Mike Williams
As a tumultuous year in politics finally begins to wind down, the award for the silliest piece of political writing was at the last moment snatched away from all of those academics and political commentators who confidently predicted a fourth term for the National-led government by a sublime piece of one-eyed claptrap.
Please imagine a short drum roll.
The award for transcendent journalistic idiocy for 2017 goes to the anonymous leader writer who penned the following (and got it past the normally vigilant producers of what is usually a credible publication).
"The National Party has had a month to get over the disappointment of winning the general election but losing the partners it needed to continue governing." You may want to read that paragraph again.
Yes, our valedictorian is telling us that the National Party won the 2017 election. This would be news to Bill English who is no longer Prime Minister and to Jacinda Ardern who is.
It will also be a revelation to all of those National Party, Maori Party and United Future ministers with slashed salaries who are doing without their posh offices, state-funded Wellington houses and 24/7 limo services and to the Labour, New Zealand First and Green Party ministers who have inherited all of those goodies.
It would also be news to the Governor-General who accepted Jacinda Ardern's assurance that she could command a majority in Parliament and appointed her PM.
This assertion is, of course, partisan nonsense.
It's unbecoming of a major publication and at the very least reveals an appalling and unforgiveable ignorance of how our political system works and has worked since the advent of the Mixed Member Proportional system of electing our Parliament 21 years ago.
Although the quote above was published behind the veil of anonymity, this sounds very much like to work of a columnist who, whenever the National Party dipped in the polls in recent years, wrote pieces asserting that the party with the most votes inevitably had some kind of moral right to govern.
I thought I'd corrected this particular piece of ignorance some years ago by sending this person the results of a German state election where the Social Democrat and Greens Parties formed a government after coming second and third behind the Christian Democrats.
If it is, indeed, the same scribbler, further education on the definition of what is a "win" in politics may be necessary.
If we have butchered the definition of winning an election to mean simply getting a plurality or more votes than anyone else then Hilary Clinton won the US Presidency last year and Bill Rowling's Labour Party won general elections in 1978 and 1981.
As the redoubtable Sir Robert Muldoon once informed us after one of these polls, it's really quite simple; if you want to know who won, just look at who's the Prime Minister.
Across the Tasman, the vast majority of Australians breathed a sigh of relief when the awful Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party flopped in last Saturday's Queensland state election.
Picked to win up to 10 seats and have the balance of power in the Queensland State Parliament, preliminary results have Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk's Labor Party re-elected and retaining its narrow majority, with the One Nation Party winning just one seat.
One Nation also failed to live up to its polling expectations in the West Australian state elections held in March of this year offering the possibility that some people tell pollsters they intend supporting Pauline Hanson's followers but then lack the stomach to do so when faced with the ballot paper.
The big losers in that poll were Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's conservative coalition parties and this will be another nail in the coffin of what looks like a Federal Government on its last legs.
In one interesting parallel with the recent New Zealand election, there was a major surge in early voting.
The Green Party also had high hopes of winning a seat in the Queensland Parliament and, with a significant number of postal votes still be included in election night counts in an electorate where they have done well, may yet get their wish.
In Australia voting is compulsory and the message seems to be that many voters just want to get elections out of their way and off their radar as quickly as they can.
In what may soon turn into a divisive issue in this country, the Victorian State Parliament this week enacted a law allowing voluntary euthanasia for terminally ill people in limited circumstances.
This has been very controversial and finally passed into law after more than 100 hours of debate.
This will be the first Australian state to have a voluntary euthanasia law though there are proposals in other states - as in New Zealand - to enact similar laws.