As the kids have grown up and become aware of moments in our country’s history, they’ve asked about things at different times. One is the 1981 Springbok tour and the realisation that dawned on many as to just how well we are served. What I mean by that is Kiwis take a bit of moving when it comes to firing them up, a direct reflection on how well we’ve done setting up our little corner of the world. Most of the time, we’ll get blustery and threaten action about something, but then we realise the sun is out, and either the surf’s up at Whanga, the birds are bombing a school in the Able Tasman, or there’s fresh rooting right on the bush-line behind Raetihi.

Yes, to get our dander up properly, you need a really big ‘nasty’. Back in ’81, it was amazing as a youth to see that our lackadaisical paradise was indeed made up of people with real opinions who, if pushed enough, had the kahunas actually to do something about effecting change.

I feel my need to relay that story may soon be over. Our next conversations in the fam may be more along the lines of comparing one event in history with another.

In a country that’s free, has a strong sense of liberty and equality, with a largely deregulated economy, there’s always the potential for fireworks when you put a government in power as red as ours, with the margin we did. What is likely to strike the flint of an uprising is a crisis. Enter the bug. Perfect.

If the 9th floor is not careful over the next six weeks, the complete lack of consultation, knee-jerk strategies, fortress mentality, and the pulpit of truth with its servile media entourage may come to an ugly head at the borders above Warkworth in the north, and Mercer, and Mangatawhiri in the south. Not to mention the roving redoubts in the Waikato.

Likewise, if this week in the ‘hustings’ didn’t send the PM a clear message that the voters are restless, pissed-off and had enough, then nothing will. The vaccinated and unvaccinated are increasingly at one over the loss of a nomadic mammal’s instinct to roam. Those who wanted to be jabbed have, those who didn’t haven’t. Let nature do its thing. After all, if what they’re saying at Cop-out 26 is right, we’ll see nature take its course on a grand scale shortly, anyway.

There appears to be an increasing awareness that we’re all becoming political pawns, not biological ones.  Our history is not that of an oppressed socialist or even communist state, and as much as the government’s election night margin gave them a ticket to ride, it wasn’t a ticket that allowed them to shift to such a regime in one political term.

Standby, kids! You just might see a real barney for yourself!

All the best

Dave McCoid
Editor