Paula Bennett is stepping down from politics…
National MP Paula Bennett calls time on politics, ventures into ‘business world’
National Party MP Paula Bennett will bow out of politics at the election and venture into the “business world”.
Her decision follows last month’s leadership change in the National Party after Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye rolled Simon Bridges and Bennett. Bennett was also removed as the party’s campaign chair and replaced by Gerry Brownlee.
She informed Muller of her decision at 9am today. She told media this morning he had thanked her for what she had done for the party and that she would be missed.
…her legacy is one of political puppetry and malice.
Her draconian attacks on welfare recipients was only possible because she herself had been a solo mother.
Paula was the ultimate political poacher turned game keeper.
She could push welfare eugenics because she could always cite her own experience as some sort of justification.
She released personal information to shame beneficiary critics and put into place a sanction regime that saw thousands go hungry.
Her most shameful moment in politics was her championing of throwing state tenants out onto the street for meth contamination in state housing.
Ignoring the scientific evidence and refusing to implement Housing NZs own policy. Paula sought headlines attacking state tenants whose houses tested positive, and enabled the needless spending of $120million to decontaminate houses that didn’t pose a health risk.
She threw thousands of beneficiaries onto the streets in the middle of a housing crisis.
Her ruthlessness masquerading as ‘I know best’ damaged NZs poor, she didn’t alleviate it.
She’s been dumped now National don’t need any more draconian welfare reforms and the status this solo mother worked so hard to attain has been cut from under her with the same ruthlessness she showed beneficiaries.
Paula’s lack of empathy is her legacy. The poor will not weep her passing from politics.
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Hopefully the trials for treason, eco-vandalism, and extreme antisocial behaviour causing severe injury or death can commence soon.
Will Paula still be running National’s ‘No’ campaign for the cannabis referendum, or will that job be passed on to another fine upstanding hypocrite like Nick Smith?
Muller asked her to go but she dug her toes in and established herself as number 13 in the party . However if your not liked and clearly she wasn’t because big Gerry gor her campaign manager job, then there’s no point hanging around. Unless of course you work for your constituents. Everything I’ve read and heard from Bennett was about her, not “all New Zealanders”.
Just another slimy politician leaving a sinking ship whom will be a no name in a years time. A political punative politician.
Objectively I wonder if the lifestyle she once associated herself with on a personal level pre politics, shaped her attitude towards those type of people she associated with beneficiaries later on. A genuine belief that what she did as Welfare Minister was for the better. Not that she has ever said.
Still her abuse of privileged private information to knock down anyone who dared criticise her was an appalling low in a government that dredged uncharted depths of dirty politics and manipulation. And she seemed to thrive on such bully boy tactics.
Thing of it was though she always looked so amateur doing it compared to a pure natural like Key. And of course she got caught out, not that it mattered.
She won’t be missed with NZ parliament being a better place without her sort, a relic of a very toxic era of the National Party. Not that they’ve shown any inclination for the better!
You’d think from the blubbering MSM reports today that New Zealand had lost one of their greatest politicians. “She brought colour to politics” one commentator said. “She went from a poor solo mother to running the country”. “She was an exemplar for women and indigenous communities”. This cruel, selfish sociopath was the exact opposite of what our politicians and leaders should be. She lacked empathy, compassion, fairness, ethics, ability and style. She was an obfuscator, hypocrite and a menace to the social fabric of this country. Good riddance.
an astute description of this person. she spoke of her admiration of key & her inclusion in his “kitchen cabinet” – yuk ! perhaps to replace his prodigy – mike sabin – thank god he was stopped.
Good riddance
I think you have under-estimated the ongoing bruising impact that this crass person had on the lives on the undeserving poor. She damaged, and she damaged families with children.
I bookmarked a comment about aging attributed to Simon Bolivar, that, “memories were more of a burden than the years”; I think that this is true, that there are some whose psyches may have been permanently blighted because of Paula Bennett.
Her public comments about J-L R’s behaviour not befitting a married MP may have been intended to pose herself as some sort of morally superior being, but in my view they were comments not befitting any decent self-respecting human being, and they placed her down in the drains. Thank God she’s going.
Winston says he has proof who leaked his pension details and will release it.
Is the reason Anne Tolley and Paula Bennett are both throwing in towel ?
I had the same thought Clifford J or is it just coincidental?
That’s a very good point. The “Loaf” has probably orchestrated this. Goodbye to two very sad arses.
I, for one, will be so glad to see the back of that self-serving, opportunistic trougher.
She probably entered politics as a pauper and now leaves as a multi-millionairess thanks to the pay packet and perks of the job of being a typical ratbag.
It’s interesting to note Tolley and now Bennett getting out of politics. How convenient indeed. Is there something in say Judith Collins’s book that showed up Bennett for what she was doing and had done over the past so many years i.e bullying and denigrating those who criticised her beloved John Key and the NZ National Party?
I guess John Key will have shoulder tapped her and got her a job in the ANZ. Lets see if she breaches the right to privacy of anyone that criticises her and her style of ‘business’?
Parliament will hopefully be better off now that she isn’t trudging around the hallways with her ‘look at me. Aren’t I fantastic?’ photo opportunity seeking antics.
Makes it easier for Winston to work with National.
Hmmmmm ,… you know?… if you stuck a Turkish fez hat on her in the top photo she would look a lot like Mussolini….
https://www.gettyimages.co.nz/detail/news-photo/benito-mussolini-italian-statesman-news-photo/92423919
Wild Katipo – Settle down. At least Mussolini got the trains to run on time, and Italy subsequently has a fantastic train service. Paula would have hated him.
Paula saw Hurimoana Dennis successfully operate and establish a model for something she was unsuccessful at: providing shelter, housing, and help into jobs, for down-and-outs, so she got him blackened in the media – and for a totally unrelated and not straight forward matter, emanating from his again trying to help.
Criticism of Ted’s all-white cabinet is based on the assumption that Maori in power will help their own people. I don’t know anything that Paula did for anybody.
The euphemisms being squirted around about her now, I would sum up simply as Bennett being a loud and vulgar woman.
I am so dreadfully and humbly sorry. I will settle down .
Wild Katipo – “Blessed are the humble, for they shall inherit the earth”.
(Don’t tell anybody though, or Bowen Street could be crawling with fake Mother Teresa’s, and St Francis of Assisi’s , and there’s enough fakes up there already.)
Oh I’m so pleased to see her go, I wish Gerry the immovable object, Nick Smith, Collins and Woodhouse will follow suite.. Just a nasty bunch of self serving egotists.
National will be stronger and more united with her gone – the main leaker to Bomber’s favorite journalist, Tova. I’m surprised as it shows Muller has more steel than I gave him credit for. Bennett was never the answer and from the right I won’t get the dread feeling every time she lead question time and got annihilated by Peters.
Another that rose above her station and thus never has the ability to be a political leader
I feel for her, she can’t help herself, she carries the ‘do as I say not as I do’ gene.
One of my greatest hates in a person is hypocrisy, and jeez have i despised that woman. If the joke that we call msm in this country had ever attempted to do there job (holding the powerful to account) instead of fawning all over them for seats on the next junket/dinner etc. It is my honest belief that had they done so, the carefully massaged back story’s of both herself and shonkey may have produced proof of much more assistance in early life, than fed to the gullible sheeple. Poor girl/boy makes good???
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