Below the Beltway

It hasn’t been a great week for the Government. By Tuesday they’d already had two disasters to deal with and it hasn’t really improved as the week’s gone on.

UP

Melissa Lee: The National MP has been digging away at her counterpart, Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran, for months and this week she claimed a scalp for her efforts when RNZ head of content Carol Hirschfeld resigned over a meeting she had with Curran.

Mark Mitchell: He may have lost his bid to be leader but the National front-bench MP has been doing some good work in Opposition. This week he put NZ First in the spotlight after a junior MP, Jenny Marcroft, threatened him over a local project allegedly at the request of a minister.

David Parker: Finding a base for the America’s Cup is no easy task with so many views to take into consideration. Parker has managed to pull it off and kept local government, interest groups, iwi and a number of others all on side.

DOWN

Clare Curran: The broadcasting minister hasn’t caught a break this week after it was revealed a highprofile RNZ news boss quit her job after she was sprung lying about a meeting with Curran. The minister hasn’t come up rosy herself, being misleading with her answers in the House, and the prime minister has had to repeatedly defend her. Jenny Marcroft: The junior NZ First MP has had her first taste of bad headlines this week after National MP Mark Mitchell revealed the conversation the pair had in their electorate that ended in threats over Government funding. Marcroft has avoided answering any questions by simply dodging media and leaving her boss, Winston Peters, to do the clean-up job.

Jacinda Ardern/Winston Peters: There’s no spies, there are some spies – it’s hard to know really as the story has changed a bit over the last week. Neither the prime minister nor her deputy has managed to be completely clear with the public about why no Russians have been expelled from New Zealand in the same way they have in many other countries we have close ties with, including our Five Eyes partners.

A DAD AND HIS BOY

‘‘Tommy doesn’t say anything, literally. He’s what they call nonverbal autistic. He’s eight years old, he doesn’t have any vocabulary at all, but I know he likes having his dad around – he tells me with his laugh and with his eyes. And now he’s going to have dad around some more.’’ There wasn’t a dry eye in the House on Tuesday when the usually private Steven Joyce shared his son’s condition during his valedictory speech and choked up as he promised he’d be home more now that he was leaving political life.