A popular TikTok meme and a column featuring a wobbly dessert capture a run of unforced errors and a government “staggering to Christmas”, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday morning, sign up here.
Government “staggering to Christmas”
There’s a meme on TikTok that uses an old sound clip from a news broadcast in 2009. It starts with a Big Ben bong and is followed by the question “What on earth is going on in the House of Commons?” from ITV anchor Tom Bradby. The clip bounced around in my head all day yesterday after reading Pattrick Smellie’s very good column (paywalled) about the government “staggering to Christmas”. Smellie writes: “Bill English used to talk a lot about the importance of a government ‘holding its shape’. Unless the intended shape is a blancmange, the current government is failing to do so.” A blancmange, for the unfamiliar, is a gelatinous, cold dessert that’s prone to wobbling. If you found the right mould, it could look like the Beehive.
Ministers still at odds over entrenchment issue
There’s a human reaction I have to this stuff at the moment which is that everyone is very tired. Smellie himself notes that “if there was ever a government that looked as if it really needed a Christmas break to regroup, it’s this one.” But there’s also an election next year and a lot at stake. I wrote last week about the public health case for the Three Waters reform. Six public health experts were so concerned about the very real issue of safe drinking water being subsumed by political debate, they wrote a whole paper about it. Yesterday, we still couldn’t quite get to the bottom of the entrenchment issue, with the prime minister and the minister for local government at odds about who knew what, when.
Media reforms are an overdue response to decaying infrastructure
This morning, Duncan Greive reiterates the need for the TVNZ/RNZ merger. The case for those reforms was not helped by broadcasting minister Willie Jackson’s Q&A interview on Sunday. Yesterday, Jackson apologised for the way he came across. Greive writes that, like Three Waters, “the government’s media reforms are an overdue response to decaying infrastructure. And much like Three Waters, arguments over relatively arcane details now threaten to derail the whole programme.” The thing about the current run of blunders is they don’t create much need for the opposition to mount its own policy in response to big issues. National’s approach to the merger is a promise to reverse it. National’s approach to Three Waters is “repeal”.
“Rinse and repeat” on crime
When was the last time we heard anything about social investment as a potential approach to intervention that might assist in crime prevention? By my estimation, the last mention by the National party of what could be a fairly major policy plank, and therefore should be scrutinised, was in a speech given by Nicola Willis in October. Instead we have a repetition of “soft on crime” and bootcamps. Lianne Dalziel has a very good column on Newsroom this morning (paywalled) lamenting the rinse and repeat cycle of political rhetoric on crime. Social investment was introduced by Bill English in a speech in 2011 that described prisons as a moral and fiscal failure. At the time English was praised for bursting “the hot-air cloud of rhetoric and emotion that so often envelops discussions of crime and punishment in this country.” Perhaps, as Stuff’s Luke Malpass writes, the tying together of cause and consequence on crime by Christopher Luxon will arrive in the new year. Also arriving in the new year will be a cabinet reshuffle from Jacinda Ardern. Stuff’s Thomas Manch writes this morning that Nanaia Mahuta is expected to be moved off the local government portfolio.