Bruce Bisset: National leader Simon Bridges sidesteps criticism

National Party leader Simon Bridges' response to column 'full of spin'. Photo/File

Response to last week's column from leader of the National Party Simon Bridges 'full of spin'
The amount of spin generated by Simon Bridges in his reply on Monday to my last column would be enough to gain selection to the Indian cricket team.

He neatly sidestepped any personal criticism by claiming I was attacking "hard-working" Kiwis by daring to call him out for his monetarist perspectives.

Pure nonsense, of course, but what's objectionable about it is the implication that critics (read, non-National voters) are not among those he sees as "hard-working" – and that only those folk deserve consideration.

While they do, so does everyone else in our society, including beneficiaries of all sorts and even criminals. Because regardless of whether they're "good" or "bad" people, or whether they help or hinder the economy, our progress as a society is measured as much by how we treat them as by how we treat the more fortunate.

A measure of how removed Bridges is from the reality of daily existence for those "teachers, police, and firefighters" he presumes to represent, is to claim a parent in work will make a family better off than being on a benefit.

Looked at – let alone tried living on – the minimum wage lately, Simon? Seen the price of a half-healthy rental home, let alone decent food?

If shop assistants, delivery people, farm workers or labourers are better off with one parent working than on a benefit, it's marginal, at best.

They're hard-working, too; but they don't have the inherent safety net of being in government-paid positions.

Mind you, since teachers, firefighters, and police have all had to take or threaten industrial action recently, they're apparently not much better off than people working for the private sector.

And it was National's tight-fisted approach to wages (while the rich ran away with an increasing share of pie) that forced them to it.

I'm not going to get into an argument over statistics, except to say that Bridges knows as well as I that whatever trends continue during the first half-term of a new government are a direct result of the previous government's policies; it takes at least that long for any change in direction to begin to take effect.

Bruce Bisset

So the bad-news examples he uses, citing increased numbers of beneficiaries and homeless, plus fewer elective surgeries, are all hang-overs from National's nine years of neglect.

Moreover, talking about tax on petrol as an example of the Coalition supposedly taxing people to death, and moaning about the "billion trees" programme as well as the ban on new oil and gas exploration, shows how out-of-step Bridges is with the need to take radical measures to redress climate change.

I'd agree with his complaint were he promising more; but you can be sure the Nats are still "donkey deep" in denial, both on fossil fuels and animal farming. At least Labour are starting to get real about the problem, even with NZ First holding them back.

Meanwhile, I'm happy to be ahead of the news once again in saying there was nothing appropriate about releasing budget details early. Bridges still defends this, but the public disagree; according to last weekend's Reid Research/Newshub poll, 55 per cent say he was wrong.

Perhaps that, coupled with his plummeting popularity, is the real reason Bridges bothers taking on a regional columnist. For, unless the admittedly-squeaky wheels fall off the coalition and change his luck, I'm betting he'll be gone by October.

* Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet. Views expressed are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.