Punches fly as water muddied
Who let the dingoes out? The Australian Government has ample reason to be angry about a New Zealand Labour MP’s involvement in the citizenship crisis involving deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce.
But some of the charges seem decidedly overblown. They’ve accused Australian Labor Party (ALP) leader Bill Shorten of conspiring with a foreign power (yes, friendly, little New Zealand).
Words like treachery are being thrown round. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has even gone so far as to say she would have trouble working with a Jacinda Ardernled Labour government. They can’t be serious? Bishop knows Joyce was rumbled by Australian journalists, not Labour MP Chris Hipkins – though that was mostly an accident of timing. Hipkins lodged a couple of written parliamentary questions related to Aussie dualcitizenship issues, but Joyce was outed by Fairfax Australia as a dual New Zealand-Australian citizen before he received the answers.
Hipkins should be thankful he was beaten to the punch. Interfering in Australian domestic politics is a deadly serious offence, though Hipkins insists he did not know how the information would be used.
It suits Bishop and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull politically to point at Hipkins as an accomplice to Shorten, of course. They are playing to a domestic audience. But their response has lobbed a grenade into an already overheated New Zealand election campaign.
No wonder National was quick to seize on it as a way to undermine Ardern’s inexperience, just two weeks into the job. Her response, however, was straight out of the Helen Clark playbook. Clark operated on the golden rule that no-one ever lost votes by standing up to the Aussies.
Ardern didn’t mince words about Hipkins, whose behaviour she said was completely inappropriate. Ardern even offered to speak with Bishop and talked up the importance of the relationship. But she would not apologise.
Labour’s new leader could have had the wind knocked out of her by the force of Bishop’s attack. But she managed to look decisive and unflappable.
Hipkins has done Ardern no favours, however. News that the ALP staffer who raised the citizenship issue with Hipkins used to work alongside him in Wellington further muddies the water. Marcus Ganley is a top adviser to Australian MP Penny Wong, and used to work for Labour leader Phil Goff.
Intentional or not, the suggestion that one of her MPs was grubbing around for dirt is precisely the sort of behaviour that will undermine Ardern’s pitch as a breath of fresh political air.