It would have come as a great relief to the dwellers of the Beehive that on Thursday the dominant story on news websites and television news bulletins was PM Chris Hipkins’ announcement of the options for a second Waitematā Harbour crossing in Auckland.
What that indicated – and what Labour’s monitoring of online and social media told them – was that the wider public interest in the twists and turns of the Stuart Nash saga had subsided.
And what that meant was that the political damage of Nash’s email to donors – and the shambles around the handling of that email when it was requested under the Official Information Act – was contained, at least for now.
It would be very hard to argue that Hipkins has had a good week on any metric. It was the worst he’s had (and he hasn’t had many so far). He will be hoping it remains the worst he has.
But by the end of it there were signs Hipkins himself had been kept relatively safe from the fallout.
It was a lucky coincidence that Hipkins was making the bridge announcement that day.
Despite scepticism from National about whether Hipkins was promising shiny new bridges and tunnels to distract from the Nash stuff, that announcement had been planned (and signalled to some media) before the Nash email came to light.
After announcing two tranches of programmes and policies that he was scrapping in recent weeks, Thursday was the day he was to announce something that he was doing.
It was his bid to show Aucklanders – and Auckland businesses – that he had meant what he said when he promised to re-focus on things that mattered to them. Things like the cost of living and congestion.
Having had to spend the week before that talking about Stuart Nash instead of those issues was not helpful. It had completely swamped Hipkins’ efforts to talk about the increases in benefits, super and the minimum wage that kick in from April 1 – today.
Hipkins has escaped being too sullied by the scandal by virtue of three things. First, he was not the Prime Minister at the time Nash’s email was discovered and then ignored. He cannot be personally blamed for it. Secondly, most people will blame a minister for their own wrongdoings rather than their Prime Minister – unless the PM has been complicit in it, tried to defend them for too long, or covered it up.
Thirdly, his quick dismissal of Nash once he was alerted to the email by Stuff, and his call for the Cabinet secretary to look through all Nash’s communications with his donors to ensure nothing else was amiss.
It is to his credit that he front-footed on the most concerning element of the whole affair: the risk that a minister’s actions were being influenced by his donors’ wishes, that he was arguing for them around the Cabinet table, and then reporting back to them on the outcome of that.
That review is not risk-free for Hipkins. Hipkin’s predecessors will tell him is perilous to call for a review into such a thing unless you are fairly certain of what it will find out. In this case, there is some certainty: they have already seen some of the other emails between Nash and his donors, which were also considered as part of an OIA request. But that does not mean there is not a ticking timebomb sitting in Nash’s other messages and texts.
Whatever the outcome, Hipkins will not get off completely scot-free for the Nash affair.
Such things always take some toll on a government. The wider public might not follow every twist and turn, but the general vibe of murkiness leaves a mark.
The more the little horrors accummulate, the more political capital seeps away.
The risk of seeping political capital is also why Hipkins – and all other Government ministers – have been hellbent on trying to pin the blame for it all on Nash himself.
The primary aim is to limit the damage to Nash, rather than have it become a trust issue for Hipkins himself so early in his premiership and heading into an election in which trust is his biggest asset.
That is why back in Parliament on Thursday, National MPs were full of fire and brimstone about the discovery that Nash’s email to his two donors – and that it was considered by the PM’s office as part of an OIA request in mid-2021, but not released or acted on internally at the time.
On the cock-up and conspiracy scale, the Opposition will always leap straight to the conspiracy argument – and Parliamentary privilege is a very handy ally in allowing them to do it.
For a government, it is problematic to admit to either a cock-up or a conspiracy – but the cock-up is by far the lesser of the two evils.
Thursday gave us the spectacle of an almighty scramble by politicians to clamber up onto the moral high horse.
Nicola Willis was particularly magnificent in her righteousness. She huffed and she puffed and tried to blow the house down. Her target was not Nash - it was Hipkins and the entire Labour Government.
She spoke of the “stench” and “conspiring” and said it was time to “clear the rot”.
She stood, the butter holding firm in her mouth, and pledged a future National Government would be pure in all its workings, the Vestal Virgins of governments.
Labour’s response was to deliver a rollicking potted history of scandals of yore, those involving former National Party ministers. Grant Robertson ran through Judith Collins’ history, David Parker pointed out an entire book had been written about National’s woes: Dirty Politics.
Robertson then set out his case for pure cock-up when it came to the failure to act on the email earlier: pointing out the workload on the PM’s staff, that it was during Covid when many staff were working at home and busy.
And he pointed to that one thing that will almost inevitably also result in the downfall of Willis’ pledge of sanctimony: plain old human error.
There are many knots in all of this to ponder over. Not all of them matter – including the futile fight over which of them is worse when it comes to bad behaviour.
One definitely does matter – and amidst the sound and fury of it all Hipkins and Willis identified it: the question of the influence donors might have had over Nash - and any other ministers.
Nash’s breach of Cabinet collectivity and confidentiality might concern his Cabinet colleagues and was the grounds for his dismissal.
But the question that will concern the public is not whether he is airing internal discussions. It is whether ministers are sitting round the Cabinet table trying to influence things in the way donors want – rather than the way the people they represent want.
Let us hope that review by the Cabinet secretary is indeed thorough – and provides either some reassurance or more light on those relationships.
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