Clark now just a placeholder

Health Minister David Clark says he has a lot of work to do to regain the public’s trust. The far more important question is whether we can entrust him with that work. Short answer: no. In truth, he is now a placeholder in the role. His moral authority authority is shot and his functional usefulness even as a background toiler is in doubt.

Having repeatedly broken the very rules he was invoking from on high he’s become a political oxymoron – a goner who’s still around. A man in an untenable position who has for now kept hold of it for want of a replacement – a situation that only heightens the impression of a caucus without depth.

This leaves Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to emphasise, wanly, Clark’s institutional experience, thereby portraying his retention as the lesser of two evils, preferable to changing horses in a midstream quite as turbulent as this one.

Yet even in the short term, Clark’s capacity to shoulder responsibilities has to be in doubt, given the awful standard of his decision-making of late.

He was initially seen as guilty of what might charitably be called a spasm of hypocrisy when he was caught driving two kilometres to go mountainbiking. A slip-up of largely symbolic seriousness. The fresh revelation that, on the first weekend of the lockdown, he had forayed 10 times further afield, driving his family 20km for a beach walk, is more than 10 times worse.

In a portfolio as significant as health, the ability to show clear-headedness and a functioning sense of the consequences of one’s actions is surely a minimum requirement. Yet Clark says he ‘‘wasn’t thinking straight’’. This speaks to competence, at least in his present mindset.

Next we turn to honesty. During the period he was presenting himself to the public and his PM as chastened by the folly of his mountainbike decision, it was a narrowly focused admission of error having been caught out.

Either he also recalled full well the undisclosed 20-kilometre drive to Doctors Point beach near Dunedin and chose to keep that little titbit to himself – in which case, where was the honesty? – or it had indeed slipped his mind entirely. In which case, what the hell . . .?

What do you call a health minister who has shown such an array of failures? The expected answer is that you call him a former health minister. That Ardern has merely scolded him, demoted him, and stripped him of an unrelated portfolio of associate finance minister comes across as an example of letting the punishment ill-fit the crime, though it’s more a case of justice delayed.

The PM’s depiction of massive disruptions to the health sector should he be more promptly dropped is questionable beyond the now dubious steadiness of his influence. To what extent has he really been at the helm anyway?

He’s hardly been a high-profile leader since the crisis arose. Rather it’s been the health bureaucracy, well-led, most would say, by Ashley Bloomfield, that has stepped forward into the more heavily spotlit role, particularly when it comes to addressing the tough questions.

In all likelihood, any good work Clark is able to do between now and the more emphatic dumping that awaits him may influence the manner, but not the inevitability, of his departure.

What do you call a health minister who has shown such an array of failures? The expected answer is that you call him a former health minister.