I fully understand why people were outraged when Christopher Luxon told Simon O’Connor to take down his comment celebrating the US Supreme Court decision to overturn the Roe v Wade decision. On our side of the political divide, we believe in free speech and freedom of opinion, and this did not seem like the sort of thing the leader of the opposition should be doing. This is much more in line with Jacinda’s playbook, where everyone who disagrees with her is referred to as ‘rivers of filth’ or described as someone with personal hygiene problems. We don’t like that sort of behaviour and we don’t want to see it from the next prime minister.
Fair enough. I am struggling to see why people in New Zealand are so up in arms about it anyway. TV1 News has led its 6pm bulletin with the story two nights running – a story that affects precisely no one in New Zealand.
This may, of course, be a deliberate diversion: to stop people from worrying about much less important things such as spiralling inflation or ever-increasing child poverty. Nothing would surprise me from this Government’s biggest cheerleaders.
But maybe Luxon was slightly smarter than we give him credit for because, on Monday morning, out came this disgraceful piece from Newshub:
Acting Prime Minister Grant Robertson is accusing Christopher Luxon of putting out political spin to hide his real views on abortion after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.
But despite his [Luxon’s] assurances, [Grant] Robertson urged the leader to make his view on abortion clear, pointing to Luxon’s 2021 comment that he believes abortion is tantamount to murder.
“I think New Zealanders need to ask themselves what Christopher Luxon’s stance on abortion actually is, he managed to put out two statements in two days over the weekend and previously he’s said that abortion is akin to murder,” Robertson told AM’s Melissa Chan-Green on Monday.
Newshub
Many of us think abortion is akin to murder, but Luxon has come out and said firmly that there will be no changes to abortion law under the next National government.
I’m not sure how much clearer he can be.
Nothing will stop this dreadful Government from trying to bring down the opposition, even though their own performance over the last 5 years has been woeful in the extreme.
Still, they will do absolutely anything to win the next election… even if they have to make things up to do it.
I have said before, I am no fan of Luxon, particularly when he failed to go and speak to the Wellington protesters. As a politician, it is important to know where you can win votes and he missed a big opportunity there. There is no point in taking the same stance as the government; their voters won’t vote National, and becoming too left wing and compliant will only lose National voters to other parties.
But Grant Robertson’s baseless accusations are all over the Monday media, as only the best government shills are able to do.
Was Robertson trying to deflect from the fact that, on Sunday, former Covid response minister Chris Hipkins admitted that last year’s lockdowns went on for too long, and that Aucklanders in particular paid an unnecessarily heavy price? The media ought to be all over this, asking for explanations, and looking for resignations – as they would if any such admission had been made by a National minister.
But they weren’t. Instead, Christopher Luxon’s position on abortion is far more important, even though he has come out and said that he has no intention of changing the law in this country as it stands.
The good thing about this is that it shows how desperate this Government has become. Jacinda has to hide overseas to avoid the protests everywhere she goes in New Zealand and Grant Robertson is running deliberate interference to take away any attention to its woeful record on just about anything.
It won’t work. They’ll need another pandemic to save them next year, but even that is unlikely to work, as we all know now how incompetent they were over Covid. Nevertheless, Christopher Luxon needs to understand exactly what he is up against, because the Government’s cheerleaders will not want to lose the free money paid to them for doing nothing more than waving pom-poms and cheering from the sidelines… no matter what lows this Government sinks to.
I think it is called Dirty Politics. Someone even wrote a book about it once. But it’s always okay if the left does it.
