2017: The Class of 2017

October 9, 2023

By AHNZ

On 23 September, 2017, New Zealand’s 17 day General Election finally came to an end. We stopped having a single Election Day in 2008 and shifted to a Prolonged Campaigning model or what the politicians tell us to call “Advance Voting.” In 2017 48% of votes were cast WHILE voters were under the influence of active political campaigning. This measure, I suspect, was to nullify the advantage of passionate minor political parties over apathetic mainstream parties. If not, why would the mainstream parties have legislated for it? Ref. 2008: Voting under the influence, AHNZ

The National 5.0 Prime Minister’s, Bill English’s, party clearly won the election with over a million Party Votes whereas the Opposition’s Jacinda Ardern lost with less than a million Party Votes. However, Ardern won the bidding war for New Zealand First as coalition partner and formed a the Labour 6.0 Ministry.

On 25 September the sitting MP Barbara Kuriger (Taranaki-King Country) posted a photo to social media showing the new intake of National MPs; “The Class of 2017.” They were: Simeon Brown, Matt King, Erica Stanford, Tim van de Molen, Lawrence Yule, Nicola Willis, Denise Lee, Andrew Falloon, Chris Penk, Matt Doocy, Hamish Walker, and Jami-Lee Ross.

“Do well “Class of 2017″ !!!Congratulations” – Kate Wilkinson, MHR (former,) Facebook (2017)

It’s been amusing to watch those names tagged beside the above photo removed over the months and years to follow due to various stumbles and scandals.  In the end Kuriger simply deleted everyone!

So, what happened to all of Bill’s Boys and Girls who were elected with a destiny to join National 5.0 but instead were cheated by Winson Peters’ and Jacinda Ardern’s back room deals? And what predictions can we offer at this point (eve of election 2023?)

Simeon Brown survived and is likely to be Transport Minister in National 6.0 and, one day, Prime Minister. He’s very ambitious and calculating. I remember him walking around the University of Canterbury back in the day in a suit with 2 suited lieutenants in lock-step flanking him! I remember him mastering the Wonkery of the Auckland Unitary Plan so he could be the Q&A guy and make a name for himself. Brown apparently took a shot at Leader Chris Luxon to test him using bi-lingual road signs in mid-2023. I don’t think Luxon likes him but can’t cut Brown out and in the end Brown will survive when the Luxon-Wood Nats topple.

Matt King lost his seat in 2020 but instead of sticking it out to, probably, win it back, he exited the mainstream and the National Party. King joined the Freedom Revolt, railed against “vaccination” mandates,  was trespassed from parliament, and formed his own DemocracyNZ party. National act like they never knew him.

Erica Stanford stuck it out and will be Minister of Education for National 6.0. As an ex-TV industry insider she has been working the media for a while. Eventually she’ll take a shot at “reforming” our State schools by making them yet more Communist the same way Chris Hipkins, Nikki Kaye, and Hekia Parata all tried to do before but couldn’t stick the landing. The horrible mess will come for us one day and Erica is just the one to bring it.

Tim van de Molen has a Safe Seat in Waikato and is destined to be a Back Bencher. He could be a Sock Puppet Minister run by handlers but that would never be in a major Ministry like Agriculture which is what this farmer probably wishes he could be. The bearded one is apparently the political agent involved in establishing a new medical school at Waikato University if that even happens. It will probably just be an expensive consultation process to pay back some National Party donors and come to nothing and Tim wont see any of the bling.

Lawrence Yule moved from Mayor of Hastings into the seat of Tukituki but lost it in 2020 and didn’t come back despite nearly being victorious. He just vanished into the shrubbery like a reversing Homer Simpson and has never come out again. Redacted! What do they have on him?

Nicola Willis went right up to the top and is Deputy Leader of the Nats. She’s set to be the next Minister of Finance and even Deputy Prime Minister unless Winston Peters demands it. She shares a deeply twangy Kiwi colloquial accent with Luxon and of the two is the less effeminate. Usually quite a vicious countenance, she lights up and transforms into Eva Green when in throes of political glory. According to the Baby Boomer Grapevine she’s sure to roll Luxon. So, trusting that, I expect she’ll leap-frog over Winston Peters and become Prime Minister in time for the 2026 Election Month.

Denise Lee was narrowly beaten out of her seat in Auckland in 2020. Based on her Christian politician dad and having been president of United Future I guess she was a bit too conservative for the direction that political brands are heading in. Saw the writing on the wall. Got out, back to local politics. Changed her name, lost her husband, lost her son. Had enough of the rotten place and left it to people with a higher tolerance for the despicable.

