PM’s virtual work bubble scene of toil and trouble
JACINDA Ardern has three bubbles — her home bubble at Premier House, her work bubble in the Beehive and her virtual work bubble.
Ardern’s home bubble and Beehive bubble are physical and finite.
Her home bubble comprises her partner, her parents and her toddler. The only trouble there has involved one of them drawing an Easter egg on the carpet.
Her Beehive bubble is a small, welloiled group: Finance Minister Grant Robertson, chief of staff Raj Nahna, chief press secretary Andrew Campbell, senior private secretary Le Roy Taylor and chief policy adviser Hollie Donald.
It doesn’t cause any trouble. It helps her to fix problems and if they can’t fix them, they know who can.
Ardern’s “virtual bubble” is my term for the changing group of people with whom she shares the burden of major Covid19 decisionmaking duties, whether she is working from her home office or the Beehive office, but only ever on screen.
It’s the bubble which is meant to deal with the crises within a crisis.
This week, however, it has been creating them in the form of the miscreant minister of health, David Clark, and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who went off script in pitting the economic crisis against the health crisis.
Clark, of Dunedin, was barely an adequately performing minister at best before being demoted to lowest in the Cabinet this week for blatantly breaching lockdown rules and driving 20km to the beach.
If only he had listened to his wife, should be his political epitaph.
When I ranked the performance of Ardern’s ministers a year ago, Clark was one of only three ministers out of 26 to rank below average (the other two were Phil Twyford and Shane Jones).
Clark improved a little over a year. Even if he had been based in Wellington in this Covid19 crisis, he probably would not have been in Ardern’s bubble.
The question is whether he could have had a more beneficial influence on the Ministry of Health in the pace of its response to Covid19 by being closer to it. That is unlikely with Ardern so deeply involved in the detail of the ministry’s response.
Clark’s presence in Wellington would have been symbolic, which, as shown by National leader Simon Bridges, can still be meaningful.
Despite the competence of Directorgeneral of Health Ashley Bloomfield, pace has been a problem in the ministry. New Zealand was given two days’ notice to move into lockdown.
The same sense of urgency is not always apparent in the Ministry of Health.
Ardern has not helped herself. She has been all too willing to defend the status quo despite knowing changes and adjustments to early policy have been in train behind the scenes.
The initially overly restrictive criteria for testing and the compulsory quarantine or managed selfisolation of all arrivals are two cases in point. Instead of announcing a change in principle in the relevant policy and setting a deadline to iron out the detail, she has defended what is already clearly inadequate until such time as the details are nailed down and then announces it. It gives the appearance of buckling to pressure.
As restlessness over the lockdown rises, it appears that approach may be changing.
One of the last things Robertson did as sports minister before the Easter break was to announce in principle that the Government would allow solitary groundskeepers to maintain the upkeep of pitches, golf courses, bowling greens and the like.
Details will be announced next week which are likely to preserve the assets of hundreds of recreational facilities used by tens of thousands instead of watching them needlessly fall into ruin.
Such an exception completely contravenes the principles of Alert Level 4 but, in order to maintain general support, the Government has to be more pragmatic where possible.
That is also why Ardern and Robertson will also outline how business can operate under Alert Level 3.
Ardern has attempted over the lockdown to explain that the health and economic crises are inextricably linked and that the quickest way to minimise economic disaster is to deal quickly and effectively with the health crisis.
It is one message she has not succeeded with convincingly. Opposition to the purest approach is mounting and it got highlevel support this week.
Winston Peters joined the sceptics’ club this week when he talked about the huge tension between the health and economic imperatives and firmly came down on the side of the economic one, if the choice had to be made.
“We have to be rational and sane and keep our feet on the ground and keep a commonsense approach,” he told Newstalk ZB.
He was saying no more than what others have, including National, Act and business advocates. But it represented a divergence from the PM’s consistent messaging.
Coming as it did from such an important member of the Government, and one who has been particularly loyal to Coalition unity, it may well have done more to burst Ardern’s bubble than David Clark’s antics.
Peters also struck a discordant tone when he confirmed to RNZ he didn’t want the election on September 19 but still wanted one on November 21 (calving and lambing are over, the sun is shining and there would be more time to persuade the US to launch freetrade talks). It was unusual because it was an admission he had lost an argument with Ardern — and it also set him up for a second one about the election date.
November has always been out of the question for Labour because the university students have dispersed by then, plus the timing would make it impossible for a New Zealand prime minister to attend Apec and the East Asia Summit.
Whether those would even be relevant factors is moot while the virus plagues the world. There is plenty more trouble to be navigated by Ardern and her Government before those matters are even contemplated.