If the departing Director-General of Health is mulling a new career in politics, then James Elliott has the perfect opportunity for him.
Oh Ashley! Say it ain’t so. We hardly knew ye.
Ashley Bloomfield is stepping down as Director-General of Health. He will be greatly missed, to use one of his own expressions, “across the motu”. Either that or he won’t be missed at all. Ashley Bloomfield is revered or reviled, praised or hazed, hero or zero - depending on whether or not you listen to Newstalk ZB.
Covid Response Minister Chris Hipkins is one of those who’s going to miss him. As news of Ashley’s departure spread, Chris was rumoured to have to said “There will be widespread sadness at Ashley’s leaving. It’s not spreading it on too thick to say that his influence over our Covid response has spread far and spread wide. But now it’s time for him to spread his wings in search of new horizons. I for one am looking forward to a super spread at his leaving function adding to my own middle age spread. I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be a superspreader event.”
Across the aisle a politician who’s not going to miss Ashley is ACT leader David Seymour. He said that Ashley has been “a disaster from start to finish”, and if that phrase is familiar to you that’s because Seymour lifted it from the judges’ comments - every week - about his efforts on Dancing With The Stars.
Ashely’s leaving function is going to be one of the social events of the year. David Parker, Una Jagose, and Dame Cindy Kiro will be in attendance - the A-G, S-G and G-G all there to farewell the D-G who may sign off by singing the Bee Gees. He’s covered “Stayin’ Alive” before but apparently intends to sing “Friday I’m in Love” by who else but The Cure. Newstalk ZB listeners will instead hear an overdub of the Neil Young classic “The Needle and the Damage Done”. We shouldn’t underplay the importance of Ashley’s last gig. If he can hold a tune then he could parlay his fame, or Newstalk ZB notoriety, into a new career as one half of a Proclaimers tribute band. He wouldn’t even need to buy new glasses.
By my calculations all you need to do to win a by-election in New Zealand is to get a quilting bee, a croquet team and two-thirds of a book club to vote for you, provided there isn’t any common membership across those three groups, in which case you’ll need to wrangle some extra votes from an operatic society.
Or, maybe Ashley’s mulling over a new career in politics. If so then I have the perfect opportunity for him. The Tauranga by-election is going to be held on June 18. This is the electorate seat vacated by Simon Bridges who, incidentally, also sings a great cover, of the Cockney Rejects song “Oi, Oi, Oi”.
Standing in a by-election is an easy way to get into Parliament. However, writing about standing in a by-election is probably an easy way to get you to stop reading this column. But hear me out. Based on exhaustive study of New Zealand by-election voting statistics, which took 10 minutes and was exhausting, I have concluded that there are more by-election statistics in New Zealand than there have been by-election votes. By my calculations all you need to do to win a by-election is to get a quilting bee, a croquet team and two-thirds of a book club to vote for you, provided there isn’t any common membership across those three groups, in which case you’ll need to wrangle some extra votes from an operatic society.
Notwithstanding that by-elections in New Zealand suffer from a lack of voters exercising their right of suffrage they have an interesting history involving some notable political leaders. Prime Ministers David Lange, Geoffrey Palmer, and Jacinda Ardern have all won by-elections, albeit at the cost of having to supplement their bed linen with some fairly ugly quilts.
New Zealand’s winningest by-election candidate is Winston Peters who has won two by-elections. He won the Northland by-election in 2015 but his more famous by-election win came in 1993 when, in a stroke of political genius, Winston Peters won the Tauranga by-election after that electorate seat was vacated by none other than Winston Peters.
Could Winston run again in Tauranga in what would be his third by-election tilt? The Beetlejuice theory says yes - summons him three times and he’ll appear.
Genius aside, the more prosaic explanation of the by-line to this by-election was that Winston had resigned from both the National Party and Parliament, and stood in the by-election as an independent. The voter turnout in that by-election was less than 50 percent of the registered electors but Winston got more than 90 percent of that 50 percent cruising to victory over the second-placed candidate Greg Pittams from the McGillicuddy Serious Party. Pittams' strategic blunder was a policy that included kiwifruit in a list of crops (potatoes, carrots, brussel sprouts and turnips) whose cultivation was to be outlawed for reasons unknown. Not a smart move to propose banning kiwifruit when standing for election in Tauranga. How different New Zealand politics might have been if the ban had been limited to just brussel sprouts and turnips.
And if you thought that crop cultivation ban was the most left-field policy on offer to the Tauranga electorate on April 17, 1993 you’d be wrong. Rhona Tengblad was the candidate for the Blokes’ Liberation Front whose policies included selling the Beehive to the US to repay national debt, moving Parliament to Waiheke, and appointing Linda McCartney as an advisor to then Prime Minister Jim Bolger. And she didn’t come last. Some people liked the Linda McCartney idea.
So, could Winston run again in Tauranga in what would be his third by-election tilt? The Beetlejuice theory says yes - summons him three times and he’ll appear. You heard it here first.
Have a peaceful weekend.
