Six months in a leaky boat – captain overboard

Jacinda Ardern is a whirlwind prime minister in a giant hurry. There’s no time to stop and celebrate six months in office because the scorecard might not make for pretty reading.

It would say things have been a bit average, sometimes chaotic and muddled with a sideshow or two but with the very best of intentions and hugely lofty goals and ambitions, if not a little naive.

Because at every turn I think she and her bodgied-together coalition test our historical perception and acceptance of what a prime minister and government should be.

Get over it. She’s here and doing OK. As she points out, it’s a tough job and the world isn’t as simple as some of us suggest it is.

I mean she’s 37, about to become a mother and, if we’re honest, she’s only herself learning to be a leader after being thrust into the prime minister’s job leading a pile of misfits to the promised land.

So she’s desperately getting runs on the board now because she leaves deputy Winston Peters the keys to the Ferrari, the mansion and the office all in one go, very soon. What could possibly go wrong?

But first, here’s one for the extraordinarily if not strangely quiet Winston Peters. Where the bloody hell are ya? You’re in charge soon, Sir, and needed at home.

If anyone in the world has seen him please alert the authorities.

In the meantime here are six things for the Government to ponder after six months.

1. Families Package

The Government needs to remind us what it’s doing. And then repeat and repeat again. It’s paying $5.5 billon over the next few years to help struggling low and middleincome families with kids. Families will be $75 a week better off. Students will be better off. Pensioners will be better off. This will target poverty. It won’t solve it.

2. Honestly, you’re dreaming

This Government throws around lofty ambitious targets like it’s going to be easy. $28b worth of roads and 100,000 homes in 10 years is massive. But not one nail has gone into a timber frame yet and it’s been six months. Expectations and failing to meet them will hurt this Government. Somehow it needs to be realistic about its programme. It’s called letting us down gently.

3. Watch the weak links

Be careful how often you parade the weak links. Think Kelvin Davis, Carmel Sepuloni, Clare Curran. If you look and sound incompetent then that affects the Government.

Winston, where the bloody hell are ya?

4. National left a dog

Labour needs to keep telling the world National left its own billiondollar hole in the form of woefully underfunded social services and promises to build roads that had no funding attached. Repeat and repeat again.

5. Grant Robertson must front

The finance minister has been too quiet. What does he think? What does he want? What can we afford? What must he say no to? Come on, Grant. Your time is now. The sporting events can wait.

6. Winston as PM

How will this go and will Ardern truly let go? Ardern is the marketing face of this Government, she pulls together the loose strands to make it all that more acceptable. Will Winston have the same composure? Can’t wait to watch this space.

So it comes down to this: Jacinda Ardern’s stardust must turn to something useful and quickly. Voters are impatient.

A slew of reviews only leads to paralysis by analysis. The Government’s hands are full but with not much to show for it.

And I haven’t even touched on their populist promises to slash immigration and fix the deeply troubled mental health service.

The stardust must turn to something more concrete – solutions, not slogans, trains, not talk and houses, not just hope.