Memo to Bill English: Election year is this year, not next year.
English’s cruisy start to the week suggests he has forgotten that.
He ditched the regular Prime Minister’s media spots on a Monday morning, designed by Prime Ministers past to set the news agenda, on the grounds it was Auckland Anniversary day.
That allowed opposition parties to fill the news vacuum and call for some leadership from English in responding to Donald Trump’s shocking directives aimed at refugees from the most desperate of war-torn countries and which discriminate against Muslims.
The Prime Minister’s only response (much later) was to say that the Foreign Minister would be responding.
English’s first item of business was the Karaka yearling sales and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The sale of horse-flesh is a thrill and still cheaper than Auckland real estate. Lot 181 sold for a mere $450,000 and was “an absolute bargain” said one onlooker.
Karaka was an important annual event for John Key and Helen Clark. But it was almost a five-hour appointment for English. In election year.
He strolled around the sales with the urgency of a teenager with a tea towel, not a new Prime Minister in election year with a busy agenda.
English bumped into Brendon McCullum, now a cricketing horse-breeder rather than a horse-breeding cricketer. But that was a private encounter. English needs public encounters.
Bill’s lackadaisical attitude extends beyond the McCully / UNSC2334 issue. He’s not hungry for it. He’s just coasting.
Good luck to all the MPs that have chucked their hats in the ring with him. They must feel really confident now seeing how committed English is to their future in politics. /SARC Read more »
As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.
They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.
He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.
Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.
To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.