I’m sure it is obvious from my stitches, but I am a raging leftie. The election result is not ideal, but I kept coming back to an excellent thread on the platform formerly known as Twitter by Nandor Tanczos. You can read the whole thing here but the main bit that had me feeling a bit better about the way things were heading, was this:
If we do get a National / Act / possibly NZF coalition, it is hard to imagine it not being completely dysfunctional. National appears to have little clue about how they would run the country and Act doesn’t seem to care. Can David Seymour transition from political troll to responsible member of the executive? It seems unlikely. At least Winston Peters has a record of delivering real (if erratic) gains. So a National led government will probably be short-lived. That is much better for the country than a Labour win this year and a potentially more stable National / Act government at the next. The gameplan is clear. We need to campaign hard to make sure the Greens capitalise on falling Labour support and come in with the largest caucus they have yet seen.
As I was watching the election night coverage with my kids I very quickly saw how things were going overall so I stopped looking at the things that were going badly and focused on what I think is good.
I knew our Maungakiekie electorate was going back to National because a lot of people in this area are racist and sexist so when there’s a choice of a white man in a blue shirt, there’s no way they’re going to vote for the competent brown woman. It sucks that there are 20 people in my electorate who hate trans people so much they voted for the Women’s Rights Party, but almost 13% of my neighbours party voted Green, so that’s nice. I’m going to spend the next three years helping out where I can in my community, supporting people who need help and working to make things just a little bit better where I live.
I likened the Tāmaki electorate to voting to eat dog poo or voting to eat vomit; both options suck so it was good to see most of the Labour and Green voters vote for the Labour candidate who had no chance there, vote. Congratulations Act on winning their first1 electorate seat, I guess.
Speaking of Green votes, Dunedin was looking so good early in the night and the vote for Ricardo in Mt Albert was pretty solid. Melissa and Helen can duke it out for that seat on special votes this time and next time Ricardo is sure to come through the middle and get another electorate seat for Green.
Tamatha Paul and the Green team did such a good job in Wellington Central, and Julie Anne Genter taking Rongotai and Chlöe Swarbrick retaining Auckland Central says great things about the solid Green ground campaign and young urban voters.
The best bit of the night for me was the Māori electorates though. Seeing Te Pāti Māori go from one electorate and two MPs last time to four electorates is awesome. Polls said Tākuta Ferris wasn’t going to win. I’m not sure if it was his excellent performance in The Press debate or what, but that was a great win in Te Tai Tonga.
Huge congratulations to Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke who was amazing in the youth debate and won the Hauraki-Waikato seat last night.
Unseating Nanaia Mahuta in Hauraki-Waikato is massive and although we’re losing a great and very experienced MP with Nanaia leaving, having a representative voice for young Māori in parliament is exactly what we need. I’m really looking forward to seeing what a stong Māori voice in parliament brings in the coming term and I’m hopeful that we can drown out the racism from the right.
If you want to stitch the quote from Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, the pattern is below for paying subscribers.
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