It wasn’t a lie, all that stuff they taught us in school about democracy.
It wasn’t a lie, all that stuff they taught us in school by holding pretend elections where we earnestly set out our case in the fond understanding that voters listen carefully to all the arguments and then come to a solemn decision.
Guffaw. As if.
It wasn’t a lie, all the stuff they taught us in school, but it was very much a gilding of the lily.
Elections can be a bit bloody disappointing.
I am inclined a bit more when I’m not sick to look for the best in us. But I’m still coughing my lungs out so let me blunt about what I make of this election so far.
The same people who promised $250 a fortnight to Joe Average Voter last election, the same people who promised to get the country back on track,
the same people who dog-whistled the fuck out of Three Waters and promised to replace it with something better,
the people who failed to deliver any of that whatsoever,
those same people are now happily back on their bullshit just wildly distorting and exaggerating and sometimes downright lying all day long.
I am thinking in particular of their absolute joke of a leader, and their sneering finance minister, but all of them are happily tossing off this stuff and none more brazenly and defiantly so than that charmless weasel Simeon Brown. Nine new taxes this and fiscal hole that and they know that all they have to do is utter this shit over and over because forget that stuff they taught us in school about voters listening carefully to all the arguments and then coming to a solemn decision. That is at least thirty towns over from where we're actually living.
There are plenty of voters who are entirely comfortable in their unquestioned assumptions about the way things are, and should be, viz. National is the party of business and the responsible adults and Labour and the Greens and the rest of the crazy socialists will ruin the country and punish us for trying to make money.
For oily Simeon and sales robot Luxon, campaigning is just ensuring that you're saying whatever reinforces what people already believe, no matter how deluded or dimwitted those beliefs might be.
If what they told us in school was right, ideas being offered by people like Chloe about remaking the economy in ways that get us past the failures of the neoliberal experiment and the harms of the carbon emissions would be the buzz and hum of this election.
But that's not how it works in a world where vested interests and developers shovel shitloads of advertising money towards the ones who keep intoning: taxes taxes, taxes don't vote for the crazy socialists,
The message rings out through the media like some toneless church bell calling the faithful to worship: We will spend as little as possible and protect you from being taxed, those other guys want to spend like there's no tomorrow and will tax the ever-loving shit out of you. And your Mikes and your Ryans and your Kerres intone: Amen.
Tropes and shibboleths are never decently challenged or questioned. Voters just tell themselves they're right because they know they're right.
This is what I've been trying to get at with the quizzes I've done so far, to offer something to put in front of people who have their arms folded, saying I know what I know.
Well okay, let’s take a look at what those other guys want to spend like there's no tomorrow and will tax the ever-loving shit out of you. What does that actually mean, in real facts and real numbers? I've put together ten questions.
Please click here for a fresh edition in the 2026 election quiz series.
