. . . for whom the clanger tolls
Complacency and arrogance are the blood foes of any long- term administration
Was it arrogance, or ineptitude? Callousness or exceptionally poor judgment? They’re not the kinds of questions a late thirdterm government wants bandied about, but they’re the ones I found myself musing on this week. Watching the media stand- ups in the halls of Parliament was almost like watching the dawning of realisation on the emperor’s brow as a sharp breeze snagged the goosebumps on his raw, sensitive skin. What the Government thought had been well hidden was suddenly exposed for the whole populace to see.
The Barclay scandal seemed to sweep the halls of Parliament like an airborne plague, as a small- town controversy became the top national news items.
The allegations — that CluthaSouthland MP Todd Barclay invented formal complaints about and recorded private conversations of his senior electorate agent without her knowledge, resulting in a thwarted police investigation and a taxpayerfunded payout of which then- Deputy Prime Minister Bill English was aware, in an incident that was incorrectly characterised as an “employment dispute” — are now well known. I suspect, however, that the fallout has only just begun.
If there’s one thing Kiwis can’t stand, it’s arrogance. We’re not too hot on dishonesty and responsibility-dodging either. When the Prime Minister found himself tangled in a web of denials and half- truths, flipflopping somewhere between the morning and the afternoon after presumably refreshing his memory over lunch, he began to lose some of his Sir John Key- endorsed gleam. The media smelled a rat.
The good, responsible, trustworthy, Southern bloke had told Kiwis in March 2016 that he hadn’t spoken to anyone directly involved in the Barclay case, when his text messages from February that same year suggest otherwise. He’d told the public on Tuesday that he didn’t know who had told him about the recordings Barclay allegedly made, then later in the day confessed to the media that he told police in a formal interview that Barclay himself told him about the recordings.
Who doesn’t remember telling the police about that time your colleague confessed to you that he’d done something that might be illegal? If this truly represented a lapse in memory, it’s an astonishing and disturbing one. The words, “I don’t recall”, which worked so well for Teflon John, curdled in English’s mouth and rang false in our ears.
Although it is now abundantly clear that Barclay boiled himself in a stew of his own making, the fact that a young backbencher was kept on after the Prime Minister knew about his potentially criminal conduct and misled the public about the extent of his knowledge of the case raises serious questions about the Government’s integrity, in my view. And don’t get me started on the police “investigation”.
It seems likely the Government never thought the Barclay incident would rise to the level of a national scandal. I’m not sure how they arrived at that conclusion. We live in a country of small towns, with a deep mistrust of politicians and a firm dislike for unfair treatment.
Glenys Dickson could be our aunt, or our neighbour.
The fact that the taxpayers ultimately paid for hush money to protect a now- disgraced MP from further action doesn’t exactly sit well either. The miscalculation of the scandal’s impact poses the question of whether the Government has lost touch with the people. It leads me to wonder whether the third- term chickens are coming home to roost, as they did for Labour nine years ago.
Complacency and arrogance are the blood foes of any long- term administration, although this Government may have inadvertently invited them into the fold. Barclay and English weren’t the only ones in damage- control mode. Disabilities Issues Minister Nicky Wagner also cavorted with danger, when she tweeted from an Auckland harbourside location that she was, “busy with Disability meetings in Auckland”, but would “rather be out on the harbour!”
For an MP who has been in Parliament for close to 12 years, it was an astounding flub that instantly insulted a vulnerable community. If Government ministers would rather be out on the harbour than doing the important work taxpayers elected and pay them to do, it can be easily arranged. On Wednesday came an apology from the Ministry of Education for the mishandling of the reorganisation of Canterbury schools after the 2011 earthquake — an admission of fault that may have been seen as honourable if not for a damning report released by the Chief Ombudsman the same day.
The office of the Ombudsman found that “a mismanaged process caused further stress to already traumatised communities, and resulted in a major loss of trust between the ministry and schools”. It went on to recommend that the ministry should publicly apologise to schools and communities in the region.
Christchurch principals have been calling for an apology for some time but it took a scathing formal report to pressure the ministry into acknowledging its failings, and the accountability went only so far. Notably, neither former Education Minister Hekia Parata nor current minister Nikki Kaye offered their apologies, leaving the task to Chief Executive Iona Holsted. Then on Thursday, the Chief Ombudsman told Radio New Zealand he wasn’t satisfied with the apology, saying, “I’m disappointed that the ministry hasn’t been more forthcoming in acknowledging that its process was flawed. I think that would have given a more veracity to the apology”.
It all adds up to a bad run for an administration trying to make a case to represent New Zealanders for years 10, 11 and 12, fuelled by a series of selfinflicted wounds.
Arrogance, ineptitude, callousness or poor judgment? Come September, it’ll be up to us to decide.