Robert's Open Letters
Robert Buchanan is a near retirement aged academic from Kirikiriroa Hamilton who has views.
Views shaped by almost 6 decades of experience, he's seen highs and lows, watched as the country prospers and suffers, heard all the excuses and now wants to vent.
So I offered him a place to do that... These are Robert's open letters.
Dear Dave
I haven't heard from you for a while. Is everything OK, Dave? You've been terribly quiet and that makes me terribly uncomfortable.
I suppose it’s school holidays now, so there’s no school lunches. That means you don’t have to promise that school lunches are great for kids, when sometimes that's not exactly true. There's no school teachers for you to attack when they bring up concerns about changes in their field and respond the only way they can.
I hope it's OK that I ask you a few questions. I have seen you crumble on TV when asked questions, but hopefully if I write them down
Is it OK if I call you Dave? You're a freedom and personal choice kind of guy, so I figure you'll be fine with me exercising my freedom and calling you Dave. That said, you strike me as the kind of chap who was called Dave at high school and corrected your school chums with a curt “no, it's David!” That's the kind of energy you give off, Dave.
So I saw you recently went to Argentina. That's cool I guess. Did you get any ideas about how to get handouts from Trump while you were there? You see, for a guy who talks about personal responsibility and spending within your means, you sure are buddy buddy with a guy who needed a $20 BILLION handout from America. Did you tell him to spend a little less? You could have suggested Milei raise some taxes. That would be fiscally responsible.
I like to imagine you've paid some attention to Milei’s rise to power. His chainsaw stunt during his campaign definitely got your attention. After all, why else would you drive a truck up parliament steps the next year? Did you see another libertarian do something and figured you'd do it too? That's not very independent of you. It also came off a little childish when the security guard yelled “No!” at you and your response was a grinning “why not”, like a petulant 6 year old trying to give the cat a shower.
I also have to ask: did you do an Argentine accent while you were there? I know you did a super cringe and hokey Canadian one when you were in Canada, so I'm wondering if you ended up sounding like the guy from the CC’s commercial when you were speaking with Milei. That seems like the kind of awkward fumble you'd be right at home with. Anyway, it's off to bed for me. It's been good catching up, Dave.
Kind regardsRobert Buchanan
PSHow's your mate Tim Jago? You realize we haven't forgotten about that, right?
I haven't heard from you for a while. Is everything OK, Dave? You've been terribly quiet and that makes me terribly uncomfortable.
I suppose it’s school holidays now, so there’s no school lunches. That means you don’t have to promise that school lunches are great for kids, when sometimes that's not exactly true. There's no school teachers for you to attack when they bring up concerns about changes in their field and respond the only way they can.
I hope it's OK that I ask you a few questions. I have seen you crumble on TV when asked questions, but hopefully if I write them down
Is it OK if I call you Dave? You're a freedom and personal choice kind of guy, so I figure you'll be fine with me exercising my freedom and calling you Dave. That said, you strike me as the kind of chap who was called Dave at high school and corrected your school chums with a curt “no, it's David!” That's the kind of energy you give off, Dave.
So I saw you recently went to Argentina. That's cool I guess. Did you get any ideas about how to get handouts from Trump while you were there? You see, for a guy who talks about personal responsibility and spending within your means, you sure are buddy buddy with a guy who needed a $20 BILLION handout from America. Did you tell him to spend a little less? You could have suggested Milei raise some taxes. That would be fiscally responsible.
I like to imagine you've paid some attention to Milei’s rise to power. His chainsaw stunt during his campaign definitely got your attention. After all, why else would you drive a truck up parliament steps the next year? Did you see another libertarian do something and figured you'd do it too? That's not very independent of you. It also came off a little childish when the security guard yelled “No!” at you and your response was a grinning “why not”, like a petulant 6 year old trying to give the cat a shower.
I also have to ask: did you do an Argentine accent while you were there? I know you did a super cringe and hokey Canadian one when you were in Canada, so I'm wondering if you ended up sounding like the guy from the CC’s commercial when you were speaking with Milei. That seems like the kind of awkward fumble you'd be right at home with. Anyway, it's off to bed for me. It's been good catching up, Dave.
Kind regardsRobert Buchanan
PSHow's your mate Tim Jago? You realize we haven't forgotten about that, right?
Dear Winston
Seeing as I’m quite mad at you, I’m going to give you a Compliment Sandwich. I’ll start with a compliment, give you some constructive criticism, then end on a compliment.
Here’s the first compliment: for a guy who seems to have spent the past sixty years surviving on Dunhill Blues and hard liquor, you sure are alive. That’s a compliment, I guess.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I feel like New Zealand’s political sphere could do with someone who repeatedly has bad takes. It gives us the ability to say “well at least they’re not as bad as Winston” whenever another MP opens their mouth. You let a lot of MPs get away with saying atrocious stuff, because your opinion on the same matter is somehow even worse. You challenged David Seymour, a man almost 40 years younger than you, to a fist fight. You voted against the decriminalisation of homosexuality AND against marriage equality. Time and time again you have proven yourself to be on the wrong side of history.
My current issue with you is that, possibly for the first time in your 47 year political career, you have shut up. This is causing me some confusion, as normally I love it when you shut up. I love it when I open RNZ or Stuff and there’s no sound bites from Aotearoa’s most fermented politician. It’s a great way to start the day.
