New Zealand election weirdness, press freedom in Kansas, and CPAC takes stock

Love Jones It’s election season in New Zealand, as the country prepares for post-Ardern life. And thanks to Shane Jones, we have our first sugary hit of weirdness ahead of polling day. The former Labour MP, who in 2017 defected to populist party New Zealand First (founded by NZ political fixture Winston Peters), has posted on TikTok expressing his policy achievements through song.

As you might expect from a “musical performance performed by a populist party candidate on TikTok”, it’s essentially outsider music, a repurposing of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” to discuss his parliamentary record: “I took the PGF [ed’s note: that stands for provincial growth fund, obviously], then gave the funds to our people”. So the lyrics are fine, there’s no problem there. But Jones murmurs them in a way that manages to sound both artificial and out of tune, like the audio has been put through an auto-tune set to the wrong key.

“I’m back and making Northland great again,” he sings, adding “Shane Jones, belieeeevin’! Let’s hope his policy platform isn’t as lazy and obvious as his lyric substitution.

Press freedom watch Last week, Joan Meyer, co-owner of Kansas paper Marion County Record, died at the age of 98. It was sudden, mid-sentence apparently, and occurred after 24 hours in which she couldn’t eat or sleep following a raid on her home by local police. The search stemmed from the Record‘s pieces on a drink-driving charge against a local business owner — the police alleged the information had been accessed illegally — and has sparked a heated debate about press freedom.

A few days after Meyer’s house (as well as the paper’s offices) were raided, Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey withdrew the search warrant that led to the raid after concluding that “insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between the alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized”.

The revocation will be little consolation to Meyer’s loved ones, including her son Eric, who co-owns the paper. But it may be a source of pride to be able to share that she was legitimately fearless to the end. When the cops arrived, she gave them hell.

“Don’t you touch any of that stuff,” she says in footage released by the paper. “This is my house. You asshole!” At one point, she asks one of the officers: “Did your mother ever love you?”

CPAC of lies So Australia’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is done for another year — achieving what it always does, getting everyone mad with some calculated, hollow and deeply unserious provocations. This year it came via the laugh-a-minute speech from one attendee acknowledging “the Traditional Owners — violent black men”. Cool it, squares, it was just a joke, came the reply from Warren Mundine and others. But we wonder what some other, less high-profile members of the organisation made of it?

We’d love to get in contact with some of them to see, but as researcher Chrys Stevenson found when she checked in on organiser Andrew Cooper’s page, it’s not quite as easy to “meet the team” as we might like — apart from the interesting breakdown of race and gender, there is a conspicuous lack of names, titles or contact details.

Frankly, we just think she’s being needlessly suspicious. Who has time to fill in their bios for a website when they have as much on their plate as this quartet? After all, they have to take care of that property management business, their freelance career, the physio they do, and mortgage broking. That’s just one of them. Another is recovering from a dental issue, and is constantly “deep in thoughts, looking for solution”.

Qantas is all class (action) As we reported at the end of July, Qantas, Australia’s most complained-about company, is expected to deliver a profit of nearly $2.5 billion this year. All thanks to a healthy 15-year diet of high prices, underinvestment in its fleet, engineering staff and facilities, and, of course, a generous pinch of wage theft. It will be glad for a little buffer, as its Michael Jordan-like run of successfully trashing its reputation continues with the news it’s being sued in a class action lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in refunds and compensation for customers who had flights cancelled following the outbreak of COVID.

The lawsuit — which Qantas rejects — alleges customers were misled about their refund options, and the carrier withheld funds and engaged in a “pattern of unconscionable conduct”. In case you’ve forgotten, Qantas spent most of the pandemic demanding it be allowed to begin operating again, only to reveal it didn’t have a plan for what to do when its request was granted. Flights were constantly delayed or cancelled, baggage seemed as likely to arrive at a spot chosen via a map and a dart as it was to correspond with a customer’s ticket, and general customer service was pure chaos. And now this.

The Yes campaign will be hoping outgoing CEO Alan Joyce revokes his endorsement of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament more than it already was.