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Election 2020 Special Part 1
24 Plays4 years ago
Josh and M talk about the conspiracy theories of the 2020 Election in Aotearoa New Zealand the night before polling day!
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
You can learn more about M’s academic work at: http://mrxdentith.com
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the election special of the podcast as Guide to the Conspiracy. As it's the night before polling day here, we're not going to in any way encourage you to vote for any particular party or candidate, not even Andy Bishago, who isn't even running in our national elections here in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
00:00:17
Speaker
We will also not tell you the name of our most recent patron, who, despite giving us good coin every month, wishes to remain anonymous. Though he does want weekly blood samples. Something about building a better human? About the jokes on them, I'm not even human.
00:00:41
Speaker
2020 has been quite the year, and it's not even close to being over. God no, there's another election to… not look forward to… cover, I guess. So sit back, relax, and settle in for a look back over the last six to ten weeks of electioneering here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. And do a go vote. Just don't tell anyone we sent you.
Election Day Rules in New Zealand
00:01:11
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. Imdente.
00:01:21
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Addison Day, a Dr. M. Denteth. We are both in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and at the time of recording, it is one day until the general election here. And four hours, approximately, before we would not be able to record this podcast and release it for this year, that there are certain rules and regulations around talking about fiscal parties on election day, and anything which might be an
00:01:50
Speaker
inducement to vote or not vote for a particular party can be seen as a little bit, I believe Stephen Joyce's term, pretty illegal. And given we are going to be talking about how some political parties have engaged in conspiracy rhetoric,
00:02:07
Speaker
you might take this to be an inducement not to vote for those parties. So this is coming out on the night before the election, so we can scrape by with our political commentary without actually breaking the law. And indeed we will be restricting ourselves to stuff that has happened in the past, not what may or may not happen on election day or thereafter. But it's been a long...
00:02:34
Speaker
It's been a long election period for New Zealand. Of course, we all know that the American election is coming up as well. In New Zealand, we have a three-year electoral cycle, whereas in America it's four years, which means every 12 years they line up. So last time it was 2008, which was Obama.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, it was when Obama was voted in. And now it's Trump v Biden. But yes, our election, when did it start? It's only really a couple of months normally, and then it got extended by the lockdown.
00:03:07
Speaker
Well, the election was delayed by a month, effectively. So what was meant to be six weeks has turned out to be 10 weeks. Although technically it wasn't 10 weeks because the election period is only ever six weeks. But people have already started campaigning. Then they suspected their campaigns. Then they resumed their campaigns. There's an interstitial period where technically no campaigning was going on, but people were talking about the election nonetheless. It was very, very weird.
00:03:34
Speaker
But anyway, at least it's not like in the states where they essentially start campaigning for one election immediately after the end of the previous one.
00:03:44
Speaker
We do have a new patron. Hello, and thank you for giving us money. It's a shame that you don't want us to reveal your identity to everyone because they would be very curious as to what you've been doing overseas. And apart from that, I don't think we have anything else to say. Do you have any any updates on your mysterious big news?
00:04:04
Speaker
Well, I've seen a contract and we're discussing the arrival date for said contract because said contract requires me to leave the protective bubble of our COVID free nation state and go to another nation state which isn't doing particularly badly with the novel coronavirus.
00:04:22
Speaker
But arguably, very few countries are doing as well as we are, so I am leaving our protective bubble for elsewhere. But until such time, the contract is actually signed, and I have a date which I can say, look, I'm leaving on. I'm going to keep it under wraps. It's not jinx things. Jinx things doesn't kind of nudge it ever so suddenly. Look, let's jinx things. Let's nudge it towards the process of being completed. Indeed. I'm all for jinx.
00:04:52
Speaker
Hmm, but until then, shall we nudge this podcast towards the main content of the episode? And the way we do that is with a chime. Oh, let's hear it.
00:05:06
Speaker
Good chimes, good chimes. So, a slightly longer than normal electoral period, and it has not been without matters conspiratorial. Where shall we, do you want to do this party by party, chronologically, in order of most to leave conspiratorial?
Impact of COVID-19 on Elections
00:05:27
Speaker
Now, one obvious reason why this election period has been so long was that the country went into a lockdown as the election period was about to start, which meant that what was going to be an election based around how the government reacted to the Covid-19 crisis
00:05:48
Speaker
and how the opposition said they would have reacted and would continue to react, became very much the COVID-19 election has been the big issue, understandably, and arguably is probably the reason why the current government is unlikely to be voted out tomorrow, in that the public's response to the government has been rather favourable, given how well we've done with the novel coronavirus, both at the border and inside the country.