But right now, in your role as Foreign Minister and National Croc Skin Wallet, we need you to say something. Literally anything would be better than the miraculous and unprecedented silence that seems to have overcome you.
You see, in case you were neck deep in a bottle of whiskey, Donald Trump says America were the only ones doing any fighting in Afghanistan. American troops, he claims, were the only ones doing ANY of the “real” fighting. Everyone else was there, but just faffing about, keeping as far away from the combat as possible.
Now, in case no one has told you, about 3,500 Kiwi soldiers went to Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021. Ten of them never came home alive. We went and fought for America’s aims, despite not being members of NATO and thus not bound by Article 5 of the NATO charter. We went and fought and died because New Zealand supports its friends. We always have. Two world wars, Korea, Malaya. We even supported America by sending soldiers to Vietnam, another war we weren’t obligated to go and fight in.
Are you scared of Donald Trump? Are you a huge, leathery chicken? Why haven’t you said anything? It’s been a few days now, plenty of time to sleep off a hangover and get the message out that “hang on Donald, you’ve got this one wrong!” Maybe put down the cigs for long enough to fire off a tweet, or even instruct a staffer to put something on Facebook pushing back.
It's almost like you and Donald are twins. He's Arnold Schwarenager and you're Danny Devito. The hair, the bluster, the pure volume, it's all bordering on identical. The biggest difference is that he's been the leader of his country twice, and the best you can do is deputy prime minister. A role, I simply must add, you gain through throwing your toys in the post election scramble for position
Even Phillip Bruce Goff, first of his name (I mean surely, right?), has managed to speak up about the claims. He called your lack of comment "deafening”. I tend to agree with him.
And just as I'm writing this letter, Paul tells me that you've launched an attack on Goff and the Labour Party, rather than defend New Zealand’s veterans from the slanders of a blowhard. You absolute sausage.
Now another compliment: you have better hair than anyone else in the Coalition, considering Luxon is smooth like a dolphin and Seymour looks like Rimmer from Red Dwarf.
Kind regardsRobert Buchanan
Seeing as I’m quite mad at you, I’m going to give you a Compliment Sandwich. I’ll start with a compliment, give you some constructive criticism, then end on a compliment.
Here’s the first compliment: for a guy who seems to have spent the past sixty years surviving on Dunhill Blues and hard liquor, you sure are alive. That’s a compliment, I guess.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I feel like New Zealand’s political sphere could do with someone who repeatedly has bad takes. It gives us the ability to say “well at least they’re not as bad as Winston” whenever another MP opens their mouth. You let a lot of MPs get away with saying atrocious stuff, because your opinion on the same matter is somehow even worse. You challenged David Seymour, a man almost 40 years younger than you, to a fist fight. You voted against the decriminalisation of homosexuality AND against marriage equality. Time and time again you have proven yourself to be on the wrong side of history.
My current issue with you is that, possibly for the first time in your 47 year political career, you have shut up. This is causing me some confusion, as normally I love it when you shut up. I love it when I open RNZ or Stuff and there’s no sound bites from Aotearoa’s most fermented politician. It’s a great way to start the day.
But right now, in your role as Foreign Minister and National Croc Skin Wallet, we need you to say something. Literally anything would be better than the miraculous and unprecedented silence that seems to have overcome you.
You see, in case you were neck deep in a bottle of whiskey, Donald Trump says America were the only ones doing any fighting in Afghanistan. American troops, he claims, were the only ones doing ANY of the “real” fighting. Everyone else was there, but just faffing about, keeping as far away from the combat as possible.
Now, in case no one has told you, about 3,500 Kiwi soldiers went to Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021. Ten of them never came home alive. We went and fought for America’s aims, despite not being members of NATO and thus not bound by Article 5 of the NATO charter. We went and fought and died because New Zealand supports its friends. We always have. Two world wars, Korea, Malaya. We even supported America by sending soldiers to Vietnam, another war we weren’t obligated to go and fight in.
Are you scared of Donald Trump? Are you a huge, leathery chicken? Why haven’t you said anything? It’s been a few days now, plenty of time to sleep off a hangover and get the message out that “hang on Donald, you’ve got this one wrong!” Maybe put down the cigs for long enough to fire off a tweet, or even instruct a staffer to put something on Facebook pushing back.
It's almost like you and Donald are twins. He's Arnold Schwarenager and you're Danny Devito. The hair, the bluster, the pure volume, it's all bordering on identical. The biggest difference is that he's been the leader of his country twice, and the best you can do is deputy prime minister. A role, I simply must add, you gain through throwing your toys in the post election scramble for position
Even Phillip Bruce Goff, first of his name (I mean surely, right?), has managed to speak up about the claims. He called your lack of comment "deafening”. I tend to agree with him.
And just as I'm writing this letter, Paul tells me that you've launched an attack on Goff and the Labour Party, rather than defend New Zealand’s veterans from the slanders of a blowhard. You absolute sausage.
Now another compliment: you have better hair than anyone else in the Coalition, considering Luxon is smooth like a dolphin and Seymour looks like Rimmer from Red Dwarf.
Kind regardsRobert Buchanan
Disclaimer: The content in these letters are the opinions of the author. The Author's name has been changed to protect him from the "rampant hate" of the right as they describe it.