Napier MP Stuart Nash with Prime Minister Chris Hipkins last month. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Napier MP Stuart Nash with Prime Minister Chris Hipkins last month. Photo / Mark Mitchell
EDITORIAL
Life often seems a battle of expectations, of people hoping for the best but often falling back on cynicism due to what they observe around them.
This week was a good one for sceptics and cynics. Some people’s behaviour fell well short of what we like to think Kiwisare capable of, especially those in positions meant to set standards.
The demise of Stuart Nash’s ministerial career was the major, single political event but there was a lot going on - from local government disruption to Today FM being frog-marched off the airwaves.
The questions raised by the Nash blunders require a clear, transparent and thorough response. Thankfully there’s a review under way.
It’s not great when the best possible explanation is a series of mistakes in handling an OIA request; and blaming pandemic work stress, an error of judgment, or some other kind of incompetence.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the onus had been on Nash to review his correspondence and identify the email to two donors that breached Cabinet confidentiality.
What’s been outlined so far suggests an outsized responsibility for deciding information requests and noticing and flagging concerns being foisted on staff members. The process of “escalating” this problem to a higher level appears to have been deficient.
Another possibility is that the ruling of the key email as “out of scope” on the basis of a division of ministerial and MP responsibilities was a convenient excuse, a workaround, perhaps used on other occasions.
National contends that the problem may have been known and kept quiet - a disturbing scenario. Opposition Leader Christopher Luxon has made a valid point that, “clearly, people inside the Prime Minister’s office were aware of the issue. So what kind of culture is that if you don’t actually flag those issues higher up the chain?”
Nearly two years is a long time to operate with a political scandal grenade sans pin, the subject of both an OIA request and a letter from the Ombudsman. How many other grenades are counting down to detonation? Does this problem go wider?
How does someone get to the Cabinet level thinking it acceptable to email confidential information to donors or dial up the police chief about legal matters? Was the sackable offence dismissed as minor because of Nash’s loud and loose, gaffe-prone style? Why was Nash given so many chances?
The Nash row wasn’t the only headache for the Government. The tail of the Posie Parker storm that started the week was long, and informative about where public debate can get to.
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, aka Posie Parker, mops away tomato sauce after being spattered by a protester in Albert Park. Photo / Jed Bradley, File
Instead of taking the visit of the British gender issues activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull as a warning that toxic culture war politics should be avoided here, some of our politicians stirred the pot.
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson was struck by a motorcycle on her way to a counter-protest. Rival party MPs ran with a comment she then made to far-right activists that “it is white cis men who cause violence in the world”.
Act and NZ First appeared to play to their party bases in calling for her to resign as Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence. Luxon said Davidson’s comments were “an incredibly harmful generalisation of an entire group of people” and unsuccessfully demanded an apology.
National MP Simon O’Connor went too far in comparing Davidson’s comments to a US school shooting in Nashville, saying “the shooter and murderer is not a white cis male” and, rightly, apologised.
US Republican figures have also highlighted that the shooter was transgender, even though most US mass shootings are committed by white men. Notorious Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene made anti-trans comments and said: “Everyone can stop blaming guns now”.
Looking back on the Posie Parker saga, the professionalism of the courts, immigration, and police have, by and large, held firm while politicians and activists yelled across each other in bids for opportunistic populism.
Politics has always been tough but over recent years, standards and expectations have been eroded, especially with foreign leaders such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. We should be wary of normalising that slide here.
Technology has also pushed societies into becoming used to a rough, adversarial tone and ways of expression. It’s not all on political leaders. Arguments on social media are often pitched from an emotional, self-righteous point of view. Venting and steamrolling opposing opinions are common. Keyboard warriors spit abuse at those they disagree with as if they are video game objects to be blasted away.
After a week of dealing with, first, Davidson and then Nash, the Government clearly needed a news sea-change and provided it with the announcement that construction on a second Waitematā Harbour crossing starts in 2029.
Whatever projects it tries to concentrate on, distractions and mistakes are taking a toll.
An earlier version of this editorial mistakenly reported Marama Davidson was hit by a motorbike after the protest, rather than before.
