobble its way to a full third term, but for now, I'm signed up to a three-month unilateral moratorium on giving-a-shit.

None of the particular coalition permutations worries me too much. Not even Winston Peters. I may live to eat these words, but I think he may be the most docile of the centre-pack. Sure, he's made his reputation as "Nobody's Poodle", but that was before he got mostly-neutered. He's already lost Tauranga (aka "Lefty") and the NZF Party Vote (aka "Righty") is dangling by a 0.72% thread. One wrong move...

Anyway, this is more a pointer post than anything else. With a sentimental sob, I have officially left student media, my home for the past five years (with a 2-year exile in the middle, admittedly). Russell has invited me to stay on with Public Address for a bit longer, so I hope to blog a bit more over these coming months and perhaps reinvent the blog under a different name, with a different, broader focus.

In the near future, I'll be (finally) posting my interview with Tom Scott and resuming the Maori seats debate I was having with Che before we were interrupted by the injunction. At the risk of getting too introspective, I also want to blog about some of the lessons I've learnt this year about political journalism in general and blogging in particular. It'll be a good way to get some closure on Poll Dancer.

As for closure for my time in student media, I don't think I could have done it any better than the last story I wrote for Salient, about the injunction. This is the final paragraph:

In a post-modern statement juxtaposing the institutional authority of the university and the under-resourced informality of student media, Salient drew penises all over the confidential papers. These have now been returned to their original owner, Professor Pat Walsh.

The paragraph had a little trouble getting past Salient's legal department. Graeme noted a particularly thorny legal issue: since the penises were on the confidential documents, they may well have been covered by the injunction and the subsequent settlement, too, making their release illegal. In the end, it was decided that Salient would "release the penises".

It's been, however, an uphill struggle trying to convince people that it really was a post-modern exercise in contextual art. It was originally intended for the courtroom, so that when the documents were presented in the High Court, we would see the judge reviewing, as evidence, a simple yet elegant illustration by Salient Designer Dave Batt entitled: "Pat Loves the Cock".

Our legacy for student media.

[Also of interest: Salient sums up the year with a line-up of celebrity columnists, including Jane Clifton, Alan Duff, Bill Manhire, Jon Johansson, Chris Knox, Sean Redmond, Lauren Pyle, Uncle Russell, Michael Appleton (former Salient Editor and more recently of frogblog), outgoing Salient Editress Emily Braunstein and incoming Editor James Robinson. Phew that's an awful lot of linking.]

Salient's fight to overturn the High Court injunction blocking its publication last week has left it with around $8000 in legal fees and lost advertising revenue. The first copy that was liberated from Victoria University is now being auctioned off on TradeMe to help Salient recover its costs.

It is hoped that this auction will help demonstrate the strength with which New Zealanders believe in freedom of the press and transparency in our public bodies.

This gesture will also underscore the lesson for any future organisations that would consider using a similar tactic.

Oh, and it's a great read!

Auction can be found here.