00:06:19
Speaker
And there was a little bit of talk. I mean, let's put aside all the various COVID-19 conspiracy theories. They don't relate to the election specifically. But in terms of the election delay, there was some talk of
00:06:34
Speaker
of some ulterior motive. And I mean, some people said that Labour, because obviously as the Prime Minister, is it specifically the Prime Minister's prerogative to call the election date or just the party that the Prime Minister leads? So I believe it's slightly complete. So it is the prerogative of the Prime Minister, but it's expected that she will talk with cabinet about it.
00:07:00
Speaker
And there is kind of a convention, but not a rule, that you should talk with the opposition about any delay or bringing forward of an election. So it's one of those things where there are rules, but there are also conventions around those rules. But because conventions are conventions and not rules, when those conventions are bent or broken, people get annoyed, but it turns out they can't actually insist that the process be changed.
00:07:28
Speaker
So the moving of the election date was a little unusual. I don't know if that's ever actually happened before, that a date has been set and then moved due to circumstances. And so some people tried to suggest that maybe there was some sort of an ulterior motive there.
00:07:44
Speaker
When it comes to saying that the Labour Party did it for their own benefit, right from the start, I didn't see how that could possibly work. I mean, political pundits had been literally saying the only thing that could possibly hurt Labour's chances at the next election would be if there was another outbreak and they had to lock things down again. So it didn't seem like they had anything to gain whatsoever.
00:08:08
Speaker
And indeed, some people said it was not in the interest of the Labour Party to delay the election, because the original date of the election was going to occur before a particular economic forecast was to be released. And the suspicion was we were going to do very badly economically as a result of our first lockdown.
00:08:28
Speaker
And this forecast would be disastrous. So holding the election before the forecast result was released would have been of benefit to the government. That forecast result has been released. It does turn out there were some economic costs to the lockdown. Not as bad as people thought they would be. And it turns out to have not been a particular issue in the election anywhere. Interestingly enough,
00:08:55
Speaker
This is entirely true. In other elections, one of the main deciding factors as to when the government of the day chooses the election date is the Rugby World Cup. I don't even know if this is true or not, but the feeling is that should New Zealand win the Rugby World Cup,
00:09:19
Speaker
then there'll be a great swelling of sort of national pride and the incumbent is more likely to be elected. And if we lose the Rugby World Cup, then everybody's going to be in a bad mood and want to lash out at the government and power and vote them out. I don't know if there's any actual evidence for that, but apparently it is a consideration. Yes, it is something which was certainly talked about in previous elections.
00:09:42
Speaker
It's also one of those things where it might have been true once upon a time, but probably isn't true now for the sheer fact that the rugby cult, which kind of used to be the national religion of this country, is no longer anywhere near as popular or as powerful for a variety of different reasons.
00:10:03
Speaker
which includes a change in education, a change in focus in sports, immigration, and the fact that most sport now is on pay TV and pay TV only. People are not as big a fan of rugby anymore, and thus the idea that the All Blacks winning, I'd say winning an election means the government wins the World Cup. In fact, the All Blacks might win a World Cup may not be as influential on our national politics as it used to be.
Advance New Zealand/Public Party Analysis
00:10:34
Speaker
Now, I said before, should we do this by party or should we go most conspiratorial to least? Why don't we do both by starting with the most conspiratorial party, which should come as no surprise, is Advance New Zealand slash the New Zealand Public Party, who we've spoken about quite a bit before.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yes, so many, many, many episodes ago when they first made themselves known on the same, we looked at their website, the New Zealand Public Party website. This was before they went into an alliance with the advanced New Zealand parties led by Jamie Lee Ross. So we looked at the New Zealand Public Party as led by one Billy Tehaka
00:11:15
Speaker
Junior, also known as Billy T.K. Did I say Taka? Tikaheka. I just managed to fill his name up completely. So we looked at their policy platform and noted that it was rather conspiratorial with respect to its gloss on our recently passed abortion laws.
00:11:40
Speaker
at gloss on what they think is going on with 1080m, and their gloss on the worry about subterranean vehicles entering our nation state. Yeah, there was some interesting stuff there. But since then, the real story I think has been centred around the two people behind it, Billy TK Jr. and Jamie Lee Ross.
00:12:06
Speaker
Now, just recently, the local site stuff.co.nz had a big story about Billy TK Jr. with a 40-minute documentary. I haven't actually watched the documentary. I understand, though, it does not portray him particularly favorably.
00:12:24
Speaker
No, so basically an interview between Billy TK and the journalist Paula Penfold interspersed with interviews with other people who have had business dealings with Billy TK Jr. So the documentary is called False Prophet.
