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Passing a little under the radar, but picked up by Stuff’s Thomas Coughlan, was an exchange in parliament during Wednesday’s Question Time which encapsulated the utter incompetence of this governing coalition, as well as exposing the prime minister’s penchant for pulling rabbits out of a hat when things go pear-shaped for the simple trick that it is; just an illusion.
So frequently used by the good lady concerned she risks being labelled a one-trick-pony, or perhaps one-trickey-pony, so repetitious has the ruse become. Remembering, way back on August 18th, things had gone so badly, it was widely agreed, vis-a-vis border botch-ups that Ardern felt it necessary to pull two rabbits from the hat; Heather Simpson and Brian Roche, who were going to do something, anything, to “stand up”:
“we are appointing a small team to support Health to stand up the comprehensive testing strategy that we set out in June.”
Whatever that means, but rolling forward to this past Wednesday, came a series of simple questions in the house:
Hon Judith Collins: What will Heather Simpson and Sir Brian Roche do?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Implement the testing strategy passed by Cabinet in June.
Fair enough, I suppose, but thirty seconds later:
Hon Judith Collins: Does the small group standing up the comprehensive testing strategy have any terms of reference?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, and they’re being drafted currently.
Hon Judith Collins: Did the Prime Minister just say that the terms of reference are still being drafted?
Question 3 – Hon Judith Collins to the Prime Minister from New Zealand Parliament on Vimeo.
And that’s the very second that Ardern bit the lemon, or, as Coughlan put it:
” By her fifth supplementary question, Collins discovered the crack team of Heather Simpson and Brian Roche, drafted in to sort out the border-testing fiasco, didn’t yet have any terms of reference…That effectively means Simpson and Roche are flying blind, each knowing roughly what their job is, but with few specifics. Ardern said those terms of reference were still in the process of being drafted. The questions appeared to get under Ardern’s skin.”
Ardern doesn’t know what Roche and Simpson will do, she has no plan, and no clue, and as the video attests she was caught in Collin’s headlights, well: just like a rabbit, actually.
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