I’ve voted a couple of times before. Like all Aussie kids I was subjected to an exhaustive course of commonwealth history as well as the obligatory and utterly boring Canberra primary school trip. I knew how elections were supposed to run. Or so I thought. New Zealand can proudly lay claim to being the first country in the world to allow women to vote. Surely New Zealand would provide a shining example of how a democratic election is run. Surely.

New Zealand’s parliamentary system is based on one installed by the Allies in Germany after World War II to prevent another Nazi party setting up and running its own one horse show. It’s called MMP (Mixed Member Proportional). Basically it’s meant to ensure that no one party can govern without being in some form of coalition. So while it works, it’s a function of its very design that it doesn’t work too well. Even if you win, there will still be at least one other chef in the kitchen.

And New Zealand has plenty of chefs to choose from. The country is home to a plethora of minor parties that formed as a result of the widespread dissatisfaction with both major parties in the eighties and nineties.

Having only been in the country for eighteen months, I was relishing the chance to watch from the sidelines and point out (in a hopefully funny manner) the pitfalls of every major candidate, safe in the freedom of not having to ultimately back any one team. For me it was going to be six weeks of entertaining commentary from a fresh faced outsider. For my kiwi friends it was going to be six weeks of really annoying commentary from some Australian guy.

All this changed one Saturday morning when my bright orange ‘Enrolment Pack’ arrived in the letterbox. I rang up the freecall number to tell them there must be some mistake. I was an Australian permanently residing in New Zealand, not technically (thanks to the vagaries of our Closer Economic Agreement) a Permanent Resident of New Zealand. The ten year old voice on the other end of the line asked if I had been legally residing in New Zealand for more than a year. Yes. I could almost hear his shrug down the phone. That means you are legally entitled to vote in New Zealand elections. Wow. I still don’t qualify for a credit card but I somehow get to exercise my democratic right in national elections? So much for being the know-it-all outsider.

Voting is voluntary here and some small part of me suspected that this might be like over-inviting people to a birthday party. You can figure on a goodly proportion of no-shows. Following the election the New Zealand Herald ran a story about Toby, a Jack Russell Terrier near Queenstown who ended up on the Electoral Roll. He got the same bright orange enrolment pack as me but was a no-show come Election Day.

With my RSVP in the mail, I settled in to watch what has to have been the strangest democratic election in the developed world. I am not going to bore you with the contradictory yo-yo popularity polls that consumed the country during the campaign, nor am I going to bring up crucial policy differences in the areas of health care or education because, honestly, this was probably what turned Toby off from the whole idea of voting in the first place. Instead I am going to run you through the real New Zealand election; a string of bizarre melodramas that Aaron Spelling couldn’t think up in his wildest wet dream.

Let’s start with the main players. Forbes magazine ranked Helen Clark the twenty fourth most powerful woman in the world (ahead of J K Rowling and The Queen). I have a lot of time for Auntie Helen. There is no question that New Zealand is in a lot better shape than when she first got hold of the reins. However being too good can sometimes be a bad thing. After two terms of progressive social policy ushering in decriminalised prostitution and allowing same-sex marriages, her strong leadership style was starting to grate on a lot of people. Last year her prime ministerial motorcade was clocked at over 150 kilometres per hour as she sped her way across the countryside in an effort to make the kick off for a rugby match in Wellington. I got to watch my new head of state blatantly deny any knowledge of how fast her cars were going, leaving her police escort to take the rap in the resulting court case. A court case that was held in the middle of her re-election campaign. Adding insult to arrogance, despite Helen washing her hands of any responsibility, her party passed the hat around to pay for the hapless police officers’ speeding fines. For a lot of people, this came to represent all that was wrong with a Clark government; that it does whatever it wants to do, regardless of what the public actually wants. Clearly the message fell on deaf ears. About a week later, Helen and her entourage held up an Air New Zealand flight bound for Christchurch as she investigated other, potentially quicker alternatives for getting to her destination. The pilot voiced the reason for the delay over the plane’s speakers. When Helen heard about this, she insisted on being allowed into the cockpit to give the pilot a piece of her mind, further adding to the delays. This wasn’t the wisest of moves, as there were journalists from several newspapers and television stations on the flight, as well as… Wait for it… her political rival and leader of the opposition party, Dr Don Brash.