00:12:42
Speaker
And it's a masterclass in framing, in that you would think if you were doing a documentary on Billy T. K. Jr. You'd be looking at the conspiracy theory, these are spells, given that that's what he's famous for. But instead, Penfold and the team...
00:12:59
Speaker
look at Billie TK, the businessperson, Billie TK, the musician, and Billie TK, the person who claims to have worked as a military intelligence officer, and they go through his CV line by line and show that he has exaggerated or manipulated his CV to make it look as if he's a much more qualified and interesting individual than he is.
00:13:24
Speaker
and then they put those claims to him to see what his response is going to be. So while they talk about the conspiracy theories very briefly, they actually spend more time on Billy T.K. Jr., the politician, showing that there are certain aspects of his story which do not ring true, and those are the kind of things that should make you doubt he's worth voting for.
00:13:49
Speaker
And in the NT, he actually walks out eventually. Yes, so there's an interesting bit towards the end where they start, but with respect to the interviews with other people, point out that Billy Takey Jr. claims to be a good Christian man, but has, according to several witnesses and people who have worked with him as a musician, noticed that he still engages in womanising and sexist behaviour to this very day.
00:14:19
Speaker
And so Paula Penfold starts asking Christians about the VTK's faith and the fact he puts himself forward as a good Christian man, at which point he claims his faith is being insulted and he walks out, the insinuation being that he knows exactly what the next question's going to be about, which are questions about him acting in an adulterous fashion, contrary to his faith.
00:14:44
Speaker
Now, having watched the documentary, at no point does Paula Penfold say anything derogatory about his Christian faith. She simply asks the question, so you present yourself as a good Christian man. And he bristles at that question, which indicates that he knows exactly what's going to happen.
00:15:03
Speaker
And this is kind of compounded by the fact that after leaving the TV studio and going to his car, he immediately starts a Facebook live stream talking about the fact that they were about to ask him about affairs he has had. So it is very clear he knew exactly what the next question was going to be and was not prepared to answer it.
00:15:29
Speaker
So yes, that was an interesting bit of pre-election journalism. And then even more recently, stories just come out in the last couple of days that Billy TK had been paying $1,000 a month to be interviewed by YouTuber Vinnie Eastwood on a weekly basis. Now, that name sounds familiar to me. Who is Vinnie Eastwood?
00:15:51
Speaker
Vinnie Eastwood would be our most successful conspiracy theorist export overseas, and that Vinnie Eastwood is kind of the local Alex Jones, which is either high praise or low praise depending on exactly how you think that sentence should be passed.
00:16:08
Speaker
So Vinny runs a webstream every few days for several hours, interviewing various people. Over the last few months, even before Billy TK started doing his work for the New Zealand Public Party, he is being
00:16:23
Speaker
interviewed by Vinnie Eastwood on his show week by week. It turns out that he was actually paying Eastwood, as you say, a thousand dollars an appearance. And basically Vinnie Eastwood was acting as a promoter for the New Zealand Public Party and then afterwards advanced New Zealand. In a way which was perfectly legal before the election period began.
00:16:51
Speaker
But once the election period began, anything which looks like an inducement to vote needs to have a promoted statement on it, and there was no promoted statement on these broadcasts. Although I should point out, this is a weird sentence,
00:17:07
Speaker
In defense of Billy T.K. Jr. and Vinny Eastwood, they did mention all the time that these interviews were sponsored. They just weren't following the letter of the law about how you're meant to go about doing that.
00:17:23
Speaker
We have quite specific laws. I know in the States whenever you see campaign ads, there will always be a bit at the end where a person will say, I'm so-and-so and I approve this message. I don't know if that's the law in America or just a convention, but I'm over here.
00:17:39
Speaker
I remember when it came in. I can't remember specifically why it came in, but there was some bit of a disagreement around election advertising. And from that point onward, any bit of election advertising in New Zealand has to have on it somewhere authorized by and the name of the person who's specifically responsible for it. And yes, these interviews do not have that. So possibly a breaching electoral law.
00:18:08
Speaker
But speaking of interviews... One more point.
Jamie Lee Ross and Electoral Interference
00:18:14
Speaker
So what was particularly interesting about these interviews with BTK Jr. was the fact that they were soliciting donations. Now we also have very strict rules about the solicitation of donations for electoral purposes.
00:18:31
Speaker
including the fact you cannot take donations from people overseas. That's taken to the election in interference. And not only were they soliciting donations, they were telling people the swift code for the bank account so that they could make those donations from overseas. Now that's
00:18:51
Speaker
That's kind of interesting, given that BTK Jr. is in an alliance with the leader of Advanced New Zealand, Jamie Lee Ross, who of course made the news last year, where he had a public meltdown as a member of the National Party, having accused the leader of the National Party at that time.
