6 minute read
Opinion
The Bishop’s next big move
Young(ish), scrappy & hungry Erin Kavanagh-Hall
Oh, Brian Tamaki. God loves a trier.
Although, someone up in Heavenly HR needs to remind “Bishop” Brian his taxes are due. And that it’s “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a wealthy man to enter the kingdom of God”.
It’s right there in the Good Book — the one “the Apostle” claims to follow.
Oh, wait. The only good book is Brian’s chequebook. Silly me.
For those of you who have missed the news from Camp Destiny, “da Bish” is making another grab for The Beehive.
Last week’s Freedom and Rights Coalition protest at the Auckland Domain doubled as a recruitment drive for Tamaki’s new political outfi t — an “umbrella movement” made up of four existing parties — which plans to contest the 2023 General Election.
Tamaki refused to confi rm the identity of the parties in question. He was a little prickly with reporters — he has called the media “modern-day terrorists” after all.
The man himself won’t be standing. “[Parliament is] the last place I want to go. I’d have to turn into a deceiver, a liar and a crook.”
You gotta laugh.
Slightly less amusing, however, is what Tamaki and his band of merry men plan to do next.
The next phase for the new party is the “Let’s Get NZ Back Again!” campaign, culminating with a “roadtrip” to Parliament. There, the group intends to lead a “mass parliament clean out”. Demonstrators will present a “petition for a vote of no confi dence”, urging the Opposition to call a snap election. They will also stage a “People’s Court for crimes against Kiwis”.
Does this sound … scarily familiar? The slogan? The references to “cleaning out” and “trials”? The attempt to force hands to swing an election in their favour? The delegitimising of the media and the questionable hairdos?
Anyone else a little nervous?
Trumpian comparisons aside, media analysis doesn’t fancy Tamaki making any real dent in the election outcome. As Alison Mau mentioned in a Stuff editorial, Tamaki’s previous bids for Parliament — with the Destiny and Vision Parties — brought in 0.1% of the vote. His “lack of focus”, the decline of New Zealand’s religious population, and the number of Aucklanders annoyed by his gridlocking of the Harbour Bridge don’t exactly bode well for the Bishop. 1News’ Simon Mercep agreed. Tamaki needs numbers — and numbers at the Domain protest were thin on the ground.
Auckland University’s Disinformation Project isn’t so sure.
As academic Sanjana Hattotuwa told The Spinoff , Tamaki has become “increasingly and troublingly more populist”. Like Donald Trump and other populist leaders before him, Tamaki is appealing to “the ordinary people”. The disaff ected “silent majority”, debilitated by infl ation, the housing crisis, and vaccine mandates, whose concerns the establishment has ignored.
Classic demagogue tactics: reach out to people who have been kicked to the curb by current systems. Tap into their mistrust of the media. Rile them up at rallies. Unite them against a common enemy. It’s worked before.
Hattouwa didn’t mince words: “To dismiss these political machinations as unlikely to manifest in serious electoral success is as simplistic as it is naïve.”
I don’t personally rate Tamaki’s chances of holding offi ce. That said, I agree we’d be unwise to count him out. In 2016, Americans wrote Trump off as a buff oon and a circus attraction. That didn’t work out so well.
Don’t get complacent, folks. If you don’t want Tamaki — the same dude who charges $3000 for a sermon and blamed earthquakes on the LGBTQ+ community — anywhere near our seat of democracy, then show up and vote — for anyone else.
Hold on to your hair gel, Wairarapa. We’re in for a bumpy ride.
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