Mr Harawira is a real chip off the old block, and there is no room in our Parliament for such as him. Even Mr Dotcom had the grace to apologise: Internet/Mana had lost support because of him, he said. "The brand Kim Dotcom was poisoned ... "
The contempt for the Internet/Mana party was reflected, too, in the Waiariki result where Annette Sykes, who was second to Te Ururoa Flavell in 2011, came in a distant third.
The best postscript to the Mana debacle that could be seen is the ample backside of an extradited Mr Dotcom, escorted by a couple of US marshals, being ushered aboard an aircraft headed for the US. You can't buy your way into Parliament - not here.
Meanwhile, Mr Flavell is the only elected member of the Maori Party, just a shadow of its former self. On election-night figures he will take with him into Parliament Marama Fox, who stood for Ikaroa Rawhiti. She is an experienced educational leader, who has taught at kohanga reo, kura kaupapa Maori, wharekura, public secondary schooling, and as an adviser in the Ministry of Education.
Mrs Fox, the mother of nine children, says Whanau Ora has always resonated with her whanau, as a model for breeding success. She is, therefore, a fitting successor to the magnificent Tariana Turia.
The Bay of Plenty remains solidly blue from Taupo to north and west of Tauranga, with Rotorua's Todd McClay, Taupo's Louise Upston and Tauranga's Simon Bridges all being comfortably re-elected. And another Todd (Muller) took Bay of Plenty, a new member replacing the retired Tony Ryall.
Dear old Winston Peters and his NZ First have been consigned once again to the opposition benches and will take no part in Government. So I guess he will do what he always has done and spend three years holding up the workings of Parliament with interminable points of order.
The Greens, thank God, have made no progress, getting just 10 per cent of the vote and not the 15 they were aiming for. They, too, will have no say in government, and it is to be hoped they're on the way out.
As for Labour, it is in for some very painful soul-searching, but they can take heart from the election of Stuart Nash in Napier - the great-grandson of that redoubtable former Labour Prime Minister of the late 1950s, Sir Walter Nash.
Perhaps he can help to engineer a return of the Labour Party to what it once was - the Labour Party. As for the bumble-fingered, tangle-footed David Cunliffe, one has to wonder.
On radio on Sunday he said that while his party's result was "not a great" one, it was also "not a result that is all bad for us either". The guy must be deaf and blind.
And my unease: The people, ever wary of change, have voted overwhelmingly for "steady as she goes" and "more of the same". What does that mean for those who live in poverty, for children who are hungry and inadequately-clothed, for the unemployed and the low-paid, for those who can't afford to buy their own homes? More of the same?
Garth George is a veteran newspaper journalist, retired and living in Rotorua.
garth.george@hotmail.com