00:19:12
Speaker
Simon Bridges of having solicited and accepted illegal donations. So the fact that Advanced New Zealand was also soliciting donations from overseas at a point in time where Jamie Lee Ross has been talking about the threat of overseas interference in our fiscal parties is kind of funny and that gives us a nice segue to the fact that Jamie Lee Ross was recently interviewed by one Steve Bannon. Josh,
00:19:42
Speaker
Who is Steve Bannon? Oh, he's a lovely fellow. A jolly, roly-poly gent. A ray of sunshine in this, the most darkest of hours. No, actually, he's a complete Nazi twat who was buddy-buddy with Donald Trump until he got booted out, for I can't even remember which reason why there's been so many bootings out for so many reasons, but looks like a desiccated corpse. Actually, I'd say he looks more like a bloated corpse.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, pre-adjection, yeah, no, sorry, look, look, looks like a fairly waterlogged corpse. And is white supremacist adjacent?
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, although his current thing is China, China, China, and the threat that China plays towards the West. And so he interviewed Jamie Lee Ross for his War Room podcast last week, because Jamie Lee Ross attended a protest about the threat of Chinese interference in our electoral system.
00:20:42
Speaker
and Steve Bannon wanted to praise one of the only elected members of parliament who was actually willing to stand up against the Chinese. The entire interview basically reads like yellow Carol 2.0.
00:20:55
Speaker
And how recently was that? Last week, I believe. Yeah, it's all in the lead up. And then I guess the last things perhaps you could say about Advanced New Zealand and the People's Party are its travails with social media.
00:21:13
Speaker
So the Advanced New Zealand Facebook page was shut down. Now, some people had been pointing out, if you go to it, it says it's been unpublished. And I don't know how these Facebook things work. Some people said that shows that Advanced New Zealand themselves chose to shut it down rather than Facebook shut them down without their say so. I don't know if that's true or not. But one way or another, their page is gone and it was suspected it's part of Facebook's crackdown on misleading information.
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah, so it does seem as if there's a little bit of a she-said-she-said going on with respect to exactly what has happened to the Facebook page. What was particularly interesting was that the smallling Billy TK Jr. on his own personal Facebook page was claiming that Twitter had also banned their account.
00:22:02
Speaker
Now, this was kind of funny because at the time that Billy T.K. Jr. was saying, look, I cannot access my Twitter account. Twitter has also banned us as well. There was a massive outage of Twitter. Generally, no one could access their Twitter accounts. So Billy T.K. Jr. was mistaking an outage for actual censorship.
00:22:24
Speaker
And that's all we have to say about Advanced New Zealand and the New Zealand Public, I said People's Party before, didn't I? You did indeed. That's the yellow peril. Steve Bannon was right. I've got the People's Party on my mind. No, the New Zealand Public Party. So shall we move on? Where shall we move on to? Let's move on to the Opposition Party, the National Party.
00:22:49
Speaker
Right. Well, I mean, obviously the first thing, and we've talked about this before, Jerry Brownlee's just asking questions routine, which he was roundly pilloried for. It's interesting, given that we talked about loose change a few weeks ago, to see that form of argumentation. Here's a bunch of facts that I'm stating one after the other.
00:23:19
Speaker
No, I'm just going to leave it there. No, I should point out, actually, the great thing about the just asking questions routine in a QE accent, you don't even need to append any markers of a question other than a raising lilt towards the end of your sentence. Any statement can be turned into question.
00:23:36
Speaker
in Kiwi vernacular. Now the context of this was when the government announced the second lockdown when we had a resurgence of community transmission of COVID-19. Jerry Brownlee was going well this is awfully convenient because the Ministry of Health has been talking about how we need to wear masks and the government has been saying for a long time that there could be another outbreak so I'm just asking questions do they know more about this than they're letting on
00:24:05
Speaker
at which point the response was, well, yes, in so far as the government has been warning us for a long time that, as we've seen in Australia, COVID-19 can get back inside the country, and when it does, we're going to get community transmission, so better to be vigilant than to be laissez about these things. But Brownlee was going, oh, I mean, they keep warning us about a potential crisis,
00:24:31
Speaker
And then the crisis occurred. I think they know more about it. Maybe they set this up. It does put me in mind of the old Simpsons episode with the cat burglar voice by Sam Neill. And it's like, it seems like you've been caught by the very people who were trying to catch you. How ironic. The very thing they were warning us about happened.
00:24:56
Speaker
Anyway, Judith Collins. Judith Collins is the current leader of the National Party. Well, for how long? That's a good question. Well, we'll see.
