AUGUST 24 2019 LISTENER 11
C
H
R
IS(^) S
LA
N
E
still cancelling entire routes by the dozen, Genter
and Twyford will have been well aware of public
touchiness about this, but it shouldn’t have made
them gun-shy.
If, as is widely suspected, Genter played hard-
ball against a new tunnel and roading proposals,
there will indeed be some public disgruntlement.
But that should be no skin off her nose. What else
would voters expect a Green minister to advocate
for? Those who resent her incursion won’t be
Greens voters anyway. Some of those voters might
punish Labour for Twyford’s cave-in – if that’s what
occurred – but again, that’s for him to justify.
AIRY COSTINGS AND CURLY CONGESTION
In Parliament, Genter looked witheringly around
in protest as she was forced to answer niggly ques-
tions about what letterhead she had used when she
wrote to Twyford. Such pettifogging details are in
the rules to protect ministers as much as the public.
She now says she wrote the letter in her capac-
ity as a Green MP, but used the wrong stationery.
We may as well write a new rule into the Cabinet
Manual that allows ministers to say Dolly did it.
In any case, the real story about the LGWM plan
is already well understood: its costings are airy and
it barely tinkers with the capital’s worst congestion
issues. Even discounting the councils’ bungling
over buses and cycles, they’re a
hard-sell in this drafty, hilly, blind-
corner-full city.
As with all such ballyhooed
announcements, the strategy will
inevitably be changed, priorities
reshuffled and cost estimates, such
as they are, magnificently exceeded.
How stupid that even then, people
will still be mithered about what was
in that letter.
A further brushfire is crackling over
an alleged bully and/or sexual har-
asser, who works closely with Jacinda
Ardern’s office. Trickily, it’s less a case
of #MeToo than #HerToo. The person
the staffer is alleged to have behaved
badly towards is understood not to
want to make a formal complaint.
Others have attempted to litigate on
her behalf, but without first-person
testimony, it’s hard to achieve natural
justice for either party.
That some of the aggrieved not
only resigned from the Labour Party
over its failure to resolve the situa-
tion but also took their grievance to
National deputy leader Paula Bennett
to make it public shows the issue is
in dangerous escalation. Now the
proxy complaint is under in-house
appeal.
What’s head-bangingly inept is that
Labour yet again has tried to handle
things itself instead of having an
independent investigation. How can
it not have learnt from its flannel-
ling over the molestation at its youth
camp that attempts at self-mediation,
however well intended, are never a
good look.
Talk about “When you’re in a hole
...” What’s the bet the “Dear Phil”
letter was a suggestion that if Labour
really wanted a new Mt Vic tunnel,
it was perfectly capable of doing the
excavation itself. l
Another brushfire
concerns an alleged
bully and/or sexual
harasser in a tricky case
of #HerToo.