Donald Hipkins

Radio NZ reports:

Chris Hipkins says National is only in pole position to form a government because it “manipulated the electoral system”.

“There are a lot of people very angry about the direction that the country has been heading under this government, and you actually see that in the fact that after only one term, National has lost the party vote in this election, they’re only holding on to the prospect of power because they’ve manipulated the electoral system.

“They’re in a position where if they weren’t manipulating the electoral system, they would be gone at this point.”

He said they manipulated things through the overhang strategy.

Chris Hipkins seems to be morphing into Donald Trump. He is lying and refusing to accept an election outcome. I hope the media condemn him as much as they did Trump.

National has in no way manipulated the electoral system, unless you regard being successful at retaining electorates as manipulation!

The leader and campaign team and MPs all actively campaigned for the party vote. The party that did not campaign for the party vote was Te Pāti Māori, whose MPs are critical to Hipkins chances of gaining power. And as I pointed out National’s party vote of 29% is at the same level as it was three months ago.

Asked how that was the case when National had pushed back strongly against vote-splitting, Hipkins said Winston Peters and Chris Bishop weren’t doing that.

“Oh, for goodness sakes! I saw Chris Bishop in the electorate right next to mine, standing next to Winston Peters, asking New Zealand First voters to vote National on their electorate vote,” Hipkins said.

Now he is hallucinating. There was no joint appearance by Peters and Bishop where Peters told people to vote for Bishop. Peters was at a public meeting that Bishop was not at, and said because Bishop is good good a Minister, he thought people should vote for him. I think it is a good thing to endorse good MPs. And I also note of course that Bishop did not win Hutt South, so Hipkins comes over even more deranged by trying to use his hallucination as evidence of manipulation.

And consider this story from 2002:

Labour is encouraging supporters to vote for Green leader Jeannette Fitzsimons as their Coromandel electorate MP in a bid to court support for a potential post-election ally.

“I haven’t used the word endorsement … but just as we haven’t discouraged Labour voters from supporting Jeannette in 1999, we wouldn’t be discouraging them this time either,” Prime Minister Helen Clark told NZPA today.

Miss Clark said Labour’s position on the key electorate for the Greens hadn’t changed since the last election and was part of a long term strategy to ensure Labour had coalition partners.

So according to Donald J Hipkins, Helen Clark (who he worked for) was manipulating the electoral system.

Hipkins has lied about what National did, has hallucinated a joint appearance by Peters and Bishop and has claimed that something Helen Clark did is a manipulation or rigging of the electoral system.

Labour should hurry up and roll him, before he embarrasses them further.