00:25:08
Speaker
This is the second election where we've had the leaders of both major parties have been women. Yeah. And Jenny Shipley. Jenny Shipley, yeah. So there we go. Now there's been a little bit, when did dirty politics happen? Was that one election ago or two elections ago? 2014. 2014, there we go.
00:25:31
Speaker
I mean, it seemed actually a lot longer. It really does. It was only six years ago. So the Dirty Politics scandal of 2014 is named around the book, Dirty Politics, by Nikki Hager, who had got access to a whole bunch of emails sent between people like Cameron Slater, aka Wayl Oyl, Judith Collins, Carrot Graham, and other national party people, which indicated that
00:25:59
Speaker
The Prime Minister's office, then Prime Minister John Kay, his office was engaged in farming information out about the opposition to attack bloggers. So the bloggers could run lines of attack against the opposition in a way that didn't make it look as if the government was engaging in dirty politics. Rather, they were farming the dirty politics out.
00:26:27
Speaker
Now, Collins has several chapters devoted to her part of the scandal in Dirty Politics, particularly the way that she was leaking information to Cam Slater, and also thinking it would be really great if bodily harm occurred to certain people who Cam Slater was outing on his blog, which at the time was a very, very popular physical blog in this country.
00:26:54
Speaker
Now, one of the narratives in this election has been from the left-wing party saying, look, Collins was never really exonerated for what happened in dirty politics. And the response from the writers, don't be stupid. She was investigated and eventually cleared of all charges, which is why she was allowed back into the cabinet, having been ostracized by the former prime minister for the suspected things she had done.
00:27:24
Speaker
And of course, it turns out the real story is actually a lot more complex than that. Yes. And I think it was Nicky Hager's camp came up with a statement to this effect. But from what I could understand, the story was that
00:27:43
Speaker
they, the National Party dug up something that hadn't actually been in dirty politics, another email saying something similar, and had sort of said, this is the reason why you're being stood down. And then that was investigated, and she was cleared of that. And so now that's, and so then they say, Alex, you know, so she was cleared of all the dirty politics stuff, when, in fact, technically,
00:28:08
Speaker
she was never actually cleared of anything that was talked about in the book Dirty Politics. It was a similar thing that they'd found that wasn't actually in the book. So it's a little bit technicalities there, which don't 100% add up. And the weird thing about it, and there's shades of Hillary Clinton in the last lecture,
00:28:32
Speaker
Many of the messages that the investigative committee would like to have seen to check exactly what Collins knew or didn't know did not exist. So they had been deleted from this server and there were no copies remaining, which meant that there were certain claims they couldn't investigate because the evidence had conveniently disappeared.
00:29:01
Speaker
And the other thing that Judith Collins raised a few eyebrows with was a recent walkabout on Ponsonby Road here in Auckland, which, I mean, it was kind of a
00:29:16
Speaker
kind of a scandal but not really because she got caught doing a thing that we know absolutely everybody does where she was walking along Ponsonby Road encountering these people giving her messages of support and telling her how great they thought she was and these people turned out to basically have been planted there.
00:29:36
Speaker
including her own campaign manager. No, no, no, not her campaign manager, the campaign manager of the candidate for Auckland Center. Sorry, sorry, yes, yeah, for the candidate, the manager for her electorate. And which, yummy, yeah, it made her look a little bit silly, but on the other hand, like any, every political party has events with supporters gathered around them and what have you. And I
00:30:05
Speaker
Are we expected to believe that they're all spontaneous outpourings of support for whatever candidate happened? We all know these things are managed. Yes, I mean, it is an open secret. I think the problem for National here was when you have a well-known campaign manager in the form of Hamish Price, who's kind of notorious for his right-wing views and his rather conservative outlook on things.
00:30:34
Speaker
pretending to simply be a surprise citizen, seeing the leader of the opposition and gushing over her, then journalists are going to go, you know, you're actually someone that is actually in the national party, but you're pretending as if you're surprised that the leader of the national party is wandering down a street in an electorate where you're the campaign manager. This does seem ever so slightly
00:31:01
Speaker
as if you're pretending to be something you're not, and we can get you on that, because it may be an open secret, but we kind of expect you to be competent in maintaining that open secret, as opposed to being stupid and putting the campaign manager on the street. Yes, I suppose the worst you could say is they did a thing that everybody also does, but maybe a little more clumsily than usual. It does seem that the campaign manager for Judith Collins campaign
00:31:31
Speaker
has not been particularly good, given that they don't seem to be doing enough vetting of shops that Ms Collins might decide to go into, given she's been turned away from several shops because of people not liking her politics. And normally what you do is the day beforehand you kind of vet all the locations your candidate is going to go into, because you don't really want an embarrassing thing.
