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Sunday, April 10, 2022

Andrew Dickens: Poto Williams joins a growing list of ministers who appear to enjoy the baubles of office


And so we come to the end of a week where I have barely mentioned Covid.

A week where the Director-General of Health has resigned. And he told us he wanted to finish the job, Dr Bloomfield leaves his position in July.

With that departure date, you can get no better indication that this phase of the pandemic is coming to an end.

Which is not to say some new twist might yet emerge. But let's not go there until we have to.

And as the virus falls off our front pages we're beginning to see stories that were hidden by the fog of war Covid provided. A fog that protected senior ministers from scrutiny.

None more so than Police Minister Poto Williams. She's had a week from hell.

Firstly she prevents the new opposition spokesperson on Police matters having a sit down with the Commissioner. Why? Who knows.

Then she rejects the premise that gang activity has increased despite all the statistics and evidence at hand.

Finally, she abdicates her responsibility on police response times by firstly claiming she did not have the figures, and secondly by claiming it is an operational matter and beyond her gambit.

It shows a naivety over what her job as Minister is. A Police Minister needs to be more on the front foot than most.

It is correct that the Police are independent in their operational matters. They have to be so they can police the politicians too. You can't have Ministers telling Police who to investigate and who not to, to prevent them misusing power for political purposes.

But Ministers have the ability to hold the police to account for their operational decisions.

The opposition found the wait times using the Official Information Act. So her staff obviously knew about the problem and so she should've been across it too and she needs to solve the problem. But she's done nothing about it and when asked appears to think she has no power to.

Poto joins a growing list of Government Ministers who appear to enjoy the baubles of office but resent having to do the actual work.

Andrew Dickens is a broadcaster with Newstalk ZB. This article was first published HERE

3 comments:

Terry Morrissey said...

"Poto joins a growing list of Government Ministers who appear to enjoy the baubles of office but resent having to do the actual work."
To do the actual work, first you must have the ability, to have the ability you need a certain degree of competence. In this labour cult competence is obviously not a desired job requirement. There would not be a minister that has shown any degree of success in that entire government. Worse still they are making the ministries look like bungling numpties. Ok most already were, but you cant turn clowns into ministers and expect miracles.

Anna Mouse said...

"Poto joins a growing list of Government Ministers who appear to enjoy the baubles of office but resent having to do the actual work."

With that statement you just described the entire Labour government not just Willimas.

You really don't have to do much of a search to find how little this regime has actually done.

The list of Ministers failures is long and not distinguisehed. In point of fact it is like they do more to try and keep their jobs than do their jobs.

gregd said...

Just been looking at labour party Mp's could only see 3 that are contributing.Robertson, but he can get nasty and arrogant and Adhern can do no wrong in his eyes,Hipkins could defect to national and would fit in.so could Damien connor i think,and what a turkey this Michael Wood is, announcing all these projects as if there a done deal, harbour bridge cycle,airport rail,and theres more!And as for Nash he's that far up JA a--e his name is on the bottom of his shoes for ID.