Hadyn Jones: Tea fails to stir up golfing voters

They prefer tees here. Photo / Thinkstock

Opinion

As excited as political journalists, current affairs hosts and the headline writers have been this week over two Johns getting a bit loose lipped over a cup of English Breakfast, the one thing it hasn't done is put Clive Williams off his golf game.

Clive knocked it three feet from the hole on the demanding par three 17th at the Waimakariri Gorge Golf Club then told me matter of factly the whole thing was a sideshow. He's a Labour man too. You think he would be at least a little interested in John Key looking a little rattled for once.

It was the same for the other five in his golfing group. Phil called it amateur dramatics at its worst. He should know, he's from Wales. I can't remember any good dramas coming from the Valleys. They all agreed whatever was said over a cup of tea wouldn't sway their vote.

Off the ladies tees was Phillipa Rivers. It's rude to ask a woman her age, so I'll speculate she's 70 maybe and is as blue as they come. She loves John Key but is honest enough to admit asset sales is the one policy she doesn't like. And that's the thing.

If National hadn't pushed on us the prospect of asset sales, this election really would be over as a contest. That may have been good, we could have saved a few million dollars in election costs, got back to regular programming on the television instead of those party political broadcasts and everyone could have spent next Saturday golfing.

The golf excursion is part of a political poll I'm conducting by driving the length of the country in a campervan interviewing one voter at a time. I'm not sure I'll get around everyone.

In a smoko room at a sawmill on the West Coast I meet Alan Tainui. He tells me he doesn't trust either John or Phil. Alan's 61 and has voted red since his first visit to the polling booth. His dad took him and informed him he could vote for anyone as long as it was Labour. He also voted for prohibition too till his father leaned over and told him what it meant.

Alan knows a thing about life and reproduction, he's got 35 grandkids and can pick a winner when he sees him. John Key, he says with a sigh, will get in again. Then he turns to his stereo and puts on the song he used to sing to his late wife when he had drunk too much.

And as John Rowles winds up for one last chorus, his election analysis ends with "I'd sooner watch grass grow". Well, Alan, the lawns will need mowing next Saturday.