Some of ours haven’t covered themselves in glory lately either.
Claire Curran or Dead Cabinet Minister Walking is hanging on to her warrant by her fingernails.
Ironically, she is also Minister for Open Government, which, in the context of the story, has a delicious irony that George Orwell could have written into his book, 1984.
If this saga doesn’t eventually see her resign then a dollar to a doughnut that she will disappear at Ardern’s first Cabinet reshuffle. But Ardern would be well advised to cast her adrift now.
This, of course, is all over her meeting with broadcaster Carol Hirschfeld who was a senior executive with Radio NZ. Hirschfeld has paid the price and been sacked for repeatedly lying to her boss that the meeting was a chance encounter. Surprising, given she is an experienced journalist and has worked in the political beltway for years and knows the rules.
Now the heat is on Curran.
It was poor form to meet a senior executive instead of using the correct channel of board chairman Richard Griffin, which is a mild matter in itself.
However, she is not dealing with the aftermath of the meeting’s disclosure very well. If it turns out that she tried to instruct Griffin to not attend the select committee to rectify the earlier assertions the meeting was a chance but instead to send a letter, she’s in trouble.
There’s a voicemail on Griffin’s phone that will either back her version or not, so we await with interest.
I had lunch with Griffin once – nice chap. I’d heard him on radio complaining about his dog that wouldn’t stop barking. I got his email and we met at the White Swan in Greytown for me to lend him my electric dog collar but, in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to borrow it to zap his beloved dog.
So, we had lunch instead and I discovered I’d lunched with a fellow who had lunched with J R Tolkien, which was quite cool.
A good thing to come out of this saga is that Radio NZ’s own coverage of the matter has been exhaustive and independent.
Why Curran has decamped to the Gold Coast to see how television covers the Commonwealth Games baffles me. Wouldn’t sitting on the couch at home like the rest of us be a better way to judge and save taxpayers money on yet another junket?
Another minister skating on thin ice is Eugenie Sage, Green Party Minister for Conservation and Associate Minister for the Environment.
There was surprise at Jacqueline Rowarth’s appointment as chief scientist for the Environmental Protection Agency given her prior comments on water quality. She raised eyebrows when she delved into a debate about irrigation after the election, thus entering the political realm.
Now she’s quit the EPA and there is a whiff that Sage might have indulged in political interference in the operations of an independent Crown entity.
One day she is saying she met EPA head Allan Freeth and discussed Rowarth then the next she is saying she didn’t but confused it with a meeting with Ministry for the Environment staff.
Should someone with such a lousy memory be a minister?
And should you think this is typical of the centre left don’t forget Key sacked Richard Worth, Maurice Williamson and Judith Collins. In the latter’s case not over the Oravida scandal, which was dodgier than the Adam Feeley business that did eventually get her.
These people are highly paid, given high status but remember they are not our political masters but our employees and should act with probity and when they fail, leave the stage.
