Centre of rejection

The blessed suspension of political chatter ended the other day. For three weeks, the country appeared to run itself, no policy was enacted and even the factory that churns out Act Party press releases went quiet. I am willing to lay odds that a poll of New Zealanders would find we were quite keen on this state of affairs. Polling itself had also been retired, of course, and we liked that, too.

- Russell Brown

There were exceptions. In a running social media performance that was some combination of gleeful wind-up and genuine personal obsession, Newshub's Patrick Gower railed about the three weeks it took to verify special votes after the election, declaring, "We need to cut through red-tape crap like this with a bloody chainsaw." Only on the eve of the final result being announced did Gower allow himself to relax and declare victory. "I systematically dismantled the arguments of most who came at me," he typed triumphantly on X. "Personal opinion."

In my electorate, Auckland's Mt Albert, there was some news. Labour's Helen White held on, but her majority over National's Melissa Lee came down to a mere 20 votes. Lee, understandably, signalled her intention to seek a recount. White, who had probably been aided by lingering sentiment about her predecessor, Jacinda Ardern, had already managed to flush away that goodwill by insisting to a TV news reporter she had done "really well". She clearly had not.