read-and-butter issues were supposed to be the meat and potatoes of this year’s election. When Chris Hipkins took over as prime minister in late January, he promised to “focus on what’s in front of New Zealanders right now”, citing the traditional political battlegrounds of housing, education, healthcare, and cost of living. But for most of February, we focused on the rain, which was not only in front of us but above us, and below us, and all around us. There were torrential downpours, oceans of mud and mountains of logging debris flooding the rivers, sweeping away bridges and roads. Instead of bread and butter, our politicians are wrestling with the primal forces of nature: the forests, the weather, the very
