US not alone with having weird politics

US vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz’s use of “weird” to describe his opponents gained traction all over the world. Here in Aotearoa/New Zealand, we are on the fast-track to our own world-first “peak weird”. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres says that looking for new oil and gas is signing away our future. Our PM agrees, while simultaneously allowing new oil and gas exploration. It’s just plain weird to espouse two contrary views at the same time. 

Equally weird is education. Minister Erica Stanford has discovered the one true path to educational excellence — structured literacy and maths. She has decreed that it will be taught in all schools up and down the country by the beginning of next year. Simultaneously, Associate Minister David Seymour announces his 50 soon-to-be privatised, for-profit, charter schools can do what they like — no rules. 

But weirder is Seymour’s gobsmacking audacity in the creation of his already morbidly obese Ministry of Regulation. Thirty staff becomes 91 just by magic and they are to be paid almost twice the going rate in the public service. You destroy bloated bureaucracy by creating a bloated bureaucracy.  

And let’s not forget cancelling the ferries with no plan B; knowing that boot camps don’t work but doing them anyway at a cost of $500,000 a kid; solving the huge problem of not enough state houses by stopping building state houses; managing our emissions by mass planting of pine; cutting taxes when economic commentators across the spectrum said don’t do it; reducing emissions by building more roads.  

But what about their continual romper-stomper assaults on te ao Māori? It’s next-level vile as well as weird. That’s a whole story in itself and it’s deeply disturbing. 

The Government is  making “weird” the centrepiece of its actions. Look out for the formation of a faction or gang among themselves, “The Weird Ones”, with the tagline “gonna stomp all over you”. 

Bruce Holm