John Key's recent outburst in parliament was a missed opportunity to show strong leadership.
John Key's recent outburst in parliament was a missed opportunity to show strong leadership.
One can't help but think that our politicians missed an opportunity yesterday to make a strong statement against Australia's treatment of New Zealand detainees.
Instead of focusing on the way our friends across the Tasman have ignored the basic human rights of citizens of this country, politicians from all partiesallowed parliamentary question time to be turned into one big squabble-fest.
It started okay, with the leader of the Opposition, Labour's Andrew Little doing his job of questioning Prime Minister John Key about whether his government was doing enough to challenge the Australian government about the way it has treated detainees from our country.
From there it all descended into chaos. The Prime Minister sounded defensive and probably realises he has not tackled Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull hard enough on the issue. Instead of delivering a strong statement, he allowed himself to be rattled when he angrily accused Labour of defending rapists. It lacked decorum and was an unfair generalisation as some detainees don't appear to have done much wrong.
However, Labour MPs were probably no better, with Kelvin Davis, Iain Lees-Galloway and even deputy leader Annette King being downright rude to the Prime Minister. His position affords him respect and these MPs should have found other means of voicing their distaste.
Their fellow MPs Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins were equally lame in declaring they were offended by Mr Key's assertion that they were defending rapists. The Prime Minister missed an opportunity to show strong leadership, but Labour MPs failed to hold him to account and instead made the argument about themselves.
Meanwhile, New Zealanders are suffering at the hands of our "friends" across the ditch.