Andrew Falloon is another embarrassingly redacted loss to the Class of 2017. Like David Seymour he was once a back-room operator in the ACT Party but for some reason saw a better opening by flipping into the Nats so in he went. Andrew was working his Rangitata electorate and cultivating a long career until Jacinda Ardern basically picked him out as a blood sacrifice in her game against then National Leader Judith Collins. Faloon never really did anything wrong or nothing beyond the usual filth they’re all up to as politicians. He fell on his sword like a good soldier but was made a “sex-text scandal disgrace” and struck from Kuriger’s tagged friends list. You’d like to feel sorry for him but if the shoe was on the other foot he’d be just as thirsty to do the same thing to someone else in this bloodsport that is (was?) his lifelong identity. Ref. The ‘Yes, And’ Politics Game, NZB3

Chris Penk holds Hellensville or whatever it’s called these days. Frequently takes selfies next to potholes as if he thinks that will get him the Transport portfolio over Simeon Brown. Na-uh mate. Career appears to be an ornamental military role raising flags and wearing a uniform for the Governor General. I used to drive by John Key’s old electorate office that Penk inherited and he let the New Zealand flag go to tatters. You’d think he would know better! But after 2 weeks of emailing him he finally put it right but was really pissy about it. That electorate office has been relinquished this year and is now a really scruffy looking residence for someone without a proper clothesline. I think Penk will just be a seat warmer until Hellensville is given as a prize to someone a bit more handy with the political murder axe like JK was.

Matt Doocy still holds Waimakariri and served as an Enforcer (Whip) for Judith Collins but when her fortunes changed the job went to Luxon’s man- Chris Penk. Doocy seems a very quiet man. From a wealthy political family, he apparently turned to mental health and actually thought he could serve that by taking it to the most diseased and wretched hive of scum and villainy; Parliament?? Surely he has been disabused of that ambition by now but he’s still there making up the furniture. Nice Safe Seat career Back Bencher waiting, perhaps, for Judith Collins’ ship to come in again. [update: I hear from National’s 2023 campaign that Luxon wants a Minister of Mental Health. Looks like this lunatic is about to be running his own asylum…]

Hamish Walker is another smoking crater in the fatality list of Barbara’s photo. He teamed up with old Legacy National Party handler Michelle Boag to strike a blow against Labour 6.0 in the early days of the COVID Panic. It seemed the Ministry was planning to dump some 11,000 foreigners into his district under the guise of being New Zealanders when they were only ‘paper Kiwis’, ie only part of our population by technicality. In those early days Boag-Walker did not appreciate how much propaganda and polarisation was attached to Ardern’s COVID Crisis or they’d never have stood in the way of this monster truck and been steam-rolled. Labour just called him “racist” and away he went in a puff of smoke; “Disgraced.” The National Party allowed it, probably thinking it was as good an opportunity as any to finally burn Boag so someone else could work her levers of power in the party. Ref. Paper Kiwis, NZB3

Jami-Lee Ross is the most famous dumpster fire of everyone in that 2017 intake list over which he was Chief Whip. What his real transgression was, who even knows? Making Ross go away became such a priority that his opponents had him sectioned to a mental health facility about 12 months after this photo!

It didn’t make him go away! So it became a sex scandal with another MP, Sarah Dowie (Invercargill.) Still, Ross stuck it out. He tried to be re-elected in the 2020 General Election with a party of his own:  Advance New Zealand. He really stuck around and made his former charges in this photo wish he didn’t stand so, stand so, close to them! According to Wikipedia he is now ‘Chief Whip’ over a brothel of prostitutes in the Viaduct, Auckland. His old Safe Seat of Botany was handed over to Chris Luxon who soon became Party Leader.

What an attrition rate from a once celebrated intake! On other hand, the survivors have Free Parking or have Passed Go and Collected. They are, in October 2023, on the verge of ruling the country.

Somehow the National Party brand didn’t suffer from the appalling record of this group enough to need a major reboot.

Considering the rotten and/or kooky reputations of these Members that we know about how much worse are the ones we don’t? Dodging the Big Red X doesn’t make Simeon, Erica, Matt, Chris, Tim, and Nichola clean at all. It just means that, so far, they have been on the side of Destroyers not Destroyed. They are the reigning champions of the kill-or-be-killed game of scandals and still left standing. Doesn’t make them better at being bad and therefore worse than the X people whose ‘crimes’ we know? And they’re set to Govern as National 6.0.

Like    Comment     Share