Clark’s career over
Jacinda Ardern arrived at her daily press briefing yesterday afternoon with what should have been good news: The lowest number of new Covid-19 cases in weeks, despite huge amounts of testing.
But before the prime minister could get to that, she had to spend several minutes publicly dressing down the minister supposedly responsible for the Government’s response to this crisis: Dr David Clark.
The embattled health minister finally did some interviews yesterday, for the first time since his ill-advised bike ride on Thursday evening. It became obvious why this had taken so long: This hadn’t been the only time he had broken the rules, in spirit or in letter. In the first weekend of the lockdown, he had driven 20 kilometres to the beach with his family.
This is not an apologise and move on sort of sin.
This is the health minister breaking and undermining an extremely stringent set of rules his own Government has put in place for health purposes .It fulfils every stereotype of politicians as people who are happy to write rules but not abide by them.
You’d be forgiven for forgetting that Clark was still the health minister, given he’s fronted a tiny amount of the daily press briefings and has been holed up in Dunedin since the lockdown began.
Many politicians would see this as the month that would make their career; Clark decided it would be the month for him to ruin his. His own top civil servant is now a national celebrity while he’s an embarrassment to his boss.
The minister himself was completely unable to explain to those interviewers why exactly he had gone on this drive, other than to say he had been an idiot. We know that.
Had he been a member of the
public, Clark could have said with some credibility that he was a bit unclear on whether the rules precluded a drive to the beach while staying within his family’s bubble. But he’s not: He’s the minister of health. He should know these rules inside out.
The Government is
intervening in the public’s lives to a degree no Government has done in a lifetime, with the full power of the police behind them – they need to be absolutely squeaky clean on this stuff themselves.
Health is a portfolio that makes or breaks a political career. It’s so difficult to do well in that the ministers who do, usually earn long-term respect and sometimes even the top job: both Bill English and Helen Clark were once health minister. But it’s also a portfolio that quickly shows up a poor minister.
The damage to Clark’s standing was so obvious that Opposition MPs didn’t touch it when he appeared before them yesterday.
Clark’s offer of resignation was the right thing to do, but it did leave Ardern in an unenviable position.
Politically, the right option would be to simply accept it and send him to the backbench. That rips the sticking plaster off. You don’t have to spend the next two days batting off questions about Clark – instead giving yourself some space to talk about how well the lockdown appears to be working thus far.
Ardern made it clear she would like to fire him, but said the disruption right now would be too great. That excuse has some validity. It’s pretty hard to brief a new health minister when everyone is in lockdown. There isn’t really an heir apparent to take on the role, as there is absolutely no way Ardern would hand it to any of the associates. As much as many would love Ashley Bloomfield to simply take up the role, we do elect our leaders, and you need someone who is answerable to the public to stop a pure technocracy.
So, instead, Clark appears to be working out his notice period demoted to the bottom of the cabinet rankings.
His associate finance portfolio, which he has appeared to enjoy much more than health, has been stripped from him.
This makes sense for now, but not for the months ahead. Ardern should hold onto Clark’s offer of resignation and accept it as soon as this crisis is over.
This can be loudly or quietly – notably, Clark was not able to conclusively tell The AM Show whether he would be running at the next election.
He probably shouldn’t.