National’s lazy, loutish junior cabinet ministers and back-benchers (Nov. 8, 2013)

Morrissey2

8 November 2013 at 7:43 am

National’s lazy, loutish junior cabinet ministers and back-benchers
Lack of talent is really starting to hurt the Government

Yesterday (Thursday 7 November 2013) it was revealed that police were lying when they claimed that they had not received any complaints from victims of the notorious West Auckland rape club the Roastbusters. If you watched parliamentary question time yesterday, you saw a clearly stressed Police Minister Ann Tolley struggling (during Question No. 2) to defend this latest instance of police calumny and/or corruption and/or incompetence and, even worse, the failure of the Government to do anything about it. As the ashen-faced Tolley struggled on, viewers’ attention would have been captured not by her substandard performance, but by what was going on in the seat behind her. A vacant-looking young man was nodding his head sedulously. Throughout Tolley’s halting performance, he continued to mug and to grin and to nod vigorously. It was an extraordinary dumb-show, a forlorn display of obedient partisanship for a lost cause. It stood out because the rest of Tolley’s beleaguered National colleagues had assumed expressions of blankness and embarrassment.

The obedient, vacant young man was actually the Rt. Hon. Simon Bridges, and his extraordinary display was just the first of a forlorn procession yesterday of the National Party’s long tail of under-performers and non-performers.

After Tolley was taken off the rack, it was time for Question No. 3—-a patsy asked by another National nonentity, Paul Goldsmith. Followers of parliament will realize that asking patsy questions is all that Paul Goldsmith has been allowed to do during his ignominiously obscure time as a List MP who got there only because he allowed himself to be the stooge or ghost candidate in Epsom, where National’s obedient supporters had been instructed not to vote for him, but for the ACT lout John Banks instead. (Party orders, you see—you don’t earn a nice house in Epsom by not doing what you’re told.)

Goldsmith’s lowly ranking in the National caucus, and his humble role as patsy question asker, is interesting—and it indicates a lot about the National Party. Paul Goldsmith is actually one of the few National Party members with a sharp intellect—he wrote an excellent history of New Zealand tax law a few years ago—but he has languished in the lowest ranks of the caucus, while a dullard like Simon Bridges has been made a cabinet minister.

A little later, I tuned in to the debate and heard Labour’s Rajan Prasad make a very effective speech. He was followed by another of National’s long tail of benchwarmers,Mike Sabin, whose speech consisted of a sarcastic remark about Prasad, a vague and insincere tribute to the members of a parliamentary committee—and nothing else.

Sabin was followed by Labour’s Sue Moroney. She spoke clearly and forcefully—but throughout her speech she was subjected to loud, sarcastic barracking by….yes, you guessed it—-Simon Bridges. The Member for Tauranga’s constant stream of rude comments was neither robust nor witty, merely sarcastic and bumptious.

Any honest observer of parliament will admit that the gulf in front-bench talent between National and Labour is stark. The commanding performance in the House by the new Labour leader David Cunliffe, and by his Green colleagues, has underlined the superiority of the liberal left.

And at the lower reaches, where the likes of Mike Sabin, Paul Goldsmith, Louise Upston,David Bennett and Tim McIndoe are snoozing and doing nothing other than shouting out inane interjections, there is simply no contest.

• Muzza2.1

  8 November 2013 at 4:44 pm

  Nice work mozza.

  Is there a link where we can get a visual on Bridges ?

  Would like to write him some commentary to go with a link to his performance. Maybe ask him what he is looking for in life’s journey!
  • Morrissey2.1.1

    8 November 2013 at 8:08 pm

    Here he is on Wednesday……
    

    He’s not nodding assiduously here; like the rest of his National colleagues, he stares at the floor blankly, obviously dying inside. Steven Joyce must have told him to liven up his act for the next day’s Question Time (yesterday’s), when he was much more animated—-embarrassingly so.
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