OPINION: New Zealand is very politically charged at the moment. We haven't been this fired up since we ran out of marmite in 2012. I think it's great, even if we are deciding to focus most of that energy on the flag. Which seems ridiculous when we haven't even sorted a pole. What good is a flag without a pole? It's not even a flag, it's a towel!

Richie McCaw said he wanted to change the flag, and people tore him apart. Three days after winning New Zealander of the Year, people on Facebook (the worst people in the world) were telling him to "F*** off Richie!" Then someone was telling that guy to "F*** off!" This is just us debating a flag. Thank God these geniuses haven't heard about any real problems; they'd kill each other.

Most of the anger and lightning centres around John Key, New Zealand's "Crime Minister" according to Facebook. I saw someone write: "He's trying to ruin the country!" He's not trying to ruin the country. He's accidentally ruining the country. Regardless of what you think of John Key, he's doing largely what he said he would do before he was elected. The real problem lies with our inability to properly challenge and oppose unpopular decisions in parliament and in the media. Most people would blame the media. But as I'm now part of the media, I choose to blame the opposition.

David White Okay, so he's not called David, but.... Labour Leader Andrew Little.

I went onto the Labour Party website today to see what they were up to and it was a dark time in my life. There was a photo of a weird old guy in a suit and then a caption that said "We're backing the Kiwi dream, will you join us?" All I could think was: "No! That sounds like a lotto ad." I scrolled down and there was a header that said "latest", and underneath that, it was blank! I almost felt sorry for them in a sad Jeb Bush kind of way.

I now realise that this was a web layout issue, but it's symbolic of the subtle incompetence that has turned me towards supporting the Greens. The Greens. Look at them. They're not even wearing any shoes! If the National Party are the All Blacks then Labour are the Auckland Blues: running around firing coaches, booking 50,000 seat stadiums for 4,000 fans while their best players leave to be a Pacific Economic Ambassador after a high-profile masturbation scandal. That last one was a Shane Jones reference and an unfair low blow, I apologise. I will not apologise to the Auckland rugby team.

The score has gotten so lopsided that National has started to select joke candidates for a laugh. Did you know that the National party currently has two MPs who are former tobacco lobbyists? Two! They've nominated and won with actual human victory cigars. I don't know anything about them, no one does - that's the secret. My guess is that anyone who was working as a lobbyist for a foreign tobacco company is perhaps a bit dodgy, and they're now MPs. Their names are Chris Bishop and Todd Barclay and they look like they've had a few to many ciggies. Google them, then print out their photos and use them for the latest "Smoking: not our future campaign".

Now obviously when something is broken you try and fix it, and boy, have Labour tried. Since Helen Clark left they've had 18 leaders, at least half of them were called "David" and all of them have had the same obvious flaw, no charisma. This shouldn't matter in 2016, but unfortunately it does: you need a leader with the kind of personality that could tug ya pony and convince you that smoking isn't really that bad. I'm not sure who the Labour Party leader is in 2016 but it doesn't matter, it's too late, they're going to lose and it's time for extreme action. Burn the party down and start again.

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