Beehive Diaries
A recess week saw Act dreaming big, the Nats playing copycat and Covid-19 Minister Chris Hopkins dancing on a pinhead over the vaccinations rollout.
Sunday
Act accuses National of being a copycat
In his annual conference speech, Act leader David Seymour noted National stole Act’s ideas without giving them credit. His evidence was National Party leader and Papakura MP Judith Collins using his phrase “honest conversations”.
“I heard Mike Hosking interview a woman from Papakura and she kept saying it too. She copies me a lot,” Seymour said.
Further evidence landed a few days later.
Act came up with a meme taking a jab at socialism. A while later, a man from Coromandel (MP Scott Simpson) posted the exact same meme — with the Act Party branding removed.
Wednesday 31 days hath July
After the Ministry of Health changed the start date of the vaccine rollout to the general public from just “July” to “from the end of July,” Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins insisted it was not a delay but merely a “clarification”.
“July is July, it’ll still be from July,” he pointed out.
He noted the Government had never said what end of July. That subtlety was clearly lost on even the likes of the Auditor-General who had assumed, along with the rest of New Zealand, that it would be from early July.
It adds to the lexicon of justifications that Finance Minister Grant Robertson kicked off with his u-turn on increasing the bright line test, where he said he had been “too definitive” when he had earlier ruled it out.
Hipkins’ earlier contribution related to a farcical Ministry of Health graph on the rollout which purported to show how many people would be vaccinated and when.
Hipkins later said that graph was only intended to be “illustrative”. Illustrative of nothing other than that as time went on, more people would be vaccinated.
Thursday Beware the 15% goal
Despite insisting on The Country that he was not trying to de-throne Collins as the real Leader of the Opposition, Seymour sent out a rallying newsletter to his troops later that week.
It noted party president Tim Jago’s call for the party to double its support from 10 MPs to 20 MPs — requiring about 15% support. It noted Act had climbed to 9% in that night’s 1 News Colmar Brunton poll, and asked for donations to help get the extra 6% to hit the goal. The last time Beehive Diaries remembers a small political party getting ambitious about becoming a medium-sized party was in early 2017.
Labour was in the doldrums and NZ First leader Winston Peters believed he could hit 15% in the 2017 election. Peters still believes the party could have got there, if only Labour leader Jacinda Ardern had not come along. Instead Peters had to settle for 7.2%. Three years later that had dropped to