A new low

Felix Desmarais at 1 News writes:

It’s the final week of the 2023 election campaign and Christopher Luxon is talking about dinosaurs.

It’s not by choice — it was spurred on by a query by comedian Guy Williams, based on a rumour.

The rumour goes that National leader Luxon, while chief executive, blocked an Air New Zealand in-flight safety video based around dinosaurs from production because he didn’t believe in them.

Luxon has clarified he does believe dinosaurs existed and that the rumour about the in-flight safety video is rubbish.

It may have been a genuine (comedy) question from Williams, but the question of it soon proliferated, unironically it appears, from left-leaning social media accounts.

The inference from many of those was clear and it was mischievous — that because Luxon is religious he doesn’t believe in dinosaurs.

What a miserable state of affairs.

By all means criticise and critique politicians for their policies — and there’s always room for light-hearted questions to politicians — but that undertone shows that some think grasping at rumour and innuendo is a reasonable response to poor polling.

New Zealand deserves better.

There does appear to be an increasing desperation from the left, not seen since 2008.

They are desperate, and the dinosaur smear is no coincidence.

Labour even got their polling company to ask a question about belief in dinosaurs last month. There is no way this question was unrelated to the rumour/smear the left have been pushing against Luxon, and then Guy Williams on Newshub just happens by coincidence to ask it on air, so that it will get more currency.