Audrey Young wrote that National minor reshuffle mostly made sense in her article on 22 January 2019 titled ” One exception to Simon Bridges’ sensible start to the year”.
Audrey wrote :
“Simon Bridges has begun the political year with a largely sensible reshuffle and an innovative role for deputy Paula Bennett that should reduce the chances of party infighting over drug reform policy. In the choices he has made, Bridges has gone for experience over other options.”
By experience – Audrey is referring to “time in politics” and time with law and order issues – not – time in drug reform or health.
Options that were passed over had much more experience in harm reduction and the issues surrounding cannabis legalisation.
Options like Shane Reti who was a general practitioner for 17 years, who also served for 7 years on the Northland District Health Board and who almost single handedly wrote National’s private members bill concerning medicinal marijuana in 2018.
Russell Brown wrote about Reti on 1st August 2018 in the NZ Herald that :
“While other MPs were at the beach during last summer’s Parliamentary recess, Shane Reti was in America, begging interviews with public health officials in several states about how they’d handled medicinal cannabis.”
Like Fran O’Sullivan, Audrey was talking about horizontal management skills here – and applauded Simon Bridges for seeing how Bennett could manage any wedge issues that may divide the always unified National Party.
The optics were paramount.
In other words political party unity trumped skills alignment and Audrey confirmed her support for the “political unity over portfolio skills” priority Bridges had given to his decision when she wrote. :
“But the issue of personal use of cannabis is too politically potent to leave in the hands of the relatively inexperienced Reti.”
Reti may be inexperienced at fronting a political skeptical media campaign perhaps …but he is not inexperienced with the details of the harm reduction issues in drug reform …details Paula seems wafer thin about.
Audrey wrote that :
“Paula Bennett has been given the job of running the complex politics around, including highlighting the unknowns as much as the knowns.”
That position involved National deliberately taking no party line – but making the issue a conscience vote for National MPs and Paula scaring the public with claims that may not be true based on shonkey evidence.
Even shonkey evidence should be discussed – is the position taken by National because we just don’t know enough yet they claim.
Chloe Swarbrick described this “middleman position” that serves Nationals’ internal politics first as cynical.
Audrey described it as sensible.
It may confuse and befuddle debate unless media give the details about the legitimacy of evidence sufficient air.
Audrey thought it was sensible to reward the one expert National have in its ranks – with a role he has no experience in when she wrote :
“Reti’s solid work last year has been rewarded with an extra new responsibility for tertiary education, shed by Bennett.”
Talk about making no sense by taking the “reward over skills alignment” approach to portfolio assignment.
It all made sense to Audrey who then went on to agree with the backfilling required to allow Bennett to front the media over drug reform.
She thought Chris Bishop should have been rewarded for his questions in the house about police deputy commissioner Wally Haumaha ( which did not get a scalp ) – and wrote that he was one of three contenders for the Shadow Attorney-General role – made vacant by the departure of Chris Finlayson.
Bishop holds a first class Honours degree in Law and a Bachelor of Arts (History/Politics) from Victoria University of Wellington, and has been admitted to the bar as a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand.
But being a graduate is one thing and job experience is another.
Bishop had only one summer of legal experience worked as a clerk at both Russell McVeagh and Crown Law when he was at law school. The law was less interesting to Bishop than being a researcher for the National Party according to his own biography. To hell with the law.
At least Amy Adams does have years of experience as a lawyer and Audrey is probably correct that she is likely to be more bipartisan than Judith – who was the other candidate.
Audrey took issue with Nick Smith being appointed to Crown-Maori relations which is a no brainer – Smith was a dreadful choice.
There’s a song called “two out of three ain’t bad”…but in this case it’s three dodgy moves out of four which is bad.
Audrey dressed this up as mostly sensible given how much she values “how things look”.
It mostly looks like serving politic party unity over what is good for New Zealand and over who is really best for the job.
Gerard Otto is an activist and writer