The soft spoken and curiously charming Dr Brash was no stranger to campaign controversy himself, far from it. In a funny sort of way, he reminds me of a nicer, more genuine John Howard only without the evil. Bespectacled and balding, he’s good with money (former Reserve Bank chairman), has a balanced understanding of global politics and sincerely believes in the economical and social benefits of across the board tax cuts. His self-confessed respect for women stretched far enough to refusing to raise his voice to Helen Clark during a party leader debate (he was trounced) but not nearly far enough to stop himself speaking candidly on national television about his extramarital affair with a Singaporean woman that he subsequently married. This didn’t sit well with the voting constituency for two reasons. The first: it’s patronising to women. The second: Have you seen Helen Clark? When she gets going in these debates she looks like she could single-handedly wrestle a giant squid to shore. I am a little scared she might one day read this.

So there we are several weeks into our campaign and the kiwis are dissatisfied with the female candidate because she is bossy, arrogant and rude to hapless pilots. They’re dissatisfied with the male candidate because he’s patronising, out of touch and makes up weak excuses for losing. Both candidates proceed to extend their vacation away from sanity and isolate more voters by severely ballsing up the topic closest to our hearts: How much of our money they have and what they’re going to spend it on.

Helen Clark found herself in a curious situation. She had almost done her job too well. The country has record low levels of unemployment and a truly massive budget surplus. Surely that meant that we had all been overcharged and were due for a little refund in the way of a tax cut. No. Rather than a refund Helen decided to offer us some store credit.

Like most Left Wing parties, Helen’s Labour Party is popular with gays, hippies, migrants and that other great mass of shrill, unwashed have-nots: university students. (Hey, I voted Greens. No hate mail.) Her plan to woo this essential voter base whilst simultaneously halting New Zealand’s significant brain drain was to abolish the interest on all student loans but only for those who remained in the country. Across the country economists, chancellors and those who could count to seven without using their fingers choked into their morning coffees. She was offering free money that would cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars a year in an almost exponentially increasing amount. The opposition seized on this. Dr Brash’s shadow finance minister is a millionaire who owns property all over the country. It’s safe to say he knows what he is talking about when it comes to the mean green. He gave the example of a student drawing down a maximum student loan and investing it with a dodgy company that would be one of many springing up to take advantage of all the free money. The student gets a percentage back at the end of his course and the dodgy company, who has invested the student’s/Helen’s/My tax dollars, walks away with free money. It was clear to all that Helen Clark’s party had significantly underestimated the cost of such a policy yet she blatantly refused to release the New Zealand Treasury costings for her latest bribe.

In a first for the country’s history, the parliamentary ombudsman intervened and forced her finance minister to release the treasury costings mid way through an election campaign. Think about the significance of this. The leaders of the major banks, university chancellors and even the parliament had deemed these figures so alarming as to take the unprecedented step of forcing the prime minister’s hand. Think about the flipside. Helen had practically promised streets made of gold but was evasive about where she would source the gold. It was almost as if she was simultaneously running for prime minister and Santa Claus. (She does wear a lot of red…)

As it turns out the policy was expensive in the way space travel is expensive. Helen had lied to us. At least that is what Dr Brash said. The Labour Party’s position was that the Treasury had got the numbers wrong.

So for the first time in weeks the ball was squarely in Don Brash’s half. The prime ministerial goal posts were in sight. Pity about the astonishing knock-on.

