We all know that Simon Bridges can be a bit tone deaf at the best of times. However during the COVID-19 lockdown the National Party en masse have been outdoing themselves in just how off the mark and laughable right wing politicians can become.Perhaps it’s the recently leaked polls showing National on life support. Or perhaps they believe their negativity will somehow attract praise from business owners, many of whom are currently receiving substantial financial support from the Government to keep employees on the books. Whatever it is, clearly the National Party has miscalculated about just how much public resentment there is surrounding New Zealand's COVID-19 response.
In an unprecedented global economic downturn, blaming the Coalition Government instead of the pandemic for job losses is incredibly foolish when Kiwis are expecting solidarity from their leaders right now. Most voters don’t actually care if things like the state of emergency is extended a bit or whether the Government’s legal advice is being released. These are beltway issues that the opposition shouldn’t waste their or the publics’ time with. To do so makes them look petty, particularly when Jacinda Ardern is receiving numerous accolades for her leadership through these troubled times.
But if that nit picking wasn’t bad enough, claiming that there’s been some sort of administrative error and pointing towards other countries that are actually doing worse than New Zealand in the fight against COVID-19 is obviously a losing formula. Likewise, attacking Dr Ashley Bloomfield, who has clearly done a good job, is going to lose friends and uninfluenced people. National may as well just go back to spruiking for the fast food industry if that is the extent of their campaigning.
Then there’s the National Party’s recent play for the racist vote. Not only have their MPs made major blunders when trying to complain about the COVID-19 check points, which they incorrectly claim are illegal even though some are manned by Police, Simon Bridges has also failed to include Maori voices in the Epidemic Response Committee that he chairs.
Yesterday, RNZ reported:
Simon Bridges ignored proposals for Māori at Epidemic Response Committee, MP says
MPs sitting on the Epidemic Response Committee say Simon Bridges is to blame for the lack of Māori voices at the committee meetings.
…
Labour's Ruth Dyson said she and other MPs had proposed a number of Māori spokespeople and organisations to appear at the committee, but most of those proposals had been ignored by Bridges.
"At the end of every meeting we have a discussion about further questions, further submitters, what we want to do and what key issues we want to see, and we have consistently raised the issue of under representation of Māori voices," she said.
"We have put in written proposals to the chair of the committee, the honourable Simon Bridges, specifically linked to topics that have been agreed on like health, like education, like sport... We've made genuine proposals and to date they have not been successful."
Obviously this lack of Maori representation is because National is having a difficult time finding any prominent Maori leaders who will criticise the Government and more specifically Jacinda Ardern at the moment.
Instead of actually using the Committee to properly critique the COVID-19 response and propose relevant solutions to the numerous problems that have arisen, Bridges is trying to score cheap political points and ineffectually flailing about in the hope that he will get lucky and actually hit something. In so doing he’s expending a huge amount of political capital while his party continues to go backwards.
This type of politicking by Simon Bridges is something most Kiwis will see as a complete waste of time and resources. When many will be doing it financially tough, wasting resources with negative campaigning is the last thing any MP, particularly those on the opposition benches, should be doing right now.
