Online only
Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics is a weekly, mostly satirical column on politics that appears on listener.co.nz on Friday mornings.
American President Donald Trump yesterday announced a campaign to end foreigners buying American products, the fake news is reporting.
“It’s going to be so popular. So beautiful,” Trump said before an audience of complete morons seated in the Rose Garden at the White House. “The rest of world is unfair. So unfair. So we’re putting America First. We’re going to make America great again by making sure the rest of world never buys another thing from America again. It a beautiful plan. So beautiful. America is going to be winning. Winning like never before. Today is Aberration Day for America!”
World leaders, including the Prime Minister of New Zealand Christopher Luncheon, issued statements lauding the President’s decision. One called it “great news for anyone who has ever had the misfortune to own an American car, eat American food or drink American wine”.
The “Don’t Buy American” campaign is expected to take effect at midnight, with New Zealand businesses taking American-made products off their shelves by as early as next week.
It is also understood that Trump’s plan will mean American tourists will no longer be welcomed by the rest of the world.
World stock markets rose to record levels as the rest of the world digested the move, which would see American chainstores and fast-food outlets close throughout the rest of the world as world consumers stopped buying American.
One consumer told this reporter “This is our Liberation Day from American crap.”
Which is NZ’s looniest party? You be the judge!
Hello and welcome to the country’s hottest new gameshow, Who Wants To Be New Zealand’s Looniest Political Party?
I am your host, Exasperated Voter, and on this week’s show, four of our most crackpot political parties will compete for the ultimate parliamentary booby prize: being New Zealand biggest loons.
Our first contestant is the Greens. Once a party of friendly, dope-smoking tree-huggers who wanted to save the planet from itself, they are now a tut-tutting “rainbow” of whatever causes are dominating the looney left’s social media feeds.
And just when you think the party couldn’t be more out there, its junior MPs have found whole new ways to disassociate from reality. First Tamatha Paul gave the country the benefit of her 28 years of “lived experience” and appeared to call for the abolition of our police, apparently because some people don’t like them. As an encore she then claimed most of those in our prisons were there for “non-violent” crimes, proving that despite the Greens’ holy-than-thou attitude to honesty in politics, she isn’t beyond letting the facts get in the way of promoting The Cause.
Then came Benjamin Doyle who, through a past private social media post made public, inadvertently introduced the vile word “bussy” — a portmanteau of “boy” and “pussy” — into the lexicon of the nation, most of whom don’t care to think about men’s anuses at all, no matter what the tutting Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick and her furrowed brow say about the “context”.
Doyle also became the inadvertent generator of the biggest, fattest, Greenest irony of the week: after the poor dear received death threats, the Greens complained to Parliament’s security officials, who then went to, you guessed it, the hated police. Nobody tell Tamatha Paul!
So that’s the Greens. Are they looniest party? You be the judge!
Our next contestant on Who Wants To Be New Zealand’s Looniest Political Party? is everybody’s least favourite drunk-uncle-at-a-party party, NZ First. Formerly for old people who believed that political correctness had gone mad, it has now matured into a party for old people who believe “wokeness” has gone mad.
A sort whack-job yin to the bonkers yang of the Greens, NZ First believes the best way to save the country is by digging it up and selling it, while also trying to criminalise people for using the “wrong” toilet for their sex, while also effectively giving tobacco giant Philip Morris a giant tax break in the, er, fight against smoking.
Is NZ First the looniest party of them all? You be the judge!
Our third contestant this week is Te Pāti Māori, though what it should really be called is Te Pāti Go Fuck Yourself.
These Rebels With A Moko have been in the naughty corner for a while now for stuff you couldn’t make up. The party is at the centre of several investigations into an alleged misuse of census and covid vaccine data for electoral purposes, and last month police issued a formal warning over the party’s failure to file, like any normal party, an audited financial statement to the Electoral Commission last year.
This week, things got madder still. Like a crank refusing to accept a court judgment because they’re a “sovereign citizen” and “the law doesn’t apply to them”, Te Pāti Māori announced its refusal to attend a hearing of parliament’s Privileges Committee about three of its MPs’ performing a haka as a protest in the House last year.
Why? Because the committee is a “kangaroo court”, according to Te Pāti Māori, though it seems more likely the party has the hump because the committee won’t let it turn a straightforward disciplinary hearing into a grandstanding trial of the century to prove to party supporters that it’s still sticking it to The Man. Instead, the party will hold an “independent hearing” of its own about the protest. Is your own court the same as a kangaroo court?
Could Te Pāti Māori be the looniest party of them all? You be the judge!
Our final contestant in this episode of Who Wants To Be New Zealand’s Looniest Political Party? is Act, the party which, in short order, has delivered an exploding school lunches programme, has had an ex-president sent to the slammer for sex crimes, thinks sushi is “woke” and reckons Jesus would probably be an Act supporter.
Is Act the looniest party of the all? You be the judge! The phone lines are now open. Call 0800 VOTE LOON.
Coneheads or Boneheads?
And now from the file marked “How to be popular with people who moan about everything”, we have the government’s announcement this week that it is setting up a taxpayer-funded phone line to dob in road cones. Yes, road cones.
“New Zealanders really hate road cones,” declared Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden, who is a sort of cross between an Ayn Rand character and a Stepford wife.
First, they came for the safer driving speeds. Then they came for the road cones. Watch out high-vis vests and stop-go signs.
Political quiz of the week
What is National MP Andrew Bayly doing behind the wheel of this fancy digger?
A/ Taking another taxpayer-funded holiday.
B/ Digging a deeper hole for himself.
C/ Burying his political career.
D/ Retraining for life after politics.
