It seems we can’t even get through a week these days without the National Party's leader, Simon Bridges, making some sort of silly announcement about a policy that doesn’t actually exist.Usually concerning Bridges’ gut instinct and the undoing of whatever the Government has recently announced, National’s reactionary opinions and uncosted policy announcements are scant on details and often don’t make much sense from an economic let alone political standpoint.
However every once in a while Bridges really outdoes himself.
Yesterday, RNZ reported:
National considers reciprocal deportations for Australians
Opposition leader Simon Bridges says a National government will look at amending the law to allow Australians convicted of serious crimes in New Zealand to be deported.
Doesn't Bridges know that Australians convicted of crimes here can already be deported?
Bridges said, if elected, National would explore a policy based on amendments to Australia's Migration Act in 2014 which allows for people to have their visas cancelled on character grounds.
He said, legally, the Australia government can deport Kiwi criminals and New Zealand needs to look into a reciprocal policy.
"While Jacinda Ardern has labelled this issue as corrosive to our relationship with Australia, I don't agree," he said in a statement.
With the biased mainstream medias help, National is relying on people not digging any further than easily digestible little sound bites to gain the attention they clearly don’t deserve.
The reciprocal deportation idea for instance, where the difference between the two countries rules is in reality very minimal, has provided Simon with a platform to pretend to be tough on crime. Leaving Kiwis in New Zealand after they've been law abiding citizens for 10 years seems only fair and in my opinion we shouldn’t go changing our laws just because Australia refuses to change theirs. After all, two wrongs don’t make a right.
So this is obviously just another ploy to gain the medias attention to add to the growing list of all the other National Party's empty bravado and hollow promises.
Here’s another recent clanger that Bridges received widespread criticism for.
On Friday, Newshub reported:
Good news for Simon Bridges - his big tax idea is already happening
And then he declared: "People on the average wage shouldn’t be paying almost 33 per cent in the dollar."
Incredibly, simply by making that point clear, he managed to travel back in time and reset the rates of marginal and effective tax rates, and fortunately for several years now nobody has had to pay anything like that level of tax.
So Bridges can’t even get National’s big tax announcement right and has become a joke!
The opposition leaders' bumbling is causing National to flounder on topics they usually dominate on like law and order and tax reform. With nothing more than his own anecdotal evidence, Simon Bridges is failing to convince voters that his ideas are sound and therefore worth supporting.
Let’s take a look at another brain-fart from last month.
On Jan 29, RNZ reported:
Simon Bridges to announce potential coalition partners 'soon'
Asked whether he would be giving the Epsom seat to ACT's David Seymour or anyone else from another party, Bridges again repeated he would be making an announcement.
"As I say we'll make an announcement soon, I said we'll do that in election year because I think New Zealanders do require certainty but patience is a virtue and today's not the day."
Pressed further about when that would be, he said: 'Soon my friend, soon.'
Does there have to be an announcement that National would work with the Act Party if they have the numbers? Or has Bridges realised that making an announcement about something everybody already knows makes him look like a damn fool?
Unfortunately for the media they also get egg on their faces every time they play along with Simon’s attention seeking. Perhaps in the future they might like to distance themselves a bit to gain some objectivity, because running off to Simon Bridges to get his hot take on every single issue is becoming extremely tiresome!
