Election 2020: National Leader Judith Collins and the Art of Shameless Misdirection

COMMENTARY

Like most politicians, Judith Collins is not above a bit of deceptive cheek, regardless of how serious the question is.

When asked yesterday about the negligible amount of spending on National’s books to deal with economic surprises – $ 800 million in the first year and $ 700 million in the second year – Collins spoke about National’s temporary tax cuts.

When asked if the All Blacks should be allowed to have shorter stays in managed isolation so they can be home for Christmas, he said: “If I were prime minister, the All Blacks would be winning. That’s all you need. know about it. Thank you. “

And when asked about his MPs making up quotes on agriculture from the prime minister, he said Jacinda Ardern shouldn’t take credit for the hospital in Greymouth, which the national government approved and funded.

(Construction of the hospital began under the previous government, when $ 78 million was budgeted. The current government increased the budget to $ 121.9 million).

So far, the Collins and Ardern campaigns have often mirrored each other, with conversations about a narrow Covid-19 border, a focus on jobs, jobs, RMA reform, and trying to spend more than the other on infrastructure.

But yesterday’s West Coast campaigns showed stark differences in what’s on offer in these elections.

Ardern started the day with the official opening of Te Nikau Hospital, and it was refreshing when West Coast DHB Chairman Rick Barker, a former Labor MP, asked him to spare his DHB the recommended merger in the sector review. from the health of Heather Simpson.

Reform is on Ardern’s agenda and he could not say whether the DHB would survive. But there would be less DHB and DHB elections would be ruled out.

Collins, on the other hand, wants the DHB number to be kept and the elections to be upheld.

Tasmania’s west coast electorate was bluer than red in 2017 and plays on Collins’ strategy of painting a terrifying picture of a green-Labor government damaging fishing (the Greens don’t want bottom trawling) and the mining (and they don’t want anything). new mining industries on public conservation lands).

Ardern responded by saying that mining is not the end of the West Coast, and mining on conservation administration lands remained an open issue pending the outcome of a review.

Perhaps aware of the 7 percent of Act in the latest 1 News Colmar Brunton poll, Ardern said the two-headed monster that voters should really be afraid of is one with David Seymour attached.

He also pointed to the National numbers.

“Just to keep the services running in our hospitals, to keep the lights on, to keep the services that people expect, that required an investment on our part as a government of more than $ 900 million.

“National has left $ 800 million for everything in that first year. It just doesn’t add up.”

When asked to respond, Collins again accused Ardern of wrongly taking credit for the hospital. Then he got the tax cuts wrong: “The number you need to remember is $ 3,000.”

Finally, he said that the only key on National’s books was potential migration, and that would not be a problem due to Covid-19.

“Whether [$800m] it needs to go higher … that’s because the population would have grown. Are we really going to say that the population is going to grow big in the next few years?

“Is that Jacinda Ardern’s secret plan? Immigration?”

Collins also ultimately backed his MPs’ non-quotes about what Ardern said about agriculture by giving his own interpretation.

“I felt like the prime minister was completely discarding an old world way of looking at farming when I spoke of the utter anguish many families go through in the agricultural sector was a disgrace,” Collins said.

The context of Ardern’s actual quote – “a world that has passed away” – was about sustainability, and farmers were no longer necessarily against it.

Collins is still clearly having fun thanks to the performance of his leaders in the debate and included as many stops as he could from Westport to Hokitika, including a public meeting at the town hall.

Ardern’s agenda was so meager that it almost conveyed the complacency he had been warning his party against; Her two visits to health centers lacked the mixing and conviviality with locals that was a feature of her visit to Christchurch on Thursday.

They didn’t see others until the Hokitika flight, where they stayed at opposite ends of the small airport.

But their responses to what would have happened had they crossed paths earlier is indicative of their campaign styles.

Ardern: “Nothing will happen if we have contact with each other. Our force fields will not create any kind of explosion, so no one should worry.”

Collins: “I would have said, ‘Hi, how are you? I hope you’re having a good day.’

The parties could not even agree to get the Covid-19 vaccine when one was available. Ardern will, Collins will, but National Coast-Tasman-Tasman candidate Maureen Pugh hesitated when asked and said she hadn’t thought about it.

About the only thing the three of them had in common yesterday was eating whitebait.