You may think, “Who gives a Stuff? She’ll get back into Parliament on the party list anyway.” Except that it excited the Leftist TV1 News enough for them to make it the lead item in their bulletin last night! The reason — the Leftists don’t like sitting National MP Simon O’Connor’s anti-abortion stance, and they like Brook van Velden’s libertarian pro-choice stance. But are NZ’s current unrestrictive laws likely to be challenged in Parliament? No.
Yep, that was it as far as TV1 is concerned. Last year TV1 commented on Simon O’Connor’s FB happy post at the time the US Supreme Court decided that the US Constitution makes no mention of abortion and thus wasn’t a contitutional right. TV1 was delighted that National’s Wokeist leader Mr Luxon made Simon O’Connor delete the post, despite National long having let its MPs decide this issue on an individual conscience basis (as has the Labour Party.)
Brook van Velden has little chance of taking the seat off National — Simon O’Connor is a good MP — although she will probably beat the Labour candidate into third place. As a political commentator on the TV1 item said, this is probably to do with boosting ACT’s party vote in the seat.
The overall point is that this just demonstates the trivial nature of TV1 when it comes to politics and political issues. TV1 staff may all be pro-choice on the abortion issue, but they are and certainly were not on Comrade Jacinda’s mandates for that substance. Leftists are hypocrites.
There was much debate about abortion and euthanasia at the last election with organised groups running campaigns against political parties.
What got ‘ignored’ was that both were decided by conscience vote, and the yay’s and nah’s were spread evenly through all the parties