conscience votes

have hardly had time to take a breath over the last few days, and there's still 3 weeks to go! saturday night i went to a diwali event, then sunday drove up to auckland for an eid festival. i took the girls along for the latter, and it was a lovely day with a good crowd.

i then rushed back to hamilton to get to a meet the candidates meeting, to support sue moroney, had a campaign meeting, did the groceries and attended a church for an interfaith prayer for world peace. there were prayers from anglicans, quakers, muslims, jews and bahai's. it was nice reflection and quiet time to think about what's happening around the world. in fact, this is the official week of prayer for world peace.

today, i had a community radio board meeting and another candidates meeting at destiny church. they actually let me in. ok, that was facetious, but i have to say i was a little worried at how i'd be received. however, they were friendly enough when i was handing out leaflets and only 1 person refused to take them (although he did that in a very friendly manner). so there you go.

i have however been very disappointed at the personal attacks on helen clark. yesterday, we had the republican candidate, one jack gielen who is rather well known here in hamilton, brought a white cross with something about the PM being a lesbian on it. he displayed this at the end of his speech.

today we had ACT party president garry mallett, during a question on the repeal of s59, say that he could at least say that helen clark had never hit one of her own children. it went down well with the destiny crowd, who conveniently forgot that the hamilton east candidate david bennett also does not have children and also voted in favour of the repeal.

it just makes me so angry that these kinds of attacks are being made. while the candidates on the left have stuck to debating the issues, it seems that parties of the extreme right are just not able to do that. more disappointing was the response of the crowd. they seem to forget that the national party voted in favour of the repeal of s59, en masse. they forget that 5 out of 9 ACT MPs voted for civil unions. look at other conscience votes and you'll find that support came from around the house.

but i guess people only hear what they want to hear. never mind, onwards and upwards.