Is it time for Clark to fall on his sword?
It’s been a week since problems at the New Zealand border first emerged, but the cloud hanging over Health Minister David Clark’s career hasn’t lifted.
It’s a big deal calling for someone to resign. Despite much jeering and jibing, the Opposition doesn’t often call for people’s heads, as National now is for Clark’s. They know if they did it too much they’d be the ones who looked ridiculous, not the minister.
But any opposition still calls for resignations far more than they should. That’s politics of course, and no-one sees it changing any time soon.
The question over whether Clark should actually fall on his sword or be sacked is at once excruciatingly complex and painfully simple.
There’s the issue of what Clark knew, what he should have known, and what he was responsible for. That’s the complicated bit. Then there’s the simpler side of things: politics and optics. Does it hurt the prime minister to continue to have an unpopular minister continue to serve in her Cabinet?
The latest phase of the Clark saga is over whether the minister should accept some responsibility for the fact the Government’s strict border measures weren’t actually being implemented on the ground. The director-general of health has accepted responsibility for the failure, but there are calls for Clark to accept some responsibility also.
This, Clark refuses to do. His argument is the issue was one of implementation and operation, which sits squarely in Dr Ashley Bloomfield’s wheelhouse, not his.
He’s partly right. Bloomfield is the Health Ministry’s chief executive. If it’s not doing what it said it was doing, it is his fault. Ministers can’t take responsibility for everything. Not even the most competent minister is safe from screw ups on the ground.
But some responsibility does rest with Clark. He, and the Cabinet, are effectively the Ministry of Health’s board. It’s their job to oversee what it does and, crucially, how well it does it.
It’s a board’s job to audit the organisation it oversees. In the case of the border, it’s clear that this wasn’t being done well enough. It’s important to remember what kind of scandal we’re dealing with. The issue isn’t the two sisters who left isolation early only to later test positive for Covid-19, it’s the fact that after that story broke, a wave of equally serious incidents came to light.
The problem is that the two sisters were the rule, not the exception and that’s why some responsibility rests with Clark. It is his job to audit his ministry to ensure that what’s happening on the ground matches up with what he’s been told is happening.
Clark may not be responsible for what happens on the ground, but he is responsible for taking steps to ensure he knew what was happening and it’s very clear this wasn’t done.
The Government should have known better.
Right from the earliest days of the Covid-19 crisis, it was clear that new rules were often not implemented in the way ministers had hoped.
The political side of things is
fairly simple. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern must now decide whether keeping Clark on hurts her and her Government.
Newshub’s Wednesday night clip of Clark shifting blame to Bloomfield, as Bloomfield stared into space, somewhat dejected, was a frankly brutal piece of television.
Clark was repeating a line he’d been saying all week, but repeating it with the still-popular Bloomfield over his shoulder was a step too far.