Fun from the fringes

Dav­id Seymour’s ‘See-Mo’ Moustache

For Movem­ber, Sey­mour grew what could only be described as ‘The Epsom Ban­dito’. Like a slightly uncool Mag­num PI, it was per­fect for a man look­ing to be the annoy­ing stick-poker to the Left. Then, like the prom­ise of a sur­plus, it was gone almost as if it was nev­er there, and we are poorer for this MP’s lack of mous­tache stay­ing power. Surely it makes sense for a cham­pi­on of charter schools to look less like an optim­ist­ic 31-year-old MP, and more like a slightly bit­ter 40-some­thing prin­cip­al. Let’s get the chant going: “See-mo! See-mo! See-mo!”

Nicki Kaye — Prin­cess of Auckland

Maybe it is actu­ally her looks, or her earn­est­ness — pos­sibly her age (35 this month) — but people keep under­es­tim­at­ing the two-term cham­pi­on of Auck­land Cent­ral. And by people, I mean her own party. Kaye’s been pushed hard by Labour lead­er 2025 Jacinda Ardern, but has still held down what was once a big red fort­ress since 2008. Yet there she sits, num­ber 19, Min­is­ter of ACC, Civil Defence and Youth Affairs — which seems a bit of a waste at the pos­sible halfway mark of the Fifth Nation­al Gov­ern­ment. Like Seymour’s mous­tache, it’s time for Kaye to step up and show… some­thing… any­thing! Because after six years in Auck­land, she’s man­aged to make argu­ably New Zealand’s loudest elect­or­al seat seem unnat­ur­ally muted.

Don’t men­tion the Alliance

First of all we need a bet­ter name for a red-Green co-op than the Alli­ance, oth­er­wise Jim Ander­ton may die from laughter. Don’t worry about Laila Har­ré; she won’t get the joke. She nev­er does.

We keep hear­ing about how Labour and the Greens need to keep work­ing togeth­er, so maybe it would be good to see them finally fig­ure that out. It’s sea­son three of this strangely angst-rid­den teen drama, so it’s about time the two leads stop snip­ing at each oth­er and just hook up already! Obvi­ously the writers have oth­er ideas, and the power brokers want as many view­ers as pos­sible, but the prob­lem is, if view­ers go through anoth­er sea­son of ‘will they/won’t they’, they’ll just give up on the whole show. Oh wait, they just did.

We just got an MP called ‘Da Rock’

Dar­roch Ball is a New Zea­l­and First list MP for Palmer­ston North, who is a former army officer, whose last name is Ball, and whose first name sounds like ‘The Rock’. Watch this space.