Like most of us, Erica Stanford, Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop wish to be thought of as ‘good people’. They want the world to accept that their instincts are as generous and compassionate as those of any other members of parliament. Most particularly, they are keen to dispel the notion that being a National Party cabinet minister, in an unashamedly right-wing government, does not, automatically, make you ‘a bad person’. In other words, like most of us, they want to have their cake and eat it too.
Not easy.
In its essence, politics is about the allocation of scarce resources in a society where the demand for those resources is constant and rising. Inevitably, someone is going to miss out. In a democracy, the trick is to make sure that the people who miss out are not the same people who vote for you.
