Our final political destination – sheer volume trumps clash of ideas

Joel Maxwell is a senior writer with Stuff’s Pou Tiaki team.

OPINION: It is in 2023’s election campaign we see the natural destination of the last eight or nine years: the heckler-as-candidate. Politics at its crudest – not as a contest of ideas, rather as a battle of decibels. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

On the past weekend Labour leader Chris Hipkins seems to have arrived at the Ōtara markets in Tāmaki like one of those seal pups that took a wrong turn through a drainage channel and ended up in a paddock in Matamata – bright-eyed, enthused, utterly out of place. Set to be gently tranquilised for relocation. Possibly after October.

Apparently Hipkins was followed around by supporters/protesters from the weirdly pluralised Freedoms NZ party, several of whom were bicycle-mounted. Some guy actually standing for Vision NZ, a sub-party run by Destiny Church (yeah, Freedoms NZ is like a Russian nesting doll inside an onion, it has “umbrella parties and affiliates” as described on its website) was drowning out Hipkins and his entourage through a loudspeaker.

I hope his material was better than Destiny Bishop Brian Tamaki’s comedy in the press release announcing the launch of the party’s law and order policy this month.

“Labour has given us two ‘CRIME MINISTERS’ [sic] instead of Prime Ministers,” Tamaki says in the release.

As something of a satirical writer myself, I have to admit to chasing the dragon of comedy: the often-futile, relentless urge to hear the sweet song of laughter. Every now and again, I lay a hand on that glittering tail, feel the cool tingle of its obsidian scales and inhale its pungent chuckle as a well-crafted comedic sentence tumbles out of the abyss, on to the page.

Horse crap, all of it, I thought, tears of mirth streaming down my face at this audacious comedy. Well, I was certainly crying, anyway.

Tears might have been a mistake, though, as the most striking part of Tamaki’s announcement was his desire to create a “Minister for Men”.

This minister would be a good Kiwi bloke “that can restore masculinity, restore fatherhood and a man’s responsibility for his family”. I know, I know, there’s a minister for women. But I’m not sure if Jan Tinetti was tasked with battling a femininity drought.

Who, I asked myself, could fill the pleather power suit of this macho minister? Tradie, princess rescuer, Super Mario? The surviving Bushwhacker?

I don’t want to make light of Tamaki’s assertion that Māori crime is out of hand and needs a Māori person – himself – to fix it. There is genuine enlightenment in his idea that any solution needs to come with the tenderness of “rehabilitation and support”. But when he rails against Māori elites, and how politicians are the “real criminals”, I can’t help but yawn.

I’m just not sure parliament is equipped to restore masculinity to our population. How can you legislate for a square jaw and rough-tough attitude? Dressing up National’s Christopher Luxon or Hipkins in chunky boots and leather jacket, like latter-day T-Birds – Danny and Kenickie from Grease – isn’t going to help our national cost-of-living crisis.

Freedoms NZ isn’t the only one doing political comedy. Last week ACT Party leader David Seymour was splitting our sides with a golden one-liner about Guy Fawkes-ing a Ministry for Pacific Peoples office. The joke was culture wars fodder again. Of course, he could crack any joke he likes. But should he? Things are getting a bit crazy out there, and I’m not sure if there aren’t some who might interpret such punchlines as an invitation to start punching.

The problem with men, you see, is that we can’t take a joke any more. We only dish out comedy.