Last chance to cross the floor
"If ever a man feels the sweetness, the utility of friendship, must it not be that moral leper called by the crowd a spy, by the common people a nark, by the administration an agent?" - Honoré de Balzac: A Harlot High and Low
Some lefties trundled in to the Auckland Town Hall on Monday night.
Dirty, smelly hippies. Socialists. Fabians, even. Greenies, and vegans. Barefoot bums and sack-wearing, fluoride-hating homeopathy advocates. Unkempt hair and certainly no Bangladeshi-made sweaters.
There wasn’t a suit in sight, Our Dear Leader would have you believe.
When he’s not escaping gaggles of media determined to burn him with the scalding iron of indignation, he insists on slamming any opposition to his beloved spy agency as a particular brand of religious zealotry.
We the poor doting public are wrong, misinformed, malicious, or too preoccupied by the epic struggle of the humble snapper. And let’s not forget his contempt for both the Law Society and the Human Rights Commission.
I’m sorry to disappoint and revoke such a broad brushstroke (or should that be slander?), but I wore an expensive blazer that evening, ate meat for dinner, and had a rather nice pair of loafers on my feet. I am certainly no socialist, and consider homeopathy a bigger crock of turd soup than Scientology.
Christ, I even quite like the GCSB and its role in protecting New Zealand against violent extremism from all corners of the radical axis.
But one doesn’t need to be wealthy, or even politically astute, to understand – as 89% of Kiwis do – that keys to the Waihopai Spy Base and the ‘God Terminal’ that exists inside should not remain in the sole possession of Our Dear Leader and his high school friend.
The “sleepwalk in to a surveillance society”, as Rodney Harrison so aptly put it, is almost complete. The town hall meeting, although a noble action that filled many with hope and sent consciences searching for any solution to the problem, simply came too late to be of any use.
We are now hours away from the vote. The end goal is tantalizingly close. It would take one MP to cross the floor and stand firm against a rushed, botched, poorly-worded, and nefarious slice of legislation.
Party politics aside, the journalists, legal experts, parliamentary leaders, activists, and entrepreneurs did their damn hardest on Monday night to ensure the few thousand that showed their face and offered their ears were well-informed and understanding of a situation we now all face, regardless of race, income, or ideological stripe.
That audience bought their own opinions, too. The loudest jeers, harshest boos, and most cracking insults were aimed not at Our Dear Leader, but at Peter Dunne and his lone vote that will see unaccountable state surveillance enter the fabric of our society, regardless of whether society approves or permits it.
As Nicky Hager closed the evening, looking shrunken in a bedraggled Kathmandu fleece, he reminded the nation that should the bill pass, the New Zealand government would face a long, drawn-out battle.
And there will be casualties.
Follow James on Twitter: @James_ARobins
