“I hope politics doesn’t define me” – Paula Bennett
Actors with different political views and business people staying on message like politicians: Paula Bennett has interviewed them all on her podcast, Ask Me Anything. As she celebrates 100 episodes, Jenni Mortimer turned the tables, putting the hard questions to the former Deputy Prime Minister.
Look.
Of course most politicians should be able to move on with their lives and not have it define them, as we all deserve, but with Paula Bennett we aren’t talking about an off-colour joke she made on Twitter a decade ago, she traumatised an entire generation of State Tenants with the false meth testing scandal that destroyed thousands of lives!
There has been a real attempt to sanitise Paula Bennett’s legacy, be it kind columns talking about how hard it was for her as a woman, to dancing with Tom Sainsbury, to Gives us a Clue with Hillary, to her new podcast.
In response to this attempt to whitewash her legacy, here is one image that sums up the true spite and maliciousness of her as a politician…
…Paula knew the meth testing policy was flawed. She was told and Housing NZ were told that they were mis-interpreting their own policy, Housing NZ even admitted that they knew they were misinterpreting it and yet, they willingly used meth as a clickbait weapon to demonise state tenants while they were privatising State Housing.
Paula needlessly blew $120million on decontamination that was never a health risk, she threw hundreds of state tenants onto the streets in the middle of a homelessness crisis, billed them hundreds of thousands in costs through corrupt tenancy tribunals and banned them from re-entering State Houses.
She can dance with as many comedians as she likes, nothing cleanses the pure spite of her as a politician.
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 ruthlessness masquerading as ‘I know best’ damaged NZs poor, she didn’t alleviate it.
So you are allowed back into the fold after needlessly blowing $120million on false meth contamination and throwing hundreds onto the street in the middle of a homelessness crisis while pulling the ladder up behind you?
Glad we got that clear.
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Aw come on, anyone who tells Jacinda Ardern to “zip it sweetie” can’t be all bad.
Yes Pope, at one point in time she was at least twice the woman Ardern was. As Obi Wan stated in A New Hope ‘ that’s no moon it’s Paula Bennett’
So wasting 120mil on nothing is ok if the right do it ( and they continue to)
Aww c’mon, anyone who calls David Seymour a “sanctimonious prick” can’t be all bad.
That’s the truth. Pope lives in a special world where reality is not allowed to interfere.
Jacinda Ardern. The best Prime minister we’ve had over the past 20 years.
Where does Chloe’s “OK boomer” fit in this all time list.
What a change, Paula has had a physical makeover par excellence. It would be interesting to see an early image of her alongside the now. There is a waiting leading article in some glossy magazine for a bucket of money in how and where it was carried out. You too can have Princess Di aspirations. And it is an example of how protean we are, how amorphous we will become, not just dyeing our hair but changing our person our convictions dropping commas from our writing not writing at all until we will be like someone with advanced alzheimers who looks in the mirror every morning and says hello to the new home help or someone.
Martyn, your blogs today sadden me. Many about so-called influencers who are not only ugly on the inside but so rotten to the core, you must be able to smell the rot coming off them. The likes of Bennett, DuPlessis-Allan, Jones, Seymour, Bridge immediately come to mind as do the CoC-up MPs and ZB’s ghastly, smug Hosking. In fact the list is growing larger by the day with these self-entitled, self-absorbed parasites sprouting their verbal diarrhoea as if it were a fact! The more we focus on them the more twisted and ugly they become. So maybe we need to totally ignore their comments and pretend them away for good. We don’t need them in our lives.
Yes I agree the more we talk about them the more kudos they get from their crackpot supporters
In days of ole England they would have been in the village square clamped in stocks and covered in rotten veges just ask trev
You can take the pig out of the bush, but you can’t take the bush out of the pig.
No beating around the bush this particular one is a mole
Don’t beat about the bush try lake. This bird is special, looks special.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ourchangingworld/575832/our-changing-world-what-happened-when-the-puteketeke-s-fame-faded
Indeed!
Whilst on a two week tour of the South Island I came across Bennett whilst staying at the Cardrona Hotel. She walked across the back deck of the Hotel with all the pomp of a high noter as if her shit didn’t smell. Back in the Waikato I came across her at Woolworths, she was in the Wine section and that gastric band surgery seemed to be a thing of the past. With her appalling political history and what she imposed on the already downtrodden, it beggars belief that she wishes not to be defined by politics. She is a stain on democracy and decency.
Her replacement Upston is tared with the same brush .Another who used the system to climb the ladder and is now shitting on the next generation ,from a great height .
I recall reading a Letter to the Editor that she had written whilst living in Taupo about the National government at the time.
She was on the DPB at the time. She said that the National government “Sucks”.
Once she became a National MP I would say she deliberately came down hard on ALL Beneficiaries. Whilst she was on the DPB she got an education. When she became the Social Welfare minister she practically “Pulled up the Drawbridge” to stop others from achieving what she had.
That would in my opinion define her as the most self-interested and self-serving politician of the time.
Mind you since then National are now over-flowing with self-serving Troughers.
It’s well known that National is the political party of Mean Spirited people especially on those that Luxon calls Bottom Feeders eg the Beneficiaries.
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