I don’t know. Let’s test the water.
The text was private to former National Attorney Mr General Chris Finlayson. Mr Finlayson chose to make the text public. I would have thought making a private text public to embarrass and knobble the sender would deserve its own opprobrium. It hasn’t. That said, few people will now risk casual, unguarded messages to Mr Finlayson. And no doubt people will think less of him.
We make use of traitors in war but we despise them nonetheless. It’s the same with political operatives who breach confidences.
The substance of the message was straightforward. Nash wrote that the new National MP for Napier Katie Nimon was the “laziest MP” he had ever come across — “nice woman, but ill suited to the rigours of being an electorate MP.” He also noted that she had taken nine months off on full pay upon having her baby, returned briefly, then taken another month off.
I took the claim that she was lazy as a general thing with the time-off with her new born an additional charge. It wasn’t the time off that made her lazy. After all, according to Mr Nash she is “ill suited to the rigours of being an electorate MP.”
The time-off appears not in dispute. And it was not Parental Leave which is capped at less than a quarter of an MP’s salary. Ms Nimon kept her full Parliamentary salary.
The suitability of someone for the role of Napier MP is something Mr Nash is well qualified to comment upon: he was that MP for 9 years.
I can also imagine disgruntled Napier voters expressing their concern to Mr Nash. They elected Ms Nimon expecting a full-time representative, especially when the great bulk of them work far more onerously and under far less generous conditions than their MP and then turn to their MP when in desperate need. I for one would be disgruntled. Observing that extended absence from the job has consequences is not automatically sexism. It is a statement about the nature of the role.
Yet the reaction was pure theatre. The louder one condemned Mr Nash, the more one was deemed to care about women. The actual work of an electorate MP -- casework, local advocacy, consistent presence -- was sidelined.
That Ms Nimon is lazy appears also not in dispute. The best her defenders could say was that in those months off she had turned up to events with her baby. The defence served only to reinforce Mr Nash’s point. It was not like Ms Nimon was taking the opportunity to rewrite the tax code or write a treatise for Parliament on how only women can birth a baby.
Mr Nash’s mistake was not to to point out that an MP is lazy and has taken months off parliamentary work. The problem was, the MP was a new mum. That’s the heresy. One can have a baby while the Prime Minister and the sacred narrative insists the role is unaffected.
And so we can’t have an honest debate about hiring women and men and the cost to business of paid parental leave. That would be misogynistic. I note that National is now riding the political wave to extend parental leave.
Oh, and none of this brouhaha was happenstance. Mr Nash was not about to win the seat of Napier but he would have won sufficient votes from Ms Nimmon to lose her her seat. She has a better chance with Mr Nash off the ballot.
What we witnessed was a cool, hard political assasination co-ordinated through the National Party aided and abetted by the New Zealand media party. The good people of Napier voted for Mr Nash three elections in a row. The political machinery denied them the opportunity to vote for him a fourth time.
I close without comment observing that it was National’s 2023 campaign chair Mr Chris Bishop who did an excruciatingly bad job on camera feigning no knowledge of the text -- and who then proceeded immediately to put the boot into Mr Nash the harshest.
We make use of traitors in war but we despise them nonetheless. It’s the same with political operatives who breach confidences.
The substance of the message was straightforward. Nash wrote that the new National MP for Napier Katie Nimon was the “laziest MP” he had ever come across — “nice woman, but ill suited to the rigours of being an electorate MP.” He also noted that she had taken nine months off on full pay upon having her baby, returned briefly, then taken another month off.
I took the claim that she was lazy as a general thing with the time-off with her new born an additional charge. It wasn’t the time off that made her lazy. After all, according to Mr Nash she is “ill suited to the rigours of being an electorate MP.”
The time-off appears not in dispute. And it was not Parental Leave which is capped at less than a quarter of an MP’s salary. Ms Nimon kept her full Parliamentary salary.
The suitability of someone for the role of Napier MP is something Mr Nash is well qualified to comment upon: he was that MP for 9 years.
I can also imagine disgruntled Napier voters expressing their concern to Mr Nash. They elected Ms Nimon expecting a full-time representative, especially when the great bulk of them work far more onerously and under far less generous conditions than their MP and then turn to their MP when in desperate need. I for one would be disgruntled. Observing that extended absence from the job has consequences is not automatically sexism. It is a statement about the nature of the role.
Yet the reaction was pure theatre. The louder one condemned Mr Nash, the more one was deemed to care about women. The actual work of an electorate MP -- casework, local advocacy, consistent presence -- was sidelined.
That Ms Nimon is lazy appears also not in dispute. The best her defenders could say was that in those months off she had turned up to events with her baby. The defence served only to reinforce Mr Nash’s point. It was not like Ms Nimon was taking the opportunity to rewrite the tax code or write a treatise for Parliament on how only women can birth a baby.
Mr Nash’s mistake was not to to point out that an MP is lazy and has taken months off parliamentary work. The problem was, the MP was a new mum. That’s the heresy. One can have a baby while the Prime Minister and the sacred narrative insists the role is unaffected.
And so we can’t have an honest debate about hiring women and men and the cost to business of paid parental leave. That would be misogynistic. I note that National is now riding the political wave to extend parental leave.
Oh, and none of this brouhaha was happenstance. Mr Nash was not about to win the seat of Napier but he would have won sufficient votes from Ms Nimmon to lose her her seat. She has a better chance with Mr Nash off the ballot.
What we witnessed was a cool, hard political assasination co-ordinated through the National Party aided and abetted by the New Zealand media party. The good people of Napier voted for Mr Nash three elections in a row. The political machinery denied them the opportunity to vote for him a fourth time.
I close without comment observing that it was National’s 2023 campaign chair Mr Chris Bishop who did an excruciatingly bad job on camera feigning no knowledge of the text -- and who then proceeded immediately to put the boot into Mr Nash the harshest.
Rodney Hide is a former Minister and leader of the ACT Party. This article was sourced from HERE.
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