On Friday I was having dinner with friends in the foodhall of SkyCityMetro (or whatever they call that Logan’s Run place next to Aotea Square) when Don Brash walked past, with the Asian wife he mentions occasionally to prove that he isn’t racist. They went to Burger King, then upstairs, presumably to see a movie. He didn’t have stormtroopers like the Mayor, but presumably at least one of the other people walking past was some kind of undercover imperial security agent.
This got me thinking about politics, which is only natural when you see the Leader of the Opposition going to a movie. It’s also natural to speculate about which movie he might be going to see, but you can only get so far along that line without conducting the sort of research that can cause an Incident, and my companions had got caught up in a discussion of the tactics involved in competitive rock-paper-scissor tournaments at an international level, so I stuck with thinking about politics.
In the last few elections I’ve voted for either the Alliance or the Progressives. The Alliance are pretty much defunct, and the Progressives have become a vestigial appendage to the Labour Government, to the point that they are now commonly referred to as “Jim Anderton”. This isn’t really a bad thing, as far as I’m concerned. Labour has changed since the 1980s, and it’s no longer the party that Jim left. After a couple of terms of stable, moderate government, I’d be happy to vote for Labour this year.
Except for one thing. If Labour makes any noises about a coalition with New Zealand First, they can forget about my vote. I want to see them take a clear line against the nasty immigrant-bashing politics of Winston Peters, as well as the anti-Maori slant of Don Brash.
I don’t always agree with the Green party, and I didn’t like the scare-mongering about GE foods they stooped to at the last election. Normally I’d say that I’m much closer to Labour in political preferences than the Greens. But at least they’re clearly against racism, and I’ll vote for them if I don’t see Labour making the same stand in public.
I remember fondly a moment during the 1999 election when a reporter asked Helen Clark, leaving her home to formally declare victory, whether she would consider forming a coalition with New Zealand First. She just laughed. I’d like her to do that again now.