00:31:56
Speaker
I think one of the shops later said they just didn't want a whole bunch of media in there, but I don't know. But yes, anyway, so I mean, not actually a massive scandal, just a possibly poor look. I don't know. Yeah.
00:32:13
Speaker
But let's move on. So ACT, the ACT Party, if you're not aware, is sort of the far-right political party here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Although by far-right, we mean... Well, for New Zealand. We don't mean far-right in the kinds of European Nazi Party stuff. Yes, no, not that sort of just very libertarian-ish. Yeah, libertarian with a whistle out, I think. Time to time, yeah.
00:32:39
Speaker
So, I don't know if there's been a lot of conspiratorial—apart from the obvious, the conspiracies required to hide the fact that their leader is some sort of solid-light hologram beamed down from the spaceship Red Dwarf.
00:32:55
Speaker
Now, I'm actually quite fascinated by this because it turns out that not a lot of people I know, having come to work at the University of Waikato, knows what Arnold Rimmer looks like. Well, I mean, the Red Dwarf had its heyday in the 90s, I suppose, late 90s. So it could be a generational thing, those damn millennials. Which is, I mean, on one level,
00:33:23
Speaker
Having re-watched Red Dwarf, I can understand why you might not want to introduce people to it today. But also it means that the attack that many people of our age have on David Seymour, which is to claim he looks exactly like Arnold Woomer, means absolutely nothing now to a majority of voters. Ah well. That's what ageing does for you. That's why I don't do it.
00:33:46
Speaker
It's true, you don't. But they have done... They've found themselves with some slightly strange bedfellows, I suppose, is the salacious way of putting it. I would say that it's kind of understating it, given that some of their bedfellows are white supremacists. Well, yes, that's what I was going with. But I just thought it sounded possibly unnecessarily sexy, the whole bedmates thing.
00:34:15
Speaker
didn't want to raise too many pulses, didn't want to be responsible for any onset of the vapors in our more delicate listeners. But yes, there's the gun stuff. David Seymour is currently the only
00:34:30
Speaker
Act party MP in the current government, although it's looking like he's about to have a bit more company if the polls are to be believed. He was the only MP, I believe, who voted against the changes to gun laws that were made in the wake of the Christchurch shootings. Although I believe in one case he meant to vote against them and then failed to be in the room when the vote was passed. So he just counted as an abstention, did he? Yeah.
00:35:00
Speaker
So I mean, yes, there's the idea that they're courting the gun enthusiast to vote. Where do the white supremacists come into it? So he's taken donations from white supremacists down in Christchurch, and his argument is he doesn't really care where the money comes from, and other people are going
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah, but accepting it kind of looks as if you're endorsing their views. You could just refuse to take money from white supremacists. Most people would have no issue with you refusing to take money from white supremacists, because most people, at least ostensibly, are going to say in public, they don't support white supremacy. Even if it turns out their actions indicate they do. Most people are not going to go, oh yes, I support white supremacists, you should definitely take their money.
00:35:47
Speaker
So, but David's seen what's going on. I don't care where the money comes from. And so in that respect, people are going, if you're not willing to condemn where the money comes from or refuse to take the money, it is fair to say that you are willing to cozy up to white supremacists. And that's not a particularly good look. No.
Labour Party and Conspiracy Theories
00:36:10
Speaker
But moving on, I guess, I guess, OK, so the Labour Party, the current, the major party in the current coalition, led by Jacinda Ardern, one of the most popular leaders in the world at the moment. Not really many conspiracy theories being put forward, the more being put forward about them, obviously, as the people in charge at the moment during the Covid-19 pandemic and whatever else,
00:36:39
Speaker
They're the ones who get the blame for any conspiracy theorists who want to say that they're actually, you know, wanting to control us and take away our rights and enact agenda 21. Or what's the other one? There's 21 and another one now, isn't there? There's two numbers I keep hearing people talk about. Yeah, I should be able to say that. It's probably 31 or something of that type. But yes, there are other UN agendas and many people are against them.
00:37:06
Speaker
So yes, there's been conspiracy theories about them, not really conspiracy theories spread by them, possibly because they're just not interesting enough. I think that the most remarkable thing about the current government has just been how damn unremarkable they've been given the huge approval ratings and amount of political capital that they just don't seem interested in putting to work other than to safely romp home in an election.
00:37:31
Speaker
Yes, yes, you might think that actually the real conspiracy here is that Labour campaigned on putting forward transformational change in their first term, have done no transformational change whatsoever. So maybe they're pretending to be left wing when actually it turns out they're just a party for centrist these days.
00:37:53
Speaker
So moving on to the other minor parties, the only one that I've seen any fuss about is New Zealand First. Currently, they're very sort of, I guess, centrist in that sometimes they're allied with the left-wing Labour Party and sometimes they're allied with the right-wing National Party, but they're basically the party of Winston Peters.
