Willie Jackson has leapt to the defence of Jacinda Ardern after she was excoriated by Mike Hosking on Tuesday. Bizarrely, he has suggested that though the government welcomes scrutiny it really only wants “reasonable” scrutiny.
Labour MP Willie Jackson has hit out at “shock jock” Mike Hosking after the Newstalk ZB radio host was “simply rude” to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during an interview on Tuesday.
In a scathing post shared to Facebook, the Minister of Employment castigated Hosking for skewing his questions “towards the most negative possible assessment” of Ardern’s handling of COVID-19.
Jackson began the post with a disclaimer, noting that politicians want to be held accountable by professional journalists. He expressed support for Newshub’s investigations reporter Michael Morrah, who revealed in an exclusive report that 63.5 percent of workers at Auckland’s border and managed isolation facilities had never been tested for COVID-19, one week before the emergence of the current cluster.
Jackson clarified he wasn’t angered by Morrah’s investigation, claiming the Government welcomes the scrutiny of failures amid the pandemic so the issues can be immediately addressed.
“I wasn’t angry at Newshub’s Michael Morrah’s journalism highlighting failures at the border, in this pandemic WE WANT TO KNOW if things haven’t been done so that we can immediately fix those problems,” Jackson wrote.
“But that’s not what Mike Hosking was doing with Jacinda this morning on ZB.
“His framing of every issue he challenged Jacinda on was skewed towards the most negative possible assessment of her intentions.
“Hosking began by trying to blame the pandemic on the PM and then demand conclusions that the evidence doesn’t actually support. We have to make decisions based on the best science, not the assumptions of a radio breakfast host.”
Here is Jackson’s Facebook post:
He says “This Government welcomes reasonable scrutiny!”
So, he is clearly saying that impertinent, or persistent questioning in the face of bald-faced lies, flannel and obfuscation isn’t wanted. They only want “professional journalists” to ask them questions and the questions must be “reasonable”. It follows then that we must ask who the person is who determines whether a question is reasonable or not.
This is real banana republic stuff from Willie Jackson, and no doubt the Prime Minister who undoubtedly threw a paddy after the grilling from Hosking.
I also didn’t notice him jumping to Judith Collins’ defence after Jack Tame’s 21 rude interruptions on Q&A. It seems he is as partisan as he accuses Hosking of being.
As our face of the day post said earlier, it appears that Jackson has a paternalistic approach to protecting his weak and feeble leader. Strong female leaders don’t need men leaping to their defence.
