As Parliament returns, so does the Wellington Fringe Festival. So in the spirit of fringe, here are some small performances that James Nokise hope will capture an audience’s attention. Illustration by Annabelle Archibald

Fun from the fringes

Political Animal_1502

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.