00:38:16
Speaker
Has he seen New Zealand's longest serving politician? Certainly feels like it. He must be. I mean, there might be some other national MPs who have kind of kept trucking along for long periods. I mean, Trevor Mellard in Labour seems to have been around forever. But yes, I do think Winston might be our longest serving MP who's currently alive.
00:38:42
Speaker
But at any rate, New Zealand First has gotten a little bit of trouble over the New Zealand First Foundation, which I believe they claim has no direct connection to them, despite having the same name and being set up by them and so on.
00:39:03
Speaker
investigations going on at the moment, and journalists, there's still suppression orders, which means journalists haven't been allowed to mention the names of certain people who have been involved in this. But basically, it seems like the New Zealand First Foundation was set up to launder donations
00:39:23
Speaker
to the New Zealand First Party. There are rules around, as there are, I assume in most countries, about how large a donation can be before you're required to disclose who you've got your donations from. And so there's been sort of the schemes where people will donate a lot of money, but parcel it up through various means into a bunch of smaller donations that don't have to be declared. And there's all the talk about basically them
00:39:53
Speaker
peddling influence essentially covertly through this foundation. So it's still under investigation, but there have been a bunch of stories and it all seems a little bit dodgy and it's increasingly straining credulity for them to claim that this foundation that happens to have the same name as them is not in any way connected to anything to do with them. Yeah, and I can't really think of any other
00:40:17
Speaker
particular claim to conspiracy, I mean top the Opportunities Party did try to claim that they were being kept out of minor party debates due to arcane rules, suggesting there was a media conspiracy against them, but it turns out that actually both TV1 and TV3's debate rules have been remarkably consistent for a long time, and top just has never satisfied those rules to be let into those debates.
00:40:47
Speaker
I think that's it for the parties. The other thing, of course, is that during this general election, we have two referenda, which we also get.
Euthanasia and Cannabis Referenda
00:40:56
Speaker
I'm saying, Will, you haven't voted yet, have you? No, I vote tomorrow. I will vote on election day as well. And so not as well as voting in the general election, we have a referendum on
00:41:08
Speaker
the end-of-life bill, which will essentially legalize euthanasia if it goes through, and a referendum on the legalization of cannabis in this country. And it's interesting, last I heard polling suggested that the end-of-life bill one is going to go through, but it's anyone's guess as to the cannabis one.
00:41:33
Speaker
It seems like the euthanasia one has higher stakes in that it's literally life or death. But I don't know, the cannabis one seems to be where people are most exorcised, and there have been what you could possibly call shenanigans.
00:41:49
Speaker
There has. So there's been some interesting advertising by groups like Sensible Sensing Trust and Scientologists about weed legalisation. Turns out that both those groups are Ginnert. And so they've been engaged in AstroTurf thing for putting out ads opposing
00:42:09
Speaker
a yes vote in the referendum, so basically campaigning for a no vote, as well as spreading misinformation and disinformation. So there's been concerns that there's organized and moneyed opposition to this bill, which is satisfying particular fundamentalist causes within the country.
00:42:30
Speaker
And then you've got the weird thing of the New Zealand Medical Association and their position on the cannabis bill because up until recently the NZMA was dead set against a yes vote on the cannabis bill.
00:42:49
Speaker
But doctors started saying, well, they haven't really consulted us on this. And so they are speaking on our behalf without having ever asked, what do we think? And so the person in charge of the NZM,
00:43:05
Speaker
EMA, who I think is Leanne Gradock, said, oh, our position on cannabis is a position we came to in 2012. We've always maintained this particular position, which is that we think there are associated harms with the use of marijuana, which we think means that we shouldn't be
00:43:26
Speaker
decriminalizing usage at this time. We did not consult the membership, this has always been in the position since 2012, and not only that, we have not looked at the bill at all, so we don't know what the bill says, we're just against it. Which then led to a whole bunch of doctors going, you haven't looked at the legislation, but you're still saying that people should vote no on the referendum, and you're saying it on our behalf,
00:43:56
Speaker
we want to challenge that. And so a week into our advanced voting period, the NZMA now officially has said, oh, well, we have no position on this referendum at all, despite the fact that we've been basically campaigning against it for weeks and weeks and weeks now. And votes have already been cast, as it turns out that a lot of advanced voting has occurred in this election. And suddenly we don't have a position on it. Sorry.
00:44:26
Speaker
Yes. Yes, actually, as you say, there's been a lot of advanced, much more advanced voting than usual this year, I think partly because the electoral period has dragged on. Partly because people are sort of, you know, worried about the possibility of more COVID or what have you. Partly because we just make it so damn easy.
