Rodney Hide: PM's pizza exchange shows how politically content we are

We are enjoying an amazing period of political contentment.

There is nothing working us up, not health waiting lists, not unemployment, not immigration, not race.

The Government has not been rocked by scandal, there's been no hint of collapse, there's been no policy change to upset us.

The great bulk of us are getting on with our lives without politics. It's very enjoyable. Politicians leave us alone. We leave them alone.

We are helped by the internet. We click on what we want. We choose our news and filter out the politics. It doesn't interest us.

Politics is now a side-issue despite its huge effect on our lives and our country. We can't affect it, so we switch off. Sport and entertainment are far more interesting.

And so it's become incredibly difficult for politicians to communicate with voters, especially the all-important swing-voters who by their nature are the most uninterested of them all in politics.

The only politician to cut through is President Trump. He is a master tweeter. He reached the entire world, galvanised support and enraged his opponents.

"We must build a wall" and "Mexico will pay". That's political genius. He summarised his policy in tweets that went global.

His genius was not just the brevity but that his tweets were sufficiently controversial to reverberate over and over and then to turn more voters on than they turned off.

The great politicians have always been able to summarise their policy. "We will fight them on the beaches." They clearly define what they are for ... and what they are against. They polarise and they motivate. They shift opinion.

I rate the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Jacinda Ardern. She knows voters don't follow politics and has used social media, her time spent DJ'ing, and being a celebrity to get noticed and to gain support.

She's even dragged the Prime Minister into her field. Ardern and Andrew Little did a soft piece for a woman's magazine. It was a readable and enjoyable piece. The controversial thing was their joint attack on pineapple pizza-topping. They were firmly against.

If I was a tweeter, I would have joined in. Pizza is best with pineapple in my humble view.

And so they had me engaged. It certainly gained my attention more than the all-important fiscal Operating Balance Before Gains and Losses or the fast-tracking policy of an independent Crown entity called the Affordable Housing Authority.

Cooked dinner for the family last night - like if you agree with tinned spaghetti on pizza, writes English. Photo / Supplied via Facebook

Pineapple on pizza is something I understand and know about. It matters to me.

Not to be outdone, the Prime Minister joined in. He took to Facebook to post pictures of his pizza adorned with canned spaghetti and pineapple and what looked like anything else he could think of. It was truly ghastly. If I was on Facebook, I would have reached out to him to explain his crime.

See it works.

I got more engaged over pizza toppings than anything else happening in politics. We truly are politically content.