Red all over the show at the moment

Diary of the last 48 hours

7.10am

My radio is full of questions like what now, and what next and what is the mandate?

What were we voting for? You can count the votes a million times but all they will ever tell you is where the voters put their ticks. 

What were we voting for? Maybe protection. Maybe love. Maybe six-lane highways. Maybe respect for Samoa. Maybe respect for the planet. 

What were we voting for? Our reasons are not stated and cannot ever be proven. Once we have the results, it becomes a subject of interpretation without end. 

Boy there’s a lot of it going on at the moment - interpretation - and it carries us directly to the next question: what is the incoming government going to do with its very extremely colossal latitude?

Will they have the nerve to do big transformative things?

And if they find the nerve to do big transformative things will that frighten people off the people who voted for them even though they usually vote National but really like Jacinda?

And should that frighten them off doing any big transformative things ?

And if they do any big transformative things should we maybe pin them to the wall and say why have you done this? Are you not greatly overreaching your mandate?

And if they decide not to do any big transformative things should we maybe pin them to the wall and say what in God's name is wrong with you people you could have done anything at all do you not care about the planet and our future?

No sweat, no problem, get stuck in, nice lady from the cover of Time. Hope you get it right. 

But also: maybe she will take her cue from two phrases she has been using: accelerate our response is the first and build consensus is the second. 

The second can be the absolute enemy of the first, and that's her challenge.

She's actually pretty good at getting everyone on board. I used to see her doing it when she was still in opposition and I’d marvel at her dexterity; the way she could corral and find common cause and let everyone feel they'd been heard.

If we think back to those early weeks of level 4, it was the same capability at work: bringing everyone along, convincing everyone this was the way to go and that they were a part of this.

Maybe not everyone had it, but it really did feel to me like we were in it together and that was pretty bloody motivating. Not to break the rule I just set out about not being able to tell what people voted for, but: that. I reckon a lot of people were voting for that. 

It helps if you're all in peril and the peril seems imminent. We were, and it did, and we all came on board. 

And oh look, here we are again presented with vast peril, and an opportunity to act. Yes I mean the climate crisis; I'm not going to strain the point, and yes it's coming at us fast as hell. But frustratingly, that’s not how it can seem to the naked eye.

That’s where it would be nice to see her go, the Prime Minister, with those formidable communication skills: really paint the fuck out of a picture of immense and grave imminent threat of climate crisis; lay out how we’re going to make the necessary changes. Then go for the doctor, or in her words, accelerate the response: follow all the excellent possibilities for transforming the economy as we go, with jobs for everybody, and excite and motivate the hell out of people with a common sense of purpose. And while she’s at it, put the Greens all over the show helping to make it come real, because they can turn out programmes and policies like nobody’s business.  

Undergirding all of this is the question of how much it costs to borrow money, because at the moment the answer is: bugger all, relatively, historically speaking. Why the hell not go full tilt? If you don't fix the climate problem, how much you owe is going to be the least of your worries.

Also, it would only add to the loathing she attracts from the Murdoch press and other tools of the patriarchy and carbon-emitting enemies of the planet, which would be a nice bonus really. Someone in Australia wrote today: 

We are truly so poorly served by our dominant media, which sees itself as a priestly caste, but is mostly a kindergarten.

Principally, though, I'm into the whole saving our economy and our environment thing. That can't happen too fast or too soon. 

Also, the PM could do big big things for housing by vastly accelerating supply. There's wide support for doing that; the disagreement only arises once you reach the question of who's doing the supplying. But whatever. Let's have abundant supply to an extent that it drains off the poisonous preoccupation with that part of the economy to the exclusion of so many other productive possibilities. And let's also make moves towards a better system of tax and sharing the wealth by making more things free.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself with excitement. Let's talk about those other ideas in the next few days of newsletters.

Photo @michaelwood

7.20am

The pop-up leader of the opposition is still a pop-up leader so don't you dare call Judith Collins a non-survivor. 

If she should decide to go I will miss an endearing tic. Her chats by phone begin with a surprised Oh hello Susie! like she hasn't been on hold while they wait for Corin to finish yarning with some rugby bloke and she's pleasantly delighted to find it’s Susie Ferguson from the radio. I just like the way she keeps the panto going in the little details. 

Anyway, she’s still here, steering a course forward for her motley crew and yesterday there was a press conference where she got absolutely stuck in, doing her dogged best to rearrange our understanding of everything we had seen with our own eyes.

Here's a little secret she says, we were nearly winning but the second lockdown stuffed us. And actually that leak last week, that cost us 5%. She might not show much excitement for public transport but she sure likes throwing people under buses.

This is some Olympic quality revisionism. Where is poor old Hamish Price and the dumbest walkabout ever? And where is the stuff like that drive-by fat shaming and oh what else was there? She just was cramming so much into each day.

She still needs to be right about everything. She says of her three months that she had a very short runway. A fuller more accurate expression of that proposition might have been: Presented with such a short runway I elected to throw rocks at the planes.

She makes the point, repeatedly, that they had asked her to do this job. She had not sought it, not like the other times when she had. But also no, she's not now going to ask if she can stop.

Hey Siri, how at the moment can you achieve absolute silence? 

Siri: I recommend you ask any ten people to name a good choice to take over as leader of the opposition.

It seems to me, the best option might be to ask if they can have Megan Woods on Tuesdays and Fridays. Second best would be to try Successful Businessman Christopher Luxon. 

There is a huge acknowledged problem of course and that is he will look just like that last bald guy. I reckon he needs to consider wigs - lavish lustrous affairs, a different one each day, the way Bob Moodie used to a hundred years ago with kaftans. Everyone knew Bob from the Police Association for his delightful selection of kaftans. Chris in the wigs could be a wild thing. Or failing that a different cap each day with a message on it so it's always clear what National stands for that day. Just don't have them all saying ROADS.

1.00pm

No new cases of Covid-19 today, either community or at the border. That includes some close contacts of yesterday's case. Good.

It's slippery as hell, this virus. If we keep doing the damn scanning and staying home if we’re sick and getting tested, maybe we can keep things the way they are. We can feel comfortable, just as long as we never get comfortable.

3.35pm

Making a list.

Things I've learned since the election

1. Gerry Brownlee may actually be feeling chastened.

2.  The insult machine at the National Party still has plenty of horsepower, at least when Rangitata campaign chairwoman Alison Driscoll is cranking the handle, in this excellent account from Matthew Littlewood.

    3.  Blenheimer is still a thing. And it’s red. Red all over the show at the moment.