Audrey Young: Jacinda Ardern shows ruthless streak in Cabinet reshuffle

Jacinda Ardern has decided to cauterise the Kiwibuild political wound. Photo / Mark Mitchell

COMMENT:

We can read several things into Jacinda Ardern's so-called minor Cabinet reshuffle.

The first is that this was not a minor reshuffle. There were changes affecting seven ministers.

The second is that for all her kindness, the Prime Minister can be ruthless.

What happened to Phil Twyford was nothing short of a political humiliation for the frontbench minister and No 5-ranked minister.

But he was responsible for the running wound in the Government's flagship housing policy, Kiwibuild, which was exacerbated by the constant prodding of National's Judith Collins.

Collins can now claim her third political scalp: Lianne Dalziel from Immigration in 2004, David Benson Pope as Associate Education Minister in 2005 and Phil Twyford as Housing Minister in 2019.

Ardern decided to cauterise the political wound rather than leave Twyford there in the hope that he would become less of a political liability as the pace of the build stepped up. But her decision is about the optics, not the substance.

Twyford has been removed from the job just as he has finally got the shop in order, and just as he is getting to grips with the reality of the public-private housing partnerships there are essential to large-scale housing production.

Megan Woods won't be coming in to crack the whip and suddenly double the output of Kiwibuild houses.

Anything that is produced under Woods' watch in the next 18 months in whatever rebranding Kiwibuild undergoes will be from the commitments and planning previously undertaken by Twyford.

However he had become so wounded that Ardern would not trust him with the "reset" of housing policy. She wanted not only a new set of housing priorities but a new face.

He was sacrificed for the greater good of the Government and importantly the Labour Party.

More than any other issue in Opposition, Labour hammered National on housing last election. Labour could not afford to fail in housing or it would rebound.

To soften the blow on Twyford, Ardern has let him keep Transport, given him Economic Development, relieving an already overworked David Parker of a portfolio, and she has allowed him to keep his ranking.

And Ardern said housing was too big for just one minister, which is nonsense. She could easily have left Twyford in charge of state housing.

But even that has been taken from him for reasons that Ardern could not properly articulate but it effectively means that his reputation is so trashed, she does not want him associated with something so precious to Labour.

Twyford was formerly the Minister of Housing and Urban Development. He is now Minister for Urban Development.

What that means is not yet clear except that this has been a painful de facto demotion for a once-promising minister.