Like Right Wing parties all over the world, Don Brash’s National party is popular with heterosexuals, Christians, farmers and fans of talk-back radio. These people listen to tax cuts. And Brash’s position was clear. If we have a multi-billion dollar surplus, then we are being taxed too heavily and we are going to take the pruning shears to income and company taxes. The Labour Party’s predictable response was that Dr Brash would have to borrow to cover the cost of massive tax cuts. For weeks Dr Brash flatly denied this. Then in yet another televised leader debate, Brash was cornered and admitted that, whilst he would not need to borrow to cover tax cuts, he would need to borrow to cover operating costs incurred as a result of receiving less tax. This feat of Python-esque logic was not lost on Helen Clark. She unhinged her jaw and ate him whole on national television (again).

If all of this seems to you and Toby as a right wing party being right wing and a left wing party being left wing, you need to realise that this is something novel in New Zealand. It hasn’t really happened for twenty years. In the past Labour tried it’s hardest to divorce itself from the more radical left elements it contained and National’s misguided solution to its woeful unpopularity was to appear more like Labour. It was reminiscent of the Gore/Bush election of 2000. There really wasn’t that much difference between the two. This is why, as has previously been mentioned, New Zealand has a veritable rainbow of minor parties at both ends of the spectrum and several with significant clout sitting smack-bang in the middle. Now with both major parties finally behaving (misbehaving?) like typical right wing or left wing groups these smaller parties were potentially facing extinction. What’s the point of voting for them if the big two are starting to look like real choices?

This gave rise to some really bizarre tactics and advertising that looked to all the world like school kids shouting “pick me, pick me” before dodgeball. One MP facing extinction was running in my home seat. Rodney Hyde. He’s been described by some as looking like Miss Piggy after a sex change. (I didn’t say it. No suing.) He was sinking like the Titanic and everyone knew it. Rodney commenced shadowing other party leaders like gollum and the fellowship. Anyone seen with him risked being contaminated with the same smell of imminent defeat. Two major parties actually went so far as to issue fake press releases saying they would be at a particular shopping centre when they had no intention of showing up there in an effort to throw him off the scent. They ended up meeting in a nearby café. True to form Rodney showed up alone at the shopping centre hoping to weasel in on a photo opportunity with players that still carried some political weight. All he found were photographers and cameraman lurking there to capture this astonishing professional snub. Mr Piggy ended up having the last laugh as he scraped back into parliament by the skin of his curly tail and ended up bringing another party member with him.

Apparently that’s how you deal with your political opponents in New Zealand elections. You force parliament to read their secret finance diaries, you tease the ones that are uncomfortable around girls, you un-invite them to birthday parties and you get secretive cults to spend half a million dollars of their own money trying to keep your opponents out of the capital.

Yes, after the incredibly expensive lies, the sexism, the teasing and all the rest, the only way to keep Toby’s interest in the election was to involve a reclusive Christian cult that doesn’t eat, live or marry outside its own in the proceedings. A group of businessmen from a deeply religious sect known as The Exclusive Brethren spent over half a million dollars pamphlet dropping in a large number of urban electorates, speaking of the potential evils that would befall the nation if a Labour-Greens coalition was to gain power. Gays would be able to corrupt children, New Zealand businesses would be taxed into oblivion to pay for pointless environmental causes and the entire economy would suffer. It’s amazing how much insight these businessman had considering they deny themselves access to television, radio, print media, popular music, restaurants, galleries, alcohol, contemporary fiction, modern science, most tertiary education and the internet.

At first the finger was pointed at Dr Brash’s National Party. There were rumblings that they may have financed the mysterious pamphlets themselves. Dr Brash denied all prior knowledge of the pamphlets or who had distributed them. It took a Brethren Businessmen press conference to set the record straight (how does a secretive Christian sect that shuns all forms of modern media decide to follow up their political meddling with a live national press conference?). The Brethren businessmen had done this without either Dr Brash’s or their church’s consent. However it transpired that the group had met with Dr Brash in the months before their pamphlet drop and expressed their support for his party. Dr Brash was curiously silent about this meeting right up until the press conference where the Exclusive Brethren businessmen set the record straight (I’m told Christians never lie).

