Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:36p.m.
By James Murray
I imagine you could cut the tension in the air with a hot-knife at ACT Party Central today.
What with their leader announcing he’s kind of okay about cannabis and their great white hope in Epsom really not okay about cannabis, I imagine there are some cross glances being exchanged across the purple haze.
Mr Banks was of course famous during his tenure as Police Minister for the Nats for his strong anti-cannabis stance. If you click on the link below you can see him emerge from a bright yellow portaloo and tell legalise cannabis protestors they are “stupid”.
In fact, Mr Banks said: "Anyone who smokes marijuana and thinks they are clever is stupid. How many people out there are stupid?" Everyone in the crowd puts their stupid hands up.
In the same story Mr Banks says: "This dope is dopey, these people are dopey."
When you have previously put your neck on the line with a terrible pun like that, imagine how annoyed you’d be if your boss went and ruined everything in a speech where he described cannabis as "relatively harmless".
3 News called Mr Banks on the matter – he was short on the phone and the conversation ended abruptly. Our political team say he wasn’t informed of Mr Brash’s planned change of policy and have sent a reporter to Auckland to track him down for comment.
I have to say I am torn on this one. On the one hand, it is good to see a politician not blithely following what is expected of them. It’s perhaps not surprising that a libertarian like Brash would support more freedom around cannabis and its legality. He makes some good points about the cost to the taxpayer in fighting a losing battle against a drug many see as no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco.
On the other hand, I am extremely concerned that he chose to make his announcement after a performance by a Rod Stewart covers band, that and the fact that if he did do this without consulting his man in Epsom it just underlines what a shambles of a party ACT has become.
Their time in power has been marked by scandal, in fighting and a particularly unfriendly coup. They are polling at around 2 percent, but hold undue influence in Parliament.
I am a supporter of MMP, but believe it needs some tweaking to scale down the number of seats a party that wins an electorate seat, but gets below the 5 percent threshold, is allowed to command.
This electoral anomaly has accorded a minority party too much power this term, and it will do so again without reform. Reducing this effect will also remove the allure of deals like the one between National and ACT in Epsom, the sort of blatant electioneering that removes voter choice, detracts from democracy and makes certain results too much of a certainty.
There is a way round this of course. Perhaps Mr Brash’s new stance will win him lots of support from those who wish to legalise cannabis, perhaps that will get them a decent slice of the voter pie, perhaps the ACT party will end up with an actual mandate for power, perhaps this is why they have changed their policy, perhaps this all has something to do with the WORLD GOVERNMENT and the spy cameras the state inserted in my shower, maybe Don Brash is actually Helen Clark…. Ye Gods the paranoia is taking over.