Nats barking at every car
As I sit here and write this, it pains me to tell you that I am feeling weak. I share this with you, Dear Reader, because perhaps you too may have been feeling frail. I didn’t quite know what the matter was, till I was given an official diagnosis by Opposition leader Simon Bridges, he who was kind enough to tell me what condition my fellow countrymen and I are in.
Commenting on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stripping Labour MP Meka Whaitiri of her ministerial position, Bridges said it wasn’t good enough, that the PM had been very weak on this matter. ‘‘It’s like a rugby team with fewer players on the field that leads not actually to weak leadership but weak government and a weak country,’’ Doc Bridges diagnosed.
That explains it. No wonder I have been feeling so weak that I can barely lace up a boot. And so downcast about the gloomy economy, as told to me by various business commentators and endless bank-led surveys, even though figures released on Thursday showed the economy had expanded by 1 per cent in the June quarter. And that was the fastest quarter of growth in two years.
If I was to seek a second opinion, rather than Doc Bridges and his naysayers, then I might listen to Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff, who maintains that: ‘‘Since the formation of the new Government, there has been a carefully co-ordinated campaign from vested business interests to talk the business community into depression.’’
So the facts and figures seem to paint a different picture to the gnawing negative National Party narrative that insists the electorate buy into the myth that, under the coalition Government, the economy has gone into a skid.
It has been a difficult emotional transit for National after losing the last election, but one would think that, after a year of carping, they should stop barking at every passing car, or risk not being heard. But hey, as National MP Judith Collins knows, the facts shouldn’t get in the way of a crushing good tantrum to get attention.
Collins, the Opposition’s spokeswoman for housing, did her block after Housing Minister Phil Twyford compensated 800 Housing New Zealand tenants for being kicked out of their homes for meth tests that HNZ now admits were wrongly used and unnecessary.
Collins said it was outrageous to give ‘‘hardearned taxpayers’’ money to ‘‘crooks’’ living in dwellings that were being used in some way for methamphetamine consumption.
Even though HNZ tenants had been evicted from houses tested for meth use that may have dated back prior to their occupation, Collins could not countenance a timeframe that would make them innocent of their crimes.
The irony is that some of those tenants removed from HNZ dwellings ended up being housed at huge ‘‘hard-earned taxpayer’’ expense in National’s answer to housing the homeless – expensive motel rooms for lengthy stays.
Collins has served a political lifetime using attack as the best form of defence as her signature strategy. Now it is wearing gossamer thin. Rosemary Rudolph, an 87-year-old pensioner, was a victim of HNZ meth testing and wrongfully kicked out of her home. She lost her possessions and had to rely on family to see her through.
Collins’ callous and hardline attitude towards the meth testing debacle does not sit well alongside Rudolph’s harrowing story, which will have appalled many ‘‘hard-earned taxpayers’’.
Perhaps it’s time for Judith Collins to become someone different. Twisted sister mounting ludicrous defences doesn’t cut it any more against fair-minded relentless positivity.