Now, a gay, eco-friendly, pro-social policy PR type could have spun this in Dr Brash’s favour. He could have said ‘Look. Even secretive religious groups are emerging from the woodwork to try and stop Helen getting another three years of telling us how to live our lives. When they told us they were going to throw their own private savings behind our cause we thanked and congratulated them.’ No. It was yet another knock-on. Only in New Zealand would you get a secretive sect capturing national headlines in the closing days of an election campaign and only in the National Party could this potential advantage be so spectacularly spoiled. Dr Brash decided to admit on camera that he had “misled the public” and unreservedly apologised to the people of New Zealand. He apologised on national television in the week before the country headed to the booths!Surely there must have been someone in his camp who told him that this is not the best way to build the confidence of the nation. Helen didn’t even apologise when she completely chewed out that Air New Zealand pilot. She knows that elections mean never having to say you are sorry.

I have left out stories about candidates bringing up long-buried sexual harassment claims taken out against their opponents in vain efforts to save their own skins, threats of abolishing the Maori seats, candidates walking down main streets in the nude and Dr Brash’s oddly exclusive diet of corned beef and peas from his single days because after terrorised pilots, parliamentary intervention and the inclusion of Christian cults even poor Toby couldn’t take any more excitement. We were both clearly looking forward to election day.

Fortunately for someone as lazy as myself, there was a voting booth at the end of my street. I dutifully drove my gas-guzzling car three blocks down the hill and in an effort to keep New Zealand clean and eco-friendly, cast my vote for the Green Party. I then hooked up with a group of friends in a downtown politics bar and settled in to get boozed and watch the votes being tallied up live on air. The good thing about voluntary voting in a country of four million people is that this actually takes a comparatively short period of time compared to countries like Australia or the United States. There was a tremendous feeling of relief as I downed my cool New Zealand beer. All the bizarre excitement was over.

Except for the one guy who chose election night to steal a light aircraft from a South Auckland flight school. A friend of mine came running outside to where the smokers were huddled (one of Helen’s bossy boots laws was to ban indoor smoking) and breathlessly said that someone was threatening to fly a plane into the Sky Tower. Sky Tower is like Centrepoint in Sydney. It’s big, pointless and stuck in the centre of town. We were only a few blocks away from it. Rather than head inside to watch “we interrupt this story to bring you…” we decided we’d stay outside and simply look up. That way we could smoke at the same time. All we could see at that stage were a couple of news helicopters hovering around the Sky Tower, ghoulishly waiting for the worst possible outcome. I dragged deeply and thought to myself ‘of course there’s a plane trying to fly into the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. This is a New Zealand election after all. The only way you can top secretive cults is with airborne terrorism. I mean, how do other countries elect their leaders, anyway?’

A lot of what made up the remainder of election night was pretty predictable. The plane didn’t crash into the Sky Tower. Instead, the pilot, distraught that his girlfriend had left him, nose-dove the plane into the sea mere metres off an Auckland beach. He was dragged ashore by passing do-gooders, alive but shaken. Also Helen Clark was elected for an historic third term as prime minister of New Zealand. Her victory party was around the corner from my house. I thought about going but realised I had used up all my incredibly expensive petrol in the three block trip to the voting booth. Apparently I didn’t miss much. Except for her husband kissing another man on national television.

That’s the thing about New Zealand elections, even when you think they’re in the bag, there’s a stolen aircraft or some hot man-on-man action to keep the interest up. It’s only been in the last few weeks that Helen Clark has managed to pick a plethora of other chefs to work with her in the new parliamentary kitchen. One looks like a giant chicken, another is rapidly sliding into irrelevance and hoping that he reaches retirement first and the last one famously referred to the New Zealand muslim community as a “multi-headed hydra”. He’s our new foreign minister. Unsurprisingly there has been a lot of talk internationally and within New Zealand that this third Labour government won’t last the full three year term. Toby may be heading back to the booths before long. In a way I hope he does. I want to watch another New Zealand election. Without a doubt it is absolutely the best show in town.