Important facts put through a hot wash, wrung out and tumbled on high for half an hour too long
In what’s become an annual event, it’s the end of the year.
To see it out, or through, the WWNews editorial team has turned no stone to uncover the major events of 2023, opting instead to make stuff up.
There are ten questions with multiple-choice answers. Some answers are less incorrect than others. Points are awarded for reading the question through to the end.
Fingers on buzzers, no conferring, your time starts now. Okay, now. Come on, what’s the hold up?
Ticket sales slow, dogs howling in streets
As the National and Act parties enter the first week of an expected three year period of negotiations with Winston Peters over who gets the silver ashtray at the Cabinet table, the man once described as “hopefully that’s the last we’ll ever see of him” has already started to position himself and his party’s policies, but him first.
The country is well-accustomed to Peters assuming the Kingmaker role but, despite that, New Zealanders have never opted to vote for a republic, instead preferring to wait for the day when he gets up close and verbal with a reporter and gets a microphone accidentally shoved right up his left nostril. [Editor’s note: WWNews would never advocate for violence towards an elected offical, but would pay to see that.]
Peters has repeatedly declined to give details on which of NZFirst’s policies would have to get implemented in order for him to join a coalition with National and Act, or indeed details of any NZFirst policies at all, telling members of the media they should get on with the job of reporting important matters and leave the running on the country to him and Shane Jones, but him first.
Shane Jones wasn’t approached for comment as his penchant for the overutilisation of grandiloquent and fustian circumlocution makes Mrs Malaprop seem positively Churchillian, and who got time for that?
New Zealand’s next Prime Minister , should reason not prevail, Christopher Luxon, cemented his place as pre-eminent chance-seizer yesterday by announcing, during a visit to a rocket launching site, that he would be appointing a Minister for Space, along with several assistant ministers, to be known as space cadets.
WWNews has been given exclusive access to the policy documents, reproduced below:
“I’m not sure which quite yet,” Prime Minister Hipkins told our special WWNews correspondent. “But it’ll be one of the three.”
Hipkins, currently polling second as Preferred Prime Minster, just behind front-runner Annie Wynn-Else, is confident Labour stands a good chance of returning to the Government benches next month. “I trust the people of this country to vote for the party that they think will give them the best deal,” he said. “And if that’s Labour, well, hot diggity”
National’s finance spokesperson Nicola Willis has double down on her pledge to resign if National reneges on any of the policies so far announced. “As I’ve said, if we get elected, and why wouldn’t we, I mean it just makes sense, but if we do and it turns out we don’t follow through on any of the promises we’ve made along the way, I will resign,” Ms Willis said in a press conference last week.
To date, Ms Willis or indeed any of her colleagues has been unable to release details of any National policies. “We have some,” another different spokesperson said. “But they’re at the printers. Or the details are still being thrashed out, so that nothing discernible remains.”
Political wing of the Density Church, the Freedom Party, has promised to lower taxes across the board for all New Zealanders, if they win the balance of power next month.
“We’ve had a look at the cumbersome tax structure currently in operation, and can see a way to simplify it,” assistant deacon and finance spokesman Paul Pitbasher told WWNews. “Should the bright lights of Heaven shine forth upon the ballot box and we get made the bosses of New Zealand, we will ask that, instead of paying fiddly amounts depending on level of income, everyone just gives us a flat 10%.” Asked what tithe-payers might expect in return, Mr Pitbasher said gifts would be manifold, including but not limited to “free rides on the Government Harley’s, discounted black t-shirts and hair product and a well-rinsed soul.”
“All we ask in return is they pay for their medical expenses, roading and other infrastructure, and bring a small envelope stuffed with cash whenever they need to see an MP,” Mr Pitbasher added.
The results of a survey, released overnight, give the first sign that if hell freezes over, that guy next door walks on the moon, the cheque does indeed turn up in Friday’s post, and NZ first gets over the threshold giving Winston Peters three more years in the Beehive, he is more than likely to be able to govern alone.
That won’t be because he’ll have a majority of MPs in the House – most NZ First candidates would be lucky to find their way out of a paperbag let alone get the right bus to Murphy St – but all the major political parties have refused point blank to let him anywhere near their baubles of office. Rather than enter into a protracted bargaining round, most leaders have said they’re prepared to walk way and sit on the opposition benches for as long as it takes Peters and NZ First to totally destroy NZ’s economy, social standing and genuine leather Parliamentary upholstery by chewing on it. “I’ll give it a week,” said one.
(previously published as David Seymour last remaining ACT candidate)
“Roads of National Significance” to include 4 lanes to Cadrona and better drive-in coffee shops
Inter-island ferries to sail at night to improve vistas for Sounds residents
Easier pathways for former Transport Ministers into trucking lobby groups
National Party leader Chris Luxon has said any update of what, if any, policies for managing this country’s worsening financial crisis that his party may have – you know, those ones that are meant to persuade people to vote for him – will have to wait until he’s had a chance to go through the accounts which he only saw yesterday.
Speaking to RNZ’s Corin Dann on Wednesday morning, Luxon declined to rule out ruling out any changes to policies they had previously announced, like tax cuts for the low-to-middle poor people, as he’d only received a printout of NZ’s bank statements the day before and, unlike most of the media and legions of economists, had not a chance to read past the title page. Mr Luxon was unable to say exactly when he might get to the list of contents, or executive summary, as he was going to be a bit busy for the next few weeks.
Earlier, Luxon has said he thought the opening of the books would have no effect on any of National’s tax-cut policies, as they had been independently costed and any surprises would not impact on the long list of clearly-thought-out election bribes. But that might have been a different Luxon.
“But what I can say is that Grant Robertson is the worst finance minister this country has ever had,” said every National candidate forced to read the latest set of party briefing notes.
A planned slum development on Villedale’s doorstep has been scuppered, due in part to the region’s richest recluse, former factory owner Lord Stanley Tantrumpino.
The development was to have seen up to a thousand shanty-style dwellings built on a grassed-over disused toxic waste dump and rented at exorbitant prices to beneficiaries and people who don’t know what a fish-knife is for, but ran into difficulties when it was discovered that Villedale’s wealthiest people would be living just over the back fence.
Once word got out, a large number of those who’d put their names down for the chance to go in the draw for a place on the short-list for tickets to the housing lottery withdrew their applications, one saying she might have nothing but at least she had standards. “I’d rather live in a 1993 Nissan Sentra than next door to those toffs,” Anna (not her real name as our reporter’s pencil broke as he was writing it down) told WWNews. “Although I’d prefer a Honda Civic for the extra drinks holders in the back seat.”
Without sufficient potential defaulting renters, the developer’s mobile mortgage manager withdrew funding and the developer, local builder and home-kill operative Lee Key-Holmes, was unable to secure other investors. “It’s a shame, that’s what it is,” Mr Key-Holmes said. “I’m a local, trying to help out other locals and some other locals don’t seem to appreciate that. But I have other irons in the fire, especially since the laundry room burnt down.”
Lord Tantrumpino, who made his billions through the innovative use of computerised production line processes and even more innovative employment contract workarounds during the 1990s, was unavailable for comment.
However, according to a person willing to talk about the matter even though they might not be possessed of all, if any, of the facts, Lord T was upset by the outcome and had offered to purchase all the available land himself. “He has plans to put in several native trees and a viewing platform, and will build a large museum to house the many interesting items he has collected in his travels,” the person said. “There will even be an annex to house the thousands of volumes of last week’s to-do list.”
Work is expected to start shortly on the approaches to the area, to be called Hunker Downs, with a world-wide razor-wire shortage not expected to cause unnecessary delays to the project.
