Kerry Woodham: Vote for Winston and you get other NZ First members? Really?
Voters were 'surprised' to see Andrew Williams get in. Photo / Natalie Slade
The post mortem after the election has been interesting on the radio this week.
The number of people who called to say they didn't realise that voting for Winston would mean other people would get in has been teeth-grindingly extraordinary.
"Sooooo," I've been asking, "when you ticked New Zealand First as your party of choice, what did you want to happen?"
"I just wanted Winston to get in to keep the Government honest," they reply.
"And what about the other members of New Zealand First? Did you know who was on the party list?"
"No," they replied as one. "We just thought we'd be getting Winston."
"I was very surprised to see Andrew Williams get in," one exclaimed. "What's he doing there?" she asked.
I'm sure there are New Zealand First voters who knew exactly what they were doing and what they would be getting but an alarming number think of New Zealand First as a one-man, Winston Peters band.
They all said they thought John Key had been very rude and arrogant about Winston which had swayed them and that backs up what I said last week - although, as a member of the media, I'm also to blame, because they all felt Winston hadn't been given a fair deal by journalists either.
Ah, the cult of personality.
Mind you, the Labour and Greens attack on National over asset sales also seems to have worked. I had a number of people who phoned to say that they'd voted Labour because they didn't want National selling off all our country.
One worked for Air New Zealand and he said he and his colleagues were concerned about what would happen to their jobs when the airline was sold.
"It's only a partial sale," I said. "The Government maintains the controlling share." That was news to him - as it was to a number of other callers.
Maybe it's time to make political studies compulsory at school to see if we can get an informed electorate. But then, really, we wouldn't get the results we get now and where's the fun in that?
If Labour/Greens attack had worked (as you say), National would not be in charge.
Only a partial sale? Yes, for now. There's something called "the camel's nose in your tent" that we all instinctively fear. Plus even a partial sale, when it barely raises any more funds than keeping the assets in our own hands, is as shortsighted and skimming as all of National's policies to date.
I expressed for example that for one week John Armstrong used his column expressly for the purpose of banging on about Teagate - I lost count after 4 or 5 articles he wrote on the same topic in that one week.
Other commentators were either biased to one side or the other, or merely paraphrased the party press releases. The media did a very poor job at independent in depth analysis, coupled with simplification so that most people would have the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions. You are now just highlighting how poor that effort was with a few examples.
Perhaps you were being ironic. I never thought of this whole process as fun.
From following the herald website, the general impression to me is that giving attention to these 'fun' elements is far more important than the real issues, and is partly responsible for the uninformed electorate you speak of.
Thanks.