The perils of pork-barrel policies
In some ways this coalition government looks invincible.
With Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as its main brand and figurehead, it can hardly go wrong.
Well think again. This week revealed just where the coalition is vulnerable and it’s not Labour’s usual Achilles heel.
Labour governments have often come unstuck because they get too close to their natural and strongest supporters. These adherents tend to be pressure groups and social change advocates, mostly on the left and sometimes on the looney end of the left. Their stridency and political correctness are their most defining characteristics.
However, unfortunately for her opponents, Ardern is wise to this.
Take her handling of the silly response to the 60 Minutes television programme in which Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford were grilled over a hot water bottle by the fawning Charles Wooley.
After the programme screened, Wooley was roasted for noting Ardern’s attractiveness and for a question alluding to the date of her baby’s conception. He was called sexist and patronising.
But if Wooley committed a crime it was more against intelligence than feminism.
Ardern refused to join the attack on poor old Wooley saying she wasn’t in the least offended or fazed. Good move.
Perhaps she had been following this week’s Jennifer Lawrence saga, in which Lawrence, a high profile and outspoken Hollywood actress, was lamented as yet another victim of sexism for appearing in a revealing Versace dress on a cold day alongside male colleagues wearing coats.
‘‘Overreacting about everything someone says or does, creating controversy over silly innocuous things such as what I choose to wear or not wear, is not moving us forward. It’s creating silly distractions from real issues. Get a grip people,’’ Lawrence responded.
Ardern appreciates better than anyone that ordinary New Zealanders inhabit a world far away from the prissy Wellington sensibilities and politically correct sensitivities harboured and nurtured by her most ardent supporters living near the Beehive.
No doubt she will be sorely tempted to throw them a bone but that way lies political oblivion. New Zealanders just hate zealots.
No, as revealed in lights this week, this coalition’s weakness is NZ First and, in particular, the pork barrel nature of its regional development initiatives.
The vulnerability was exposed in the furore this week over the grant of $350,000 from the Provincial Growth Fund for a feasibility study into a rubbish-to-electricity plant in Westport.
In one fell swoop all the pitfalls of regional development initiatives and of having NZ First leading the charge were displayed in their full glory.
First it showed the dangers of not doing your homework before handing over any money. It’s often hard to see who will benefit from the taxpayer forking out to explore these great ideas. In the Westport scheme it turned out one of the beneficiaries was someone who had been found to have engaged in serious misconduct as a public servant when employed by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority.
Then the minor scandal threw the Minister of Regional Development Shane Jones under the spotlight and he looked far from impressive.
The more we see and hear of Jones, the more worried I become. Instead of a safe pair of hands, he looks more like a butter fingers. No doubt a minder will soon be on the way.
The incident has also highlighted the danger of a government full of academics, health professionals, public servants, teachers and career politicians picking business winners.
The idea that councils around the country would rail or truck their rubbish to Westport for incineration is one of those ludicrous ideas that only regional development officials would think is a flyer.
It’s also hard to imagine a worse place in New Zealand for such a facility even if it was viable and even if the residents thought it was good idea.
In three years time the National Party is going to have a field day showing how little has been achieved with the $3b in regional development money dished out by this Government.
It will expose the fiction that the regions suffer from unemployment and under-investment and will demonstrate how the money has not stopped the regions supplying the cities with all their talented young people.
The self-evident truth the regions are really only good at growing things –even if it is just grass – and bringing in tourists, will be sheeted home.
It will become clear the money would have been better spent on agriculture/horticulture-focused research, the Department of Conservation and tarsealed roads.
But let’s not get carried away. It’s early days yet and maybe, despite a rocky start, Jones’s provincial programme will be a success.
But somehow I can’t get the image of Simon Bridges rubbing his hands in anticipation of points to be scored out of my mind.
‘‘Overreacting about everything someone says or does … is not moving us forward. It’s creating silly distractions from real issues. Get a grip people.’’
Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence