On the right, Trevor Mallard, Speaker of Parliament. In the center, seated and appearing to listen raptly, Lee and I. I will say parenthetically that the name Trevor Mallard sounds even more comical with a New Zealand accent, at least to my ear… the syllables are accented more evenly than in American dialect and the last part is pronounced just like the word lard. But whatever his name, he is the Speaker of Parliament and that ain’t nothing.

Our freshman MP, Shanan Halbert, has impressed us with his energy. If you hold an event bigger than a child’s birthday party, Shanan will be there and he will take a selfie and he will post it on Facebook.

On that same Facebook page he posted a note saying he’d be having dinner at a nearby restaurant (that we’d already been to and liked) and would anybody want to come? Done. It turned out he’d booked the entire restaurant, meaning there were about 50 or 60 dedicated Labour Party types and a few curious spectators like ourselves.

Trevor Mallard was there in the capacity of after dinner speaker and to present a few people with their Labour Party life membership pins. He told a few stories, which might have been more amusing to him, or at the time, then they were to us, or now. His phone went off while he was speaking, and he gets high marks for having a quack quack ringtone.

Shanan makes the third Member of Parliament I’ve had a conversation with. I’ve been in close proximity with the Prime Minister twice and had my picture taken with the Leader of the Opposition. And none of those interactions cost me a penny. Shanan has office hours every Friday within walking distance of home, and so did my previous MP David Seymour. Of course, that level of interaction with regular people would be impossible for American politicians… It would mean that Congress would have many thousands of members. But it’s amazing and wonderful to feel like politics is so accessible. I wonder how many US problems would recede if there were a similar level of connectedness.

Although it won’t be official for a few weeks, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party has won enough votes to govern NZ alone for the next three years. The opposition National party didn’t have a credible alternative policy, and its leadership was beset by internal and personal problems. Jacinda’s coalition partner NZ First (finally) self-destructed. The Greens, the Māori party and Libertarian ACT all did ok, but not enough to have a guaranteed role in shaping policy.

The most interesting parts of the election are the least certain till all the votes are counted: referendums on legalizing recreational marijuana and euthanasia. In my circles, sentiment seems to be leaning in favor of both, but let’s see.

Even with a pandemic delay, the campaign was blissfully short and substantive. NZ faces a lot of problems, as does the whole world. It’s not clear how this or any government will solve them… but by a lot of measures this government has in fact outperformed the entire world recently.

So congrats Jacinda and Let’s Keep Moving!!

For as much noise as they’ve caused, it’s a little surprising that I haven’t written more about the Lime scooter invasion.

Lime scooters are awesome electric scooters. You unlock them with an app on your phone and whiz along at up to about 16 mph. Totally fun. And they do solve the last mile problem for a lot of trips.

But Auckland seems to have been completely overwhelmed by Lime’s famously aggressive rollout team. Nobody figured out the details of how they have been introduced, where you can and can’t ride them (sidewalks, bike lanes, etc), who pays for the (many!) injury claims, who is responsible for maintenance lapses, and so on.

Or rather, Lime figured out all those details and Auckland failed to disagree. So the money goes to the VCs, and the costs stay here. The situation is particularly troubling in NZ, because of the national, tax-funded, no-fault insurance policy we all enjoy. When a private company introduces a dangerous product, their liability is mostly absorbed by the citizenry. That can be balanced by good product regulation, but government missed the mark on this one.

The City Council did take the scooters off the streets last week over safety concerns, but now they’re back. Still fun, but for me the bloom is off the rose, and I’ll be much less enthusiastic about Lime than I was at first.

And a tiny little bit of representation. 

Neither of the two big parties won a majority in Saturday’s election, so now the wheeling and dealing is underway to form a coalition government.