Answers to parliamentary questions reveal that in the three years inclusive between 2020 and 2022, there were twenty two accidents involving self-drive ministerial cars.
Think about that. Twenty two accident in 3 years, from a cohort of not much more than twenty people. That’s an average of a seven a year or one very two months.
Have you ever been in a workplace where your colleagues were involved in a car crash in a company car once every two months?
Of the twenty two, twenty were when the Minister was driving and on fifteen occasions the driver was deemed to be at fault.
So VIP Transport, which is taxpayer funded, paid out $15,000 in insurance excess, a thousand dollars a crash.
And here’s the rub.
On one of those occasions, sometime in 2021, there was an incident involving a self-drive car allocated to .. Kiri Allan.
Isn’t it about time the Prime Minister came completely clean about Kiri Allan’s accident on Sunday night, and while he’s at it, he could perhaps explain why his ministers are so useless at driving.
We’ve heard subsequently that police had to get the dog unit out to find Kiri Allan because she left the scene of the accident. Not a great look, although inconsequential now because her political career is all over forever.
Oh, and Kiri Allan’s personal VIP chauffeur in her East Coast electorate, presumably in Whakatane, threatened to quit because she kept making last minute changes to the arrangements or not being there at the time of the arranged pick-up.
All in all, she showed a combination of arrogance, a lack of self-discipline and poor personal time management. This on top of the shouting at staff. And of having had a previous car crash in a ministerial self-drive car before last Sunday night.
Surely this adds up to someone who was never fit to be a Minister.
Here’s a thought for the Cabinet Secretary. How about you add some driving instruction to the Cabinet manual?
Twenty car crashes in three years? And that was when they were actually driving.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack where this article was sourced.
Have you ever been in a workplace where your colleagues were involved in a car crash in a company car once every two months?
Of the twenty two, twenty were when the Minister was driving and on fifteen occasions the driver was deemed to be at fault.
So VIP Transport, which is taxpayer funded, paid out $15,000 in insurance excess, a thousand dollars a crash.
And here’s the rub.
On one of those occasions, sometime in 2021, there was an incident involving a self-drive car allocated to .. Kiri Allan.
Isn’t it about time the Prime Minister came completely clean about Kiri Allan’s accident on Sunday night, and while he’s at it, he could perhaps explain why his ministers are so useless at driving.
We’ve heard subsequently that police had to get the dog unit out to find Kiri Allan because she left the scene of the accident. Not a great look, although inconsequential now because her political career is all over forever.
Oh, and Kiri Allan’s personal VIP chauffeur in her East Coast electorate, presumably in Whakatane, threatened to quit because she kept making last minute changes to the arrangements or not being there at the time of the arranged pick-up.
All in all, she showed a combination of arrogance, a lack of self-discipline and poor personal time management. This on top of the shouting at staff. And of having had a previous car crash in a ministerial self-drive car before last Sunday night.
Surely this adds up to someone who was never fit to be a Minister.
Here’s a thought for the Cabinet Secretary. How about you add some driving instruction to the Cabinet manual?
Twenty car crashes in three years? And that was when they were actually driving.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack where this article was sourced.
2 comments:
If you can't manage a car, how can you manage to run a government department?
Well, you can't. We all know that now. Actually we knew it when they first got elected but they didn't disappoint.
Incompetent ideologues don't make good rulers....or good drivers for that matter.
There has been a lot of unanswered questions. There's been a lot of speculation. Are we obliged to think it was an accident? Where are the skid marks on the road? Was it just a pure coincidence it happened outside the property of a senior Ministry of Justice employee?
Was the Justice Minister having an alcohol fueled meltdown? An episode or a breakdown and frustrated at how difficult it is to achieve a fair judiciary system according to the Ministers highly principled ideology? Or something like that. Because she does the mahi.
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