Salient

The storm before the storm

By Jackson Wood | 7 Nov, 2008

Ominous dark clouds are gathering over Wellington in the lead up to tommorows election!

As the rain starts to pour down and the lightening crashes around the bowl that is Wellington, I look out from the Salient office and I contemplate tomorrows election.

What fortunes await us on November 9? A Labour Green arrangement? An Act, National, United future arrangement? Both of them + the Maori Party? A grand coalition between Labour and National with Helen as Prime Minister and Key as Deputy, ushering in a new age of bipartisan politics?

A Green majority; traditional Labour voters who can’t bring themselves to vote for National chose Green strategically with their party vote while keeping their second tick with their Labour electorate MP. Creating an awesome overhang situation.

The Maori Party could well win all seven electorates and who knows who they will work with then. Only history ties them to Labour. Maybe Maori, enamoured by Obama’s win, will see working with National as the “change” they need.

Heaven forbid a National majority. Key has ruled both Hide and Dunne in. Does that mean Douglas too? They resuscitated him for a reason…

Whatever government we have it is going to be a “multi headed hydra”. It is stupid of National (and the associated bloggers, and political commentators) to whinge about the rules of the game. We know them, we’ve had them for over ten years. Get with the game. The idea behind MMP is that we build consensus and increase representation.

The lead up to this election has been utterly boring. No one has said anything interesting. Winston Peters’ corpse has dangled over the campaign period, spilling bilious offal all over any intelligent media coverage we might have had. Hopefully the next few weeks will be interesting and New Zealand will be able to come to terms with the outcome whichever way it falls.