What was the election for, then?

For once, I'm almost in agreement with Rodney.

TV One’s Guyon Espiner reports what the parties want:

Greens: 500,000 solar panels and a “buy kiwi made” campaign.

Maori Party: Review the Foreshore and Seabed Act.

New Zealand First: Golden Age card increasing entitlements to senior citizens and removing GST from petrol.

United Future: No change to cannabis law and retain the Families Commission.

Add in Labour’s free loans to students. And ask yourself was that really what the whole campaign was about?

No steps forward then (with the possible exception of the unjust Foreshore and Seabed Act), but at least only baby steps backwards. Given what we've had to put up with in preceding years, that's some sort of a boon. The legislature will soon be back in session, and as Mark Twain warned neither property nor liberty will be safe, but if this is the extent of the new impositions to be exacted upon us, we might at least reflect that while things could be an awful lot better, it could very well have been much, much worse.