The Business section of the Weekend Herald, Saturday February 4, contained a lot of good reading for which the paper deserves credit. High praise coming from yours truly. There was an in depth article on the airport and the problems confronting it. Fran O’Sullivan was sensibly suggesting giving Mayor Brown a break, there was a positive article from Fraser Whineray (Chief Operating Officer for Fonterra) and Bruce Cotterill gave his usual commonsense opinions on current political happenings.
The one exception was the opinion piece from Mike Munro. Like his left-wing comrade Jenna Lynch, in his eyes, Labour has now won the election in a canter. To all intents and purposes, they have lapped the field. Poor old National is now in a blinking, bewildered state of inertia according to Mike. As with Ardern, the new guy on the block, who rather resembles the scoutmaster at the village hall, is suddenly God’s gift to the Labour Party. It’s easy to see why lefties can’t run a country, isn’t it?
Mike lauds the change of leadership for its speed and decisiveness. Oh, so it wasn’t planned then, it just happened overnight. What about those equally incompetent twits who put their names forward and then withdrew them; were they not in on the game plan? Or was that just a little game to try and prove their talent pool was deeper than a carpark puddle?
Mike says Hipkins’ first step as PM was to fly to Auckland to meet with business leaders who are struggling with worker shortages, rising prices and infrastructure woes. (There is one hell of a lot more of the latter now). It might have escaped Mike but the issues being discussed were all caused by Labour Government inertia or by deliberate policy-making in which Hipkins played a part.
Then of course Mike has to mention the polls. Would you believe, Hipkins has changed the game? Labour is back in front (within the margin of error, could just as likely still be behind), Hipkins is deemed more trustworthy than Luxon and is the preferred PM. Memo to Mike: it’s called a honeymoon and has happened to seventeen of the last twenty leaders who came in during an election cycle. Few went on to win the next election.
Mike is equally excited about the extension of the fuel tax cut and half-price public transport fares. Mike, with no more economic nous than those in government, has failed to work out that this will benefit Remuera tractor-driving mothers to a far greater extent than anyone else. This is doing exactly what he would criticise National for with their plans to cut taxes, i.e. looking after the ‘rich pricks’. Mike needs to give Brad Olsen a call. According to Mike National has done nothing to wrest back the initiative. It has been reduced to sound bites and sniping from the sidelines.
Everything Mike talks about happened in a week. One week. In that time Hipkins has tried to appease Auckland business leaders of the problems he had a hand in, announced his new lineup with Willie Jackson at number nine (thereby proving his available talent might in fact be shallower than a carpark puddle), and won the election for Labour. What a trifecta!! Let’s not forget: a week is a long time in politics.
I’m unsure whether this was an article written in jest but it certainly came across that way. Mike’s imbecilic ramblings remind me of some lines of a song –
These rose-coloured glasses That I’m looking through Show only the beauty But they hide all the truth
