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Is it April Fool’s?

February 24th, 2004 at 12:39 pm by David Farrar

Helen Clark has just announced that she has appointed David Benson-Pope as a Cabinet Minister!!!!

This must be a sad joke. The only rational explanation is it was done to get him away from Chief Whip. Remember this is the guy who was too stupid to apologise to Rodney Hide for alleging Rodney called out “Dopey Niggers” in Parliament.

I heard a rumour a while ago that Clark sees Benson-Pope as her sucessor as Labour Party Leader. My comment at the time was that she must be planning on staying in the job until she dies.

Considering that Labour’s Executive was already the largest in the history of New Zealand, and so many Ministers have almost nothing to do, one can’t really say the New Zealand Government would have been short done by, if it simply made no new appointment and say promoted a Minister outside Cabinet into cabinet.

The other major changes are Wilson loses Labour (after she has done all the damage with her law changes), and Mallard is appointed Co-ordinating Minister, Race Relations which i imagine means in charge of spin on treaty and race issues.

Darren Hughes is appointed what must be the youngest whip in history. He will be good in that role as an essential ingredient of being a sucessful Whip is a sense of humour and ability to work with people from other parties.

UPDATE: Rare to quote Winston Peters but he is pretty spot on with his comments on the reshuffle. He describes the Benson-Pope promotion as “truly astonishing”.

Related posts:

  1. SST on DBP
  2. Liar liar pants on fire!
  3. What if Benson-Pope wins?
  4. Curran wins Dunedin South nomination
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5 Responses to “Is it April Fool’s?”

  1. Peter Metcalfe Says:
    February 24th, 2004 at 12:50 pm

    The news isn’t all bad. Clayton Cosgrove, who had been tipped as a possible promotion, didn’t get anything. I guess Clark felt that publicly comparing Brash to Hanson was the sillier blunder.

    –Peter Metcalfe

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  2. David Farrar Says:
    February 24th, 2004 at 1:00 pm

    I suspect Clark specifically asked Cosgrove to say that knowing he is expendable if it backfired.

    I can’t work out why she did not just promote an Associate such as O’Connor or Cunliffe.

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  3. Liam Says:
    February 24th, 2004 at 4:10 pm

    What changes/damage were done to the labour laws? Being out of the country means I am out of touch

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  4. Craig Ranapia (Other Pundit) Says:
    February 24th, 2004 at 4:25 pm

    Heh… I would have loved to see Cosgrove doing his best Enoch Powell impression as Co-ordinating Minister-comma-Race Relations. I agree with David that it’s simply not credible that he went to the Sneer-Whines off his own bat. I’m sure he did the ‘rivers of blood’ routine at Helen’s request — at the very least with her knowledge and consent — with the promise of some pay-off if it scored a hit. Unfortunately for Clayton, it backfired big time.

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  5. Berend de Boer Says:
    February 25th, 2004 at 8:32 am

    Klark follows the divide and rule approach. No minister will get too many responsibilities.

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