Labour’s frenemies

HDPA writes:

The Labour Party has no friends.

You may think the Greens are its friends. Or even New Zealand First, given that party’s loyalty put Labour into power.

But you’d be wrong. The lesson from the last week is that neither are Labour’s friends. They’re frenemies. In seven days, both parties have hurt Labour.

And by the looks of things, they did so quite deliberately.

First, the Green Party. The Greens’ decision to give their parliamentary questions to the Opposition is nothing short of treachery.

 

They gave National 2 years supply of extra ammo with which to attack Labour. That’s unbelievably disloyal.

Feigning innocence doesn’t wash. No one believes the Greens don’t know the damage this could do.

None of their reasons make sense. This can’t be a commitment to holding the Government to account, otherwise the party would just ask the hard questions in Parliament. That is doable. Act’s David Seymour regularly made a nuisance of himself by barking questions at the National Government.

That’s true. Seymour almost always used his questions to criticise National.

Jones’ full-noise attack on Air New Zealand was probably designed to get headlines. It worked. But he very quickly went from credible to crazy.

Criticising Air New Zealand for its decision to pull out of Kaitaia and Kāpiti is a reasonable thing for the Self-Appointed Champion of the Regions to do.

But demanding the board chairman resign and telling the CEO to shut up is beyond the pale.

It’s slightly bullying, slightly unhinged, plenty distasteful and straddles a weird grey area of Government interference in a majority Government-owned company.

The worst part of Jones’ carry on is he made the PM look weak. First she defended his right to vent. Then she told him off and made a point of telling us she had. And then he made a joke of that.

The reality is Ardern can’t discipline any of the NZ First Ministers. She needs them to retain office, so they are immune.