Many have cynically called politicians "blood suckers", but here at last is a candidate who honestly lives up to that billing.
Some of our members of Parliament could take a leaf from this Dracula’s book and be open and honest about their undead tendencies.
Take Finance Minister Nicola Willis for example.
In her efforts to "right-size" the public service Ms Willis has turned Wellington’s central business district into a ghost town.
A whole generation of skilled civil servants now shuffle around the capital, zombie-like, mechanically submitting their CVs to private sector employers who are forced to brandish a "No Vacancies" sign like a crucifix to turn away the walking dead.
These thousands who have lost their livelihoods as the public service was bled dry/reduced to an affordable level (delete as you see fit) were seemingly forgotten by Ms Willis this week when she commented on the latest unemployment statistics.
The national rate of unemployment was 5.1% in the March 2025 quarter, the highest that figure has been for many years.
Ms Willis is, probably, not some heartless vampire but she surely sounded like one with her tone deaf response that the unemployment rate was lower than predicted and that this was really good news.
Good news in the same way that a vampire had "only" sucked a litre of your blood, when they might have drained two or three litres.
These are people who felt they were contributing meaningfully to the good of the nation, rather than cruelly draining the lifeblood of its public purse through their temerity to turn up to work, earn a living, and feed their families.
Which, ironically, is just what the government urges those who are unemployed to do.
What Ms Willis also conveniently glossed over is that, statistically speaking, that many of these dispelled public servants have the same power of invisibility as vampires.
If they have migrated from New Zealand — as many are doing, in record numbers — or gone into education or training, they do not appear in job seeker numbers.
Perhaps these public service spectres could find work somewhere that their talents would be better utilised . . . like on a horror film being made by Wellington’s acclaimed Weta Workshop.
Oh, hang on . . . Weta is laying off staff too, it turns out.
Never mind, there seems to be plenty of work at the Ministry of Regulation, which just loves to get its teeth stuck into the red stuff . . . red tape that is.
On Thursday he announced that product labelling was the latest in its long list of things he believes are giving New Zealanders a pain in the neck.
There are, apparently, 30 different product labelling regulations in this country — which would probably be about 29 too many so far as Mr Seymour is concerned — and they are now under his beady gaze.
In some cases, he may well have a point. But there is also the potential that labelling requirements which were instituted for entirely understandable safety reasons could be swept away with one fell swoop of Mr Seymour’s sinister cape.
He may be a ministerial Nosferatu, draining the life force from regulations which retained some vitality.
With two such examples out there, perhaps our local lords of darkness should reconsider their ambitions and leave the vampiric politics to the professionals?
