TO: Qiulae ‘‘Q’’ Wong.
RE: An opportunity for the Opportunity Party.
Frankly, Q, I can’t see it rising much above that level between now and the general election in November.
This is a real shame, because if ever New Zealand needed a circuit-breaker party, a political force capable of extracting vitally needed reforms from the established political parties, it is now.
I imagine it is a source of immense frustration to you and your colleagues that what (to your eyes at least) appear to be rational and desperately needed economic and social reforms fail consistently to pique the interest of the voting public.
It must be extremely difficult to resist the temptation to dismiss this lack of interest as evidence of the ‘‘deplorable’’ quality of the electorate.
I’m sure more than one member of the Opportunity Party has observed with considerable bitterness that ‘‘they don’t deserve us’’.
This temptation should be stoutly resisted. It is foolish to blame the voters for deciding not to throw their support behind what looks and sounds like a think-tank with electoral pretentions.
People don’t vote for think-tanks, Q, they vote for political parties with the smarts to capture lightning in a bottle.
What’s more, those parties must be led by politicians who aren’t just in tune with the zeitgeist but are able play it back to the voters with all the energy and passion of a solo rock guitarist.
Tall order? Of course it bloody is. We are not talking about a university seminar here; we’re not writing a doctoral dissertation.
If you are a political party worthy of the name, then you are in the business of bending the state to your will. That’s a blood-and-guts mission, Q, and right now blood, guts and the Opportunity Party are almost never used in the same sentence.
But they could be, Q, they could be. Consider the zeitgeist. Across the whole world people are turning away in disgust from a system that appears to be mired in cruelty and corruption.
What are they waiting to hear? They’re waiting to hear from someone — anyone — with a plan to replicate the fifth labour of Hercules — which, as everyone knows, was to clean the Augean Stables.
So great was the accumulated filth of these fabled stables that Hercules was required to divert the raging waters of the Alpheus and Peneus Rivers right through them.
That’s what our political system and state bureaucracy are crying out for, Q, a raging torrent of reform.
Get the Opportunity Party up on its soapbox and promise to wash away all the muck piled up by New Zealand’s vast herds of unregulated lobbyists.
Make it a crime for ex-cabinet ministers to walk out of Parliament and into the offices of a PR firm that’s promised to pay them double their present salary.
Take a leaf out of the legislation governing charitable trusts and require all political parties to adopt the same rigorously democratic constitutional template. Fund parties out of the public purse and outlaw political donations.
Make the withholding of official information a criminal offence and promise to send a few senior bureaucrats to jail — pour encourager les autres.
Tell the judiciary to keep its nose out of politics — on pain of finding itself required to do what every other sort of politician is required to do: get elected by their fellow citizens.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the measures required to restore a full measure of democratic accountability to New Zealand’s key institutions. I’m sure you could come up with lots more.
What matters is that you present the Opportunity Party as New Zealand’s very own Hercules: a political force dedicated to clearing away the accumulated corruption of 40 years and making genuine democratic change possible again.
Invite the voters to give the Opportunity Party enough seats to make the formation of a government unwilling to implement its comprehensive plans for cleaning up New Zealand’s political and administrative systems impossible.
Show New Zealanders that you’ve got what it takes to go straight for the establishment’s jugular. Make yourselves worth listening to. Make yourselves worth voting for.
Capture lightning in a bottle.
- Chris Trotter is an Auckland writer and commentator.
