OPINION: Watch out, red tape. Act Party leader David Seymour is coming to get you with his giant pair of scissors. Snippety snip. This is the stuff of nightmares: being chased through the labyrinthine corridors of Parliament by a maniacally grinning Seymour wielding an outsized cutting implement.
He has announced that, should Act be a partner in a coalition government, he would create a new minister and ministry of regulation.
Take that, you twisty, tricky red tape. Take that, you “badgering and bludgeoning” makers of needless rules and regulations. The Minister of Regulation would carry out relentless red-tape cutting sector by sector.
“Every sector is RIPE for red-tape cutting,” his speech notes yelled in capitals – just in case we were in any doubt about how cross he is with that naughty red tape.
Seymour made his announcement at Act’s annual conference at Auckland’s SkyCity Theatre. He arrived in an appropriately theatrical fashion, driving onto the stage in a tiny brightly coloured car. He looked like Mr Bean.
Mr Bean was forever getting into scrapes in brightly coloured Minis. There is something cartoonishly Mr Bean-like about Seymour. It’s that grin.
He joked, while grinning Mr Bean-ishly, that he had had to drive the car onto the stage because he couldn’t find a park. This was because of all the road cones cluttering up Auckland’s streets.
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has pledged to get rid of the bloody things and presumably has thus far failed to do so.
There are shades of Yes, Minister about Mr Bean’s whole idea of setting up a whole new ministry with a whole new bunch of bureaucrats directed to run the ruler over all the other bureaucrats, threatening the creation of a vast new bureaucratic nightmare in the process.
It’s as though Seymour has fallen into the same trap as that classic British comedy’s maladroit minister, James Hacker. In one episode Hacker, who is always outwitted by wily permanent secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, declares an economy drive to slash costs and red tape. The devious Sir Humphrey advises that Hacker should lead by example and reduce his own staff, including his driver, leading to high farce and a reversal of Hacker’s policy.
Would Mr Bean’s mad plan to give the dreaded red tape the snip end the same way? Yes, Minister, it probably would.
It’s the vibe
Electioneering has begun in earnest and is already as silly as a food fight, but uglier. Opposition leader Christopher Luxon initially said he wasn’t aware the National Party was using artificial intelligence to create ads attacking the government when asked about it by the media.
A spokesperson said: “Yes, we have used AI to create some stock images.” You’d think the leader should have been aware of this. If you’re going to stoop to a food fight, it is only polite to invite the chap hosting the messy shindig.
Labour Party campaign chair Megan Woods has joined in the electioneering, possibly using some of the prime minister’s leftover sausage rolls to chuck at National. Though for the second time in two weeks she has shown herself to be tone deaf.
Previously, she had said the tone of the government’s energy-saving “Find Money in Weird Places” campaign was a “bit off”. Now she’s gone totally off the tonal deep end. She compared National’s pledge to reverse Labour’s free prescriptions for everyone to novelist Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Behind this bonkers rationale is an accusation that National would be restricting women’s right to access prescription contraception. As far as we know, National has no plans to sexually enslave women, force them to bear babies or cut bits off their bodies if they play up.
By extension, the logic of Woods’ argument would mean Labour has restricted women’s access to contraception since it has been in government because it has had two terms in which it might have removed the prescription charges and didn’t. It is all a nonsense and makes no sense; nonsense seldom does.
So let’s move on. Oh. No. Hang on. In another example of rank idiocy, Transport Minister Michael Wood failed to properly declare he held shares in Auckland Airport. He had been advised by the Cabinet Office many times to get rid of the damned things. It ain’t a good look. One of his jobs as minister is to sell the government’s plan to develop light rail in Auckland, a service that would run from the central city to the airport in which he has shares.
He tried, he says, to get rid of the damned things. He forgot to sell them. He was busy. The share-register people had an old email address. He thought the shares were held in a trust ...
This may end up as no more than a muddle – more blundering than conniving. Why, after all, would he risk a rising career for a shareholding of a measly $13,000?
That he has shares at all seems odd. He’s an ardent unionist, the nearest thing to one of Winston Peters’ feared lurking-under-your-bed socialists. What’s he doing dabbling in the murky depths of the capitalist stock market?
This has echoes of another comedy classic – and another airport. In Australian film The Castle, the working-class Kerrigans decide to go to court when the little house they love is threatened by a compulsory-acquisition order so Melbourne’s airport can be enlarged. Their brilliantly bumbling lawyer delivers an impassioned speech to the court: “It’s the vibe … it’s the constitution … it’s justice, it’s law, it’s the vibe and, ah, no, that’s it. It’s the vibe. I rest my case.”
And it is the vibe of Wood’s gaffe that’s not great, which is why he’s been temporarily stood down as Transport Minister. As we went to print, it still wasn’t known whether he would get his role back soon or remain metaphorically circling the airport until after the election.
Grate again
Another state of emergency has been declared in Auckland, this one called Wayne Brown. He’s the political equivalent of an unstable weather system. The emergency has been declared by spurned journalists and an outfit called the Media Freedom Committee. The mayor held an invitation-only event in which he gave a speech announcing how many road cones he’s killed so far. No, not really.
He was making a budget announcement. A “select few journalists … we feel were best able to convey the mayor’s message were invited,” the mayor’s press secretary, Josh Van Veen, told Stuff.
The Media Freedom Committee said it was “unacceptable to cherry-pick journalists based on who you think will give you the easiest ride”. The mayor posted a picture on Twitter of the chosen ones with the caption: “Is this what cherry-picking looks like?” Given that they were the selected few, the answer must be yes. How embarrassing for the hacks. He might as well have asked them to wear Make Auckland Great Again baseball caps. MAGA! l
