The proportions of power changed changed, but all those polls that Peters continually derided as garbage turned out to be pretty fucking spot-on - the numbers seen on Saturday night were very close to the ones seen in recent polls. Especially the various poll of polls, which were so much more than just a "an intern with a calculator", as some sneered.
So now the entire system of government is stuck in a holding pattern as the various coalition negotiations go on, and it could be weeks before anybody has any idea who is going to be in government, and we all just have to sit back, think of Aotearoa and take it.
In the meantime, as we wait out the inevitable hesitations of the negotiation process, we can expect the usual bullshit - endless analysis and opinion, but nothing to really back it up. Peters' refusal to talk about any possible coalition deals before the election means we're all stumbling around in the goddamn dark, wondering if the old fool will go out as an establishment man to the end, or an unlikely savior for the cool young things on the left. What sort of legacy does Winston want? Does he even know?
And it hasn't taken long for the various under-performers to lash out at the mean old media coverage, for not giving their boring-arse personalities and policies more airtime or page views. While there was some moaning about this kind of thing when the pre-election debates were all going on, Act leader David Seymour was one of the first to lay into the media coverage after the ballots had been counted.
In one of his first post-election interviews, Seymour lambasted RNZ, saying his party suffered due to an over-representation of the bigger parties. If only he had that kind of platform, he reasoned, then everybody would have seen how wonderful and smart Act's policies are, and the voters would have come flocking.
Unfortunately for Seymour - despite whatever they're putting in the water in Epsom - the rest of the country are just never going to vote for somebody who looks and acts exactly like Rimmer from Red Dwarf, (a Lister or Cat candidate, on the other hand...). It didn't matter how much media time he got, nobody really wants a Rimmer in their government.
Seymour also conveniently forgets that there is a fucking shitload of stories on the election campaign to follow up on, along with a massive cast of personalities and an absolute tsunami of press releases . There just isn't room - or enough reporters - to cover it all, and someone has to miss out.
In the end, news editors can only go for the most newsworthy - the biggest election bribes, the most idiotic moves, the most egregious abuses of power. There are more than enough of those to go around. Some politicians have become masters at manipulating this news flow, and it can appear that the media is unable to resist it, but you can't just ignore this shit.
So when, say, Simon O'Connor makes a totally bone-headed comment connecting suicide and euthanasia, then he has to be called out on it. And when Steven Joyce says there is a fiscal hole in Labour's accounts, it doesn't seem to matter that everybody except Bill English says he's wrong, he just sat back smugly and let the doubt take hold.
There is the argument that the news media shouldn't rise to the bait, but all it can do is show the facts - John Campbell's slow, methodical reading of all the economists who said Joyce was full of shit has been an election coverage highlight - and hope like hell that its audience can look at the data and make up their own goddamn minds. Any more hand-holding, and you're in the realm of pure bias, but it's not like this crap is totally ignored..
Still, thank fuck it's almost over, because this is all getting a bit much. The great game of politics and media needs something new, because this relationship is getting old.
- Ron Troupe
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