Grey Power on Ministers

Even I was laughing yesterday as Annette King was reading out some frank observations from Grey Power on initial Ministerial meetings, wth Bill English trying to sugarcoat them. Claire Trevett reports:

The post-mortem by president Les Howard on the March visit has handed King a wonderful arsenal.

She first reads out his rendition of bumping into ACC Minister Nick Smith, who had not responded to their requests to meet.

“His face reddened, and with his head down the moment the lift arrived at the ground floor he took to his heels and was last seen hurrying away in the distance.”

Heh, and even better:

King, obligingly, shares their verdict of that hard-won meeting as one that “left a sour taste in our mouths as we felt we had received the old-fashioned ‘brush-off’.”

It went on, saying Bennett needed to “shape up to her obligations”, before ending, “It appears she thinks a loud laugh will solve all questions put to her and this meeting was a complete waste of her time. Well, it certainly was a waste of ours.”

Ouch.

However Claire goes on to report on teh quotes that Annette did not read out:

Had English read the full report, he would have had a happier time. Grey Power described him as “very pleasant”, and Senior Citizens Minister John Carter as “one who can be trusted to get things done, rather than just talk about what needs to be done”.

Nice.

But the real killer English needed to take the wind out of King’s sails came in their verdict of the PM: “I found John Key much easier to talk to than the previous Prime Minister”.

Heh that would have been a wonderful rejoinder, if Bill had it at the time.