Is there is life after John Key? You say you want rejuvenation?
Philip Matthews spends a week adrift in the post-Key world.
Brownlee bites back
Sometimes you wonder if John Key was the rug that tied the room together, to borrow a line from The Big Lebowski. The Government might be the same people with the same policies but that magic, that soothing presence, the national antidepressant? It’s gone. A few years ago, Key addressed a group of people in the Press lunchroom during the dark days of Christchurch’s school closures. Education Minister Hekia Parata had made a hash of it; she had been aggressive and dismissive. But within about 30 minutes, Key sold it to everyone present. That was his political gift. And you have to wonder whether Earthquake Commission (EQC) Minister Gerry Brownlee would have dared to tell Kaikoura locals that he was ‘‘p ..... off’’ with their complaints about earthquake repairs if Key had been standing there rather than new, less charismatic Prime Minister Bill English.
Lessons from Christchurch
If Christchurch was an experimental laboratory for dealing with big earthquake stuff, then one of the – sorry for the jargon – most important learnings going forward is that having both the EQC and insurance companies in the mix makes people want to tear their hair out. So it seems to be a sensible move to have EQC and insurance companies make a deal, announced this week, to use qualified insurance people rather than some of the less skilled assessors that EQC recruited after the Christchurch quakes. As the Insurance Council put it, the one-agency approach will eliminate ’’inefficiencies, additional costs and delays’’. Key’s departure was a small, highly visible part of pre-election positioning. They are gearing up for September, or will it be earlier? There has been an exodus from National of MPs you either never heard of before or thought left ages ago: Craig Foss, Murray McCully and Sam Lotu-Iiga. Two left under a cloud and the other just sort of left. Labour has had three previous leaders finding better things to do, with David Shearer heading to Sudan, Phil Goff running Auckland and David Cunliffe going back to the business world, while list MP Jacinda Ardern is lining up to take Mt Albert. Labour has reshuffled to be election-ready. The Green Party is shedding Catherine Delahunty and Steffan Browning and prompting rejuvenation through green shoots Chloe Swarbrick and Hayley Holt.
The battle over Pike River
It has been said that the only one of the John Key-era disasters or problems that attached itself to Key personally was Pike River. Others mistakes were absorbed by ministers such as the hapless Parata, Nick Smith and Brownlee. But on the West Coast they still remember Key’s solemn promises to recover the bodies of the 29 men if possible. Sonya Rockhouse, whose son Ben died in the 2010 mining disaster, said this month that ’’[Key] can either do the right thing now before he goes, or forever be the prime minister who turned his back on our boys’’. It looks like being the latter. This week the families took control of the road to the mine to stop it being sealed and urged English to do what his predecessor did not. There must be some way of settling this to everyone’s satisfaction.