On Jamie Mackay’s radio show the day before when we were talking about National’s leadership, I said he certainly wouldn’t be going into the next election and would go well before that. Pity I didn’t say he’d be gone by lunchtime tomorrow.
In the same interview, Grant McCallum, who is something high up in the National Party, disagreed and predicted a long and secure future for his leader.
Bill has had a long political career and was most effective as finance minister navigating the GFC and Christchurch earthquake issues. He finally got his chance as prime minister, holding that role for just 10 months.
He is too socially conservative on many issues for me but he has always maintained his integrity, which is no easy matter in politics. I read Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics book and where many of his colleagues, including some with aspirations to succeed him, were implicated in dealings that I found disappointing, Bill’s nose remained clean.
Most political lives end badly but to be remembered as someone who stuck to his principals and known for keeping integrity intact is as good a legacy as I can think of. I trust he enjoys his life after politics.
The jostling to succeed him has made me realise that our recent politics has been dominated by those whose surnames come from the first half of the alphabet.
Clark, Key, English, Ardern, Adams, Bridges, Collins, Coleman, Joyce, Goff, Cunliffe and Little. Someone tell Mark Mitchell not to bother.
Fletcher Building announced losses totalling $950 million over two years, leading to a 35% fall in its stock over the last year wiping $2.5 billion of value and affecting every citizen with a Kiwisaver account, not to mention the many shareholders and employees.
A complete dereliction of duties and incompetence by senior management and the board tasked with overseeing them. Sir Ralph Norris has had no choice but to walk away from his generous $350,000 chairman of directors fee with his own resignation.
Further afield, it was heartening to see Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa finally cave into the pressure, from his own party this time, and resign.
After nearly a decade of enriching himself and his cronies at the expense of his fellow citizens, justice has finally caught up with him after years of corruption and mismanagement of his country’s economy.
If there is any justice at all, he and the recently resigned Robert Mugabe from neighbouring Zimbabwe will be put in a small room together for a very long time.
Meanwhile, the people they were elected to improve the lives of will suffer the consequences of their corrupt and incompetent rules far into the future.
Another to resign last week from that part of the world is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate is a thoroughly decent, moral and brave man but now feels he can no longer be an ambassador for Oxfam. The charity is embroiled in sex scandals, which is sad for the many good people in that organisation who do much-needed work in places that desperately need help.
And finally, a chap who really should be resigning at the first opportunity.
Australia’s deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Hypocrisy Barnaby Joyce surely cannot cling to power any longer.
Long a campaigner against same sex marriage, arguing the sanctity of marriage is designed solely for a man and a woman, complete with much moralising. While grandstanding as a staunch defender of family values, he was at the same time conducting an affair with one of his own young staffers. Subsequently she has become pregnant and he has left his wife of 24 years.
Turnbull has just announced that in future there is to be no sex between ministers and their staff. But because of his government’s wafer-thin, one-seat majority hasn’t joined the chorus of calls for Joyce’s resignation.
