On the weekend CNI held a regional meeting including electorate chairs. Peter Goodfellow turned up and stole an hour of the attendees time, bored them witless and sat down to complete and utter silence. He couldn’t catch the clap from a hooker let alone an audience.
At the meeting he banged on about a lot of things, but one of the things he specifically mentioned was The Candidates College. But first a little history.
The aftermath of the Bill English/Michelle Boag train wreck of an election result in 2002 was followed by Judy Kirk and Steven Joyce making some pretty major changes to the party, including the Candidates College. They spent a fair bit of time thinking about ensuring we had a good crop of candidates coming through to run for National. The concept is sound and used world-wide to select prime candidates and then groom them for the campaign trail.
Unfortunately Peter Goodfellow has completely failed to do anything about the candidates college for a year. Nothing. Sweet F-All. Maybe he should have dropped his extensive cruise itinerary and actually ran a few candidates college events during the time since the last conference.
I’ve had a number of college members asking is National always this useless? Good people too, people that could be good MPs who now think the party is a waste of space because one man couldn’t get off his arse and do something. Something that was a passion of the previous President, and should have been an enduring part of her legacy.
And since nothing has happened there are regional chairs that have stopped referring people to it, because they thought doing nothing was a bad way to introduce candidates to National.
If anyone needed evidence for the case of the prosecution of the president for doing nothing then his “President’s Update” Newsletter is damning and from his own pen.
The Candidates’ College committee has been meeting regularly to approve the next round of people seeking to put themselves forward as candidates. We are actively considering the best way to further enhance the Candidates’ College to yield candidates who are schooled in campaigning with speech writing and media skills but also to support their campaign managers in building vibrant teams.
Riiight, so just look at the language, “actively considering“. Weasel words for doing nothing. We are 18 months out from a general election and the Candidate’s College committee is only “actively considering” the best way to enhance the College. Instead of pontificating about how to enhance the College how about the committee and the president make the damn thing happen the way Judy Kirk and Steven Joyce envisaged. When are they actually going to do anything? Actively considering? Isn’t that an euphemism for haven’t actually got around to doing anything but might at some stage in the future?
In two weeks the party has an important decision to make with regard to the composition of the board. They can re-elect Peter Goodfellow or they can select board members with a history of achievement and progress.
Call to Action for voting delegates:
- Rank Peter Goodfellow Last
- Punish him for his record of doing nothing
- Get a new President, and see the National Party thrive
