Chrisis… I think I’ve mentioned the word in an article before, but to rip the bias tape off and walk through the door in broad daylight: I don’t think Labour really knows what they’re doing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I also don’t think National knows what they’re doing either… obviously.
I mean, Luxon’s inability to answer without working through “Well what I’ll say… What I’m gonna say to you… Look well all we’ve got to say to kiwis…” has become an essential component to any impression of him, the way a tiny butthole mouth and baby hands are essential to a Donny J.T. impersonator. I mean, the spinoff counted twenty-six utterings in one sitting as he got grilled by Jack Tame, that can’t be healthy for anyone; We reached out to an addiction specialist to see how Luxon might be able to kick the habit, and they declined to comment… So I reached out to an ex-girlfriend of mine who practices witchcraft instead, Luxon is a cancer, and she said water signs are the least likely to take accountability for their actions.
Not to mention National’s recent reshuffle, Chris Bishop has been on the down-down-down, first car gets a wheel yanked off it, then he gets dumped from his job as Campaign Chair, and now twitter user EveningMoons is alleging that they “saw [Bishop] getting head from a trans sex worker in his shitty bitmoji car outside Queensgate,” the twitter user also said “May God murder my Children if I’m lying.” Obviously we can’t actually confirm whether this is true or not, but if it is, do we hate the player or hate the game?
Whispers of a plot to oust Luxon… Bishop getting his little Bishop bashed… The National party has their own crisises – is it cri-see..? But what about Labour, oh Labour – remember when I said I didn’t know what they were doing?
I was sat, buzzed and watching the 15th of April’s broadcast of Three News. On screen was Chippy, in a food bank. Getting pressed a little bit by the reporter, he was asked whether he would consider committing to more funding for food banks; The leader of the Labour party’s genius response was “We’re obviously working through that at the moment […] that is something that the current government should actually be considering”…………..OK…………
Look, Chris (Hipkins btw): The current government you’re talking about has wreaked DOGE type destruction upon an already austerity riddled public service with upper management that has been catching the second-hand smoke of hard right market fundamentalism for decades.
If Hipkins really considers himself a social democrat, a member of our left, when are we going to see the Labour party understand that this damage isn’t something that can be wound back, and start putting forward actual plans to move through it? How are we going to rebuild after austerity?
Is the public gonna put trust in a cryer to get us through that? Just saying.
Maybe this is, like, some Sun Tzu art of war ‘do nothing and win’ strategy, but if that’s the case then I don’t know if I want them to win! I mean, look man, the current government loves to do this blame game shit, my dad loves to do this blame game thing, too – “National’s just trying to clear the debts Labour racked up” – but Hipkins has decided to fight fire with fire: He basically refused to give any outright ideas as to what we should do about the fuel crisis in an article from NZ Herald. The genius opposition leader also said that he’d ‘avoid wholesale repeal of coalition policies’ on the basis that this was economically harmful. Where does that lead us? What policies are considered worthy of repeal or not, how does Labour guarantee that the following National government won’t repeal the policies that they introduce? What happens when new policy clashes with previous government policy that wasn’t deemed worthy of being repealed?
Is Hipkins – is Labour – really content to get in this election purely off of how ratshit NACTFirst has been? It doesn’t really seem like they want to come off as an attractive option to Kiwis, just an option that might stink a little less than National.
The most appealing part of a potential Labour government is that they will probably end up co-governing with The Greens and TPM, but even then, what could that lead to besides The Greens having to haggle with the Labour party bureaucracy to try and get something resembling progressive policy through the door.
I keep hearing that it really doesn’t matter, because here in Aotearoa we vote for parties, not persons, but that’s not really true, is it?
The discussions we have about politics tend to get centered around the avatars these parties put forward, with Seymour, Swarbrick, Peters, Hipkins, and Luxon meant to act as the embodiment of their respective parties.
When the embodiments of the two major parties in our country are pussyfooting, timid losers, who the hell are we supposed to turn to?
We asked our readers what they like most about the two Chrises.
72% of voters said what they liked most about Luxon was his expert answer evasion skills, followed by 23% feeling pride in him being our first real deal skinhead prime minister. The remaining 5% said that they liked his firm lead of the current coalition government. Chippy didn’t fare much better! Half of fans most appreciated the speed at which he does nothing, closely followed by 46% admiring his ginger mane, and a dismal 4% thinking he stands as fierce opposition.
So it seems like students don’t really have that much faith in another classic match of Red Vs Blue, and why should they? Hipkins and Luxon don’t seem to be focused on very much besides betting on kiwis thinking that these are the only real options we have. But we live in an era of spectacle, where influencers can make or break elections, and what are National doing? Impact font memes? Hipkins is standing in front of a camera delivering empty platitudes about an ‘affordable’ New Zealand? We just watched Zohran Mamdani become the mayor of New York through a wildfire social media campaign, why isn’t his fellow self-described Social Democrat, Chris Hipkins, connecting with us where it matters?
