Behind fun lies a serious election message

Nov 21st, 2011

Looking like a cross between Screaming Lord Sutch and Abe Lincoln on his campaign billboards, Laurence Boomert is keen to inject some fun into the Wellington Central race this election.

But underneath the top hat and glued-on side burns is a serious message that Mr Boomert wants to convey with his New Economics Party.

His focus is on the global economic crisis and the need for a new system of finance and banking.

He says there has to be new thinking about monetary systems and the agencies that have guided the world for the last 30 years, such as the World Bank and IMF.

“They all should be in hiding about now and they should no longer be advocating to us what we’re supposed to do next. Their legitimacy is really evaporating and at some point people will realise that.”

Mr Boomert says it is not realistic for him to win the seat, but he is using the election to get across the messages that New Zealanders must take action to avert a more serious depression.

“We’re a nation of happy little hobbits – in some cases zombie hobbits – and we haven’t felt it like the rest of the world, but we’re talking about the implosion of most leading western nations monetary systems.”

He says the combination of peak oil along with global resource depletion are showing us that “the unsustainable wheels are falling off the unsustainable car.

“The economic model of growth will collapse because the monetary system and the food system runs on energy – it runs on oil.”

The former organic gardener and founder of the Sustainable Business Network, stood for the Greens in 1999, but said his focus on economics and business did not go down well with the party at that time.

Mr Boomert is critical of National Party policies, saying the current government has indebted New Zealand faster than anyone previously.

He predicts John Key will lose popular support next year as he “takes the soft glove off the fist” with asset sales and more neo-liberal policies.

There are reasons to be optimistic says Boomert, because the conversation about the solutions needed is taking off and coming from the people most affected by the crisis.

He cites the Occupy movement: “People have to reclaim their part in the system and be allowed to be self-directed without constantly being throttled by corrupt systems of organisation.”

His message about the creation and control of money may be difficult for some voters to grasp, but his aim to get people talking about a new system that would benefit everyone.

Although his party is recognised by the electoral office, it has not yet managed to gather the 500 members required to be registered because he decided to run in the election only about a month ago.

Boomert will be out on his roller blades this week in Wellington, campaigning and handing out manifestos.

ENDS

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