00:44:49
Speaker
not wanting to gloat or anything, but we see these again comparing it to the American election that's going on at the moment as well where we have stories of people lining up all day just to cast their vote and people sort of being congratulated for their hardiness and their will to make sure that their vote counts when in fact the fact that they have to do that
00:45:16
Speaker
It's not a good thing. It is an indictment on a system. If you have to wait 11 hours to cast a vote, your system is not working particularly well. What's the longest you've ever waited to vote in the elections? I haven't. I've walked to my polling place, I've walked up to the person, signed in, gone to the booth, voted left.
00:45:36
Speaker
There's never been a queue when I've been. That has always been my experience. I was shocked today, Josh. I was absolutely shocked. I was at the University of Waikato getting lunch. I saw some people queuing to go into a polling place. I actually timed how long it took for someone to get from the back of the queue.
00:45:56
Speaker
to cast their vote and come out, and you'll be shocked, Josh. It took them two minutes. Now that is too long. That is far too long. I know no one who's had to spend more than 30 seconds casting a vote in this country. Two minutes? That's a long time in this country. The Electoral Commission needs to investigate this and find out what was happening.
00:46:18
Speaker
Yes, no, but basically, if you're not in New Zealand, pretty much any public space becomes a polling place, like every school hall or public facilities and so on.
Voting Process Comparison
00:46:32
Speaker
They're just everywhere with a whole lot of volunteers. It doesn't seem difficult to suggest that maybe things are deliberately made difficult in other places to suppress the vote, why that would be a conspiracy theory.
00:46:46
Speaker
It would, and a warranted one. Anyway, that'll do. For now, I think we've got to give you time to go off and edit this together and put it out before the dreaded deadline.
00:46:59
Speaker
I don't think there's anything else to say, really. I don't think there is. I think we've covered almost everything conspiratorial in this election. But of course, this will not be our only election special in 2020, because as we mentioned previously, our election occurs in the same year as the US presidential election. And that's going to be very conspiratorial indeed. So we'll have another election special.
00:47:24
Speaker
later on this year covering that near survivors. Yes and in fact possibly a sneak preview of that will be coming up in our bonus episode for patrons this week because there have been a few sort of like we're in mid October now so the it's October surprise season and there seems to be a little bit of that going around what are we going to be talking about this week?
00:47:49
Speaker
Well, we've got some emails, and they're not Hillary Clinton, so that'll be exciting. We also have a Navy SEAL who's really, really annoyed that the President no longer thinks he killed Osama bin Laden. And there's a bit of ballot interference in the US, and it's been led by Republicans. Good Lord.
00:48:14
Speaker
So yes, if you're a patron, stick around and you'll get that in your lug holes. If you'd like to, if you'd like the extra things in your lug holes, you can become a patron, but I actually looked, I finally looked up the URL. You can go to patreon.com, podcasters guide to the conspiracy, all one word, sorry, slash podcasters guide to the conspiracy, or if that doesn't work, just search for us in their search function. You'll find us quite easily. People do.
00:48:44
Speaker
And if you don't want to be a patron, well, that's just fine as well. Just listen to these episodes and good on you. But that's us for a week. So we'll be back next week. I assume the results of the election will probably be known by then. There's all the counting of all these advance of votes and everything. We won't know the results of the referenda for two weeks.
00:49:04
Speaker
Right. So we may have a follow-up next week. Or who knows? Actually, it's just in the last couple of days, I've noticed the media trying to talk this up. Like, anytime there's any sort of a competition, obviously they want it to be a close race because that's exciting.
00:49:24
Speaker
I remember Auckland's mayoral elections, which for the last couple of times has only really been one person in the running, and yet the media has desperately tried to talk up the next biggest contender, to suggest that it's some sort of a close race. And while Labour is at historically high polling and is expected to
00:49:45
Speaker
to comfortably come out on top of this election. Just in the last day or two, I've been seeing stories by journalists saying, oh, it's on a knife edge. It's good. It's pulse pounding tension. Who knows which way it's going to go? I think the answer is everyone. Everyone knows which way it's going to go. Yeah, I think people want it seen as if it's going to be closely called. But really, there's no reason to think that at all.
00:50:08
Speaker
Anyway, who knows, maybe in a week's time we'll be sitting here feeling mightily foolish indeed, but we won't know that until a week's time. So until a week's time, I think the best thing to do would be simply say go out and vote if you haven't already, and goodbye. Goodbye!
00:50:34
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extenta, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em. You can support the podcast by becoming a patron via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:51:35
Speaker
And remember, the truth is out there, but not quite where you think you left it.