Kate Hawkesby: The woeful state of the politicians who represent us

COMMENT: I know I should know better being a cynical old hack, but I can't help feeling disillusioned this week with the state of our politicians.

All of them. What a disappointing bunch of misfits.

I had high hopes when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern talked about being a better, kinder government and being open, honest and transparent.

I hoped for a nanosecond that that may actually be the case. More fool me. It isn't.

Instead, we have lies, accusations, bullies, dishonesty, no transparency at all, and no accountability.

To be fair, National hasn't been much better.

No they may not have acted illegally in accessing Treasury documents, but what would have been a morally better avenue for them would've been to take the high road and say look we've managed to very easily breach your confidential secure files, we won't release what we've found, but just know it's not safe, and easily accessible.

They could've exposed Treasury's incompetence, without exposing the detail.

Instead they waved around their ill-gotten gains and teased the public with how they got it. Lame.

Speaking of the Treasury though, what a bunch of muppets. How incompetent are they?

And that's before we get to the Deputy Prime Minister of this country and his merry sidekick who were claiming they knew exactly what had happened - when they clearly didn't have a clue.

It didn't stop them making accusations anyway, and Shane Jones going so far as to say someone needed their head lopped off with a taiaha. What? How's that being a kinder better government and doing things differently? Who even talks like that in 2019?

There were calls for apologies all round but do you know who really needs an apology? We the voters. For being represented by such a petty bunch of squabbling tyre-kickers.

And underlying all of this, the part that really grinds my gears, is the fact the biggest bully of them all, Speaker Trevor Mallard, has seemingly had his own scandalous behaviour kicked under the carpet and usurped by all this.

It feels wrong to me that he gets off the hook.

Where is the accountability?

This man cried rape, ran a man out of work over it, killed that man's reputation, conducted the whole thing inexplicably through the media in a very public forum - and has now retreated along with the PM claiming it "shouldn't be played out in the media".

Why then did he air it to the media in the first place?

And how does he get to just go to ground after arguably wrecking someone's life?

This kind of double standard does not smack of an honest transparent accountable and kind government at all.

All I see are bullies and incompetents, being let off the hook.

Somebody wake me when the transparency, honesty and kindness starts.