The Power of One

I refuse to take any­thing ser­i­ously before the Budget, so instead let’s look at the bit play­ers, polit­ic­al parties with an MP count of one… or less.

Peter Dunne Party

The man who in 2013 faced more accus­a­tions of intern­al affairs than any oth­er politi­cian has been appoin­ted Min­is­ter of Intern­al Affairs, in the most non-iron­ic­al iron­ic appoint­ment since Labour made Win­ston Peters Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs.

Then again, Peter Dunne is the old one-man army known as United Future, so per­haps irony will be his 2014 forte.

Con­ser­vat­ive Party

‘Con­ser­vat­ive Party’ sounds like a fancy way of say­ing ‘cup of tea’, but those are a big deal on the polit­ic­al right.

Colin Craig plays polit­ic­al poker like it’s Snap, and is a less cool ver­sion of Kim Dot­com, but any­thing can hap­pen once he starts talk­ing. The Bilbo Bag­gins of Rod­ney cer­tainly has ambi­tions to break into Par­lia­ment, with his dar­ing sound bites and ‘old school’ values/policies. If he can just get past that Moon land­ing first…

ACT 4.0

You’d think the Nation­al cor­por­a­tion would swal­low up ACT’s small busi­ness, but it’s a new year with new lead­ing men.

Dr Jam­ie Whyte, middle-aged philo­soph­er, takes the reins of the drunk uncle that is ACT (A Coali­tion Time-bomb?), while bright-eyed Dav­id Sey­mour gives Gareth Hughes hope that someone who looks young­er than him may finally be elec­ted to Parliament.

Inter­net Party

Sure, he launched a polit­ic­al party and a pop album in the same week and no one can tell which one was the press stunt for the oth­er, but there’s the slim­mest of pos­sib­il­it­ies Kim Dot­com could become the Win­ston of the Youth. We’ll know how ser­i­ous his chances are by how much inform­a­tion the GCSB sud­denly finds itself able to release about him.

Don’t expect cracks to show under fire either. He’s a com­puter gamer through and through, and neither politi­cians nor the press gal­lery can match the fero­city of Call of Duty for­ums. Also, he’s a billionaire.

Mana

The Wol­ver­ine of New Zea­l­and polit­ics has a small dilemma in that no one really wants to form a gov­ern­ment with him on board. And yet Hone Harawira’s com­bin­a­tion of per­son­al­ity and travel (you’d be sur­prised where Mana turns up) makes him almost more of a suc­cessor to Parekura Horo­mia than Shane Jones.

If that sounds a bit too sym­path­et­ic, it’s prob­ably because I’m excited by the pro­spect of his lieu­ten­ants get­ting in: John Minto, Annette Sykes and a return­ing Sue Brad­ford are such forces of nature, people might actu­ally watch Par­lia­ment TV.

Some form of Pasi­fika Party that involves Dav­id Tua

A Pacific-focused party has been tried before, but not with the God of Pacific Boxing.

As with the Maori vote, don’t assume Pasi­fika can’t rally or are blindly loy­al to any­one. Dav­id Tua’s got more media train­ing than any politi­cian, and a knack for self-deprec­a­tion. With the right back­ing, and in the right seat (say it with me), “he could be a contender”.