Colin Espiner sums up the sorry state of the Government in New Zealand in his blog today
There’s an old saying that goes something like “Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them.”
And certainly this Government is doing its damnedest right now. Crosby/Textor is collecting the easiest money it’s ever made because right now all National has to do is sit back and watch Labour shoot itself in the foot with both barrels.
Prime Minister Helen Clark’s shotgun attack on John Key blew up in her face in Parliament this week because Labour got its fact wrong, and she should have known better than to run with information that had not been verified.
And now one of her safest pair of hands, Transport Minister Annette King, has brought the wrath of the entire heavy traffic sector down on the Government just months before the election.
Today’s traffic chaos in main centres around the country was entirely preventable and a elementary lesson for students of politics on how not to handle a large and vocal group already angry about the price of fuel and a range of government imposts on their lives.
King must have known that raising road user charges by 10 percent without warning was going to trigger a backlash. Particularly when her office had been in consultation with the industry about formalising a month’s warning of future increases in legislation.
To then push through an increase before the legislation was drafted was downright sneaky, and a breach of faith by the Government.
