A tough month, but it may not hurt the Government

It is truly bizarre to contemplate that Ardern's ministry has been less decisive on Russian roguery than the Trump administration.

March was a difficult month for the Government.

Justice Minister Andrew Little threatened the Law Society with ministerial action if he did not consider its investigation into sexual misconduct in the legal profession to be robust enough. Within days, it was revealed the Labour Party had a sexual abuse scandal of its own.

At a summer camp run by the party, a number of minors had been sexually abused. Their parents were not told. The police were not informed. The prime minister was kept in the dark.

Labour said this was because it had taken a ‘‘victim-led’’ response to the incident, consistent with professional advice. It later emerged the professional advice had not been sought at the time of the incident, that the party did not expressly offer to take the victims to the police and that offers of counselling were not made until complaints were raised weeks after the events.

These damning details were dragged out piecemeal, having first being buried in weaselly language that seemed to minimise the extent of the party’s failings.

This comes less than a year after Labour was in trouble over an overseas intern programme. That was when young volunteers, who had entrusted themselves to the party, complained about being housed in substandard conditions and misled about the type of work they would be doing. The parliamentary leadership had no knowledge of those events back then either.

What Ardern should have foreknowledge of is the prorussian leanings of Winston Peters. Back in 2015, Peters backed exploiting European sanctions to get more of our dairy into Russia despite that country’s illegal annexation of Crimea. And, despite usually being hostile to free trade, NZ First inserted a commitment to a trade deal with the Russia-belarus-kazakhstan Customs Union into its coalition agreement.

So, by virtue of having Peters as her foreign minister, she leads a Government that is soft on Vladimir Putin. In the face of the Salisbury attack last month, we ummed and ahhed and dragged our feet. Unlike most of our allies, we have not expelled any diplomats. It is truly bizarre to contemplate that Ardern’s ministry has been less decisive on Russian roguery than the Trump administration.

NZ First was the source of other headaches in March. New MP Jenny Marcroft was accused of having threatened, on behalf of higher-ups unknown, to withhold spending in a National MP’S electorate unless he reined in criticism of her party’s ministers. Amid vague denials and uncommunicative explanations, Ardern seems to have adopted a ‘‘nothing-to-see-here’’ stance on the matter. It’s hardly confidenceinspiring.

Then there was Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran, who was accused of having a ‘‘secret’’ meeting with Radio New Zealand (now former) head of content Carole Hirschfeld. This was denied and a public narrative was allowed to take hold that the two had simply ‘‘bumped into each other’’ at a Wellington cafe. But it turns out the meeting was pre-arranged, had been placed in Curran’s diary and that the future of the state broadcaster was discussed.

Hirschfeld resigned over the deception but Ardern did not sack Curran, who has relied on Clintonesque technicalities to justify her conduct in the matter.

Do these, and a number of other missteps by Ardern last month, spell doom for her Government? Hardly. When the next public poll comes out, I doubt there will be any material change in support for Labour.

The Key and English governments suffered their fair share of bad runs. The ‘‘wheels may be coming off’’ line was trotted out many times. Yet almost without exception, the people declined to be roused.

Voters were often criticised for this. Each failure to abandon National over the latest so-called scandal was proclaimed a sign of our dangerous indifference to probity in office. Some went so far as to say it pointed to a decline in the collective morality of New Zealand.

But then, as now, the better explanation is the levelheadedness of the New Zealand electorate. Mistakes are expected and, unless they go to the very heart of a Government, they can be tolerated. We know that politics does not offer us a choice between paragons of virtue and excellence on one side and reprobates and nohopers on the other.

So the media and the Opposition can’t simply dethrone the Government on the basis of its mistakes. That is as it should be. The decision is not for them.

The job of the Opposition is to hold the Government to account while presenting an alternative. The job of the press is to get to the truth and report it as objectively as possible. What happens next is the prerogative of the voting public alone.