Brooke Van Velden, David Seymour and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon responded after NZ First invoked the first use of “agree to disagree” provisions. Video / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Barry Soper
Barry Soper is Newstalk ZB's senior political correspondent
Of course we are not. How on earth anyone can believe that three political parties, in this case,can surrender their identities at Government House when they’re sworn in is nothing short of fanciful.
Beg-to-differ clauses have been in coalition agreements ever since coalition governments came into being under MMP in 1996. The only time they haven’t been in place was of course during the unbridled Labour government over the last three years, and look where that got us.
The cracks, as painted by some, came from New Zealand First leader Winston Peters who begged to differ with the Government decision to continue with the Covid Royal Commission of Inquiry until November and then continue with it after that, with new commissioners.
Stopping a Royal Commission, the most powerful inquiry that can be held in this country, was unthinkable to ACT, and it seems National.
Peters argues it should have been canned after the former National Party minister Hekia Parata resigned as a commissioner in November last year.
He argues it was set up by the Labour Government to tell it what it wanted to hear, citing the chief commissioner Tony Blakely, a renowned epidemiologist based in Australia, who’s a mate of those involved here in our response.
National leader Christopher Luxon, Act leader David Seymour, and NZ First leader Winston Peters. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Labour’s Chris Hipkins, the former Beehive podium of truth preacher, who frequently shared it with Jacinda Ardern and Ashley Bloomfield, is adamant the Commission was designed to be neutral.
Hipkins says that’s why it was set up with a robust, independent public health expert from Australia and says Peters is simply courting the conspiracy theorists.
Before he got the job Blakely, during the pandemic, provided direct advice to key policymakers and advisors to the Beehive, including Ashley Bloomfield and Professor David Skegg, chair of the Covid 19 Public Health Advisory Group.
Blakely also disclosed “close collegial relationships and friendships with many of the key players” in the NZ Covid-19 Policy Response, including Bloomfield and the inimitable Michael Baker.
Professor Blakely also played a role in the Government decision making, extending the life of the loathed managed isolation and the quarantine system, including when to end it.
Epidemiologist professor Tony Blakely.
He still maintains it wouldn’t compromise his independence though.
There are many instances where the Labour Government appeared not to understand what a conflict of interest was.
After the current commission, another one will operate with a wider brief, hopefully to include the lotto system forced on Kiwi passport holders wanting to return home, in other words denying them their sacrosanct citizenship.
Attacking Peters, Labour through Hipkins, laboriously defends creating a society which for a time resembled a totalitarian state, throwing borders around Auckland for much longer than it was warranted.
Claims that New Zealand was a world leader in saving the country from the apocalypse, saving thousands of lives, are spurious if you read analysis of country fatality records carried out by John Hopkins University, among others.
In the same year we were all finally relieved of restrictions, at the end of 2022, Peters had been trespassed from Parliament’s grounds for two years (lifted when it was seen as stupid) by the Speaker Trevor Mallard, who’s now our ambassador to Ireland, and is ironically under Peters’ control as Foreign Minister.
Pity he doesn’t do to Mallard what Mallard did to him, and trespass him from the ambassador’s residence in Dublin!
