The circumstances did go some way to explaining her unfortunate choice of words. As Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said, “she had been hit by a motorcycle and she gets leeway”. Hipkins was particularly concerned though that Davidson brought “ethnicity” into the remark and that shouldn’t have happened.
However, just as troubling is that she prefaced the offending phrase with “I am a prevention violence minister...” This lent some weight to the impression she was speaking from her Crown position.
Davidson, as co-operation agreement Minister for Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, is responsible for a national strategy to eliminate family violence and sexual violence in Aotearoa, Te Aorerekura. It could be hugely detrimental to the $114m programme if it were confirmed she held such a blinkered view.
For Hipkins, the Davidson incident painfully overlaps with having to deal with the similarly outspoken Labour minister Stuart Nash, who resigned as Police Minister after boasting of asking Police Commissioner Andrew Coster whether he would appeal a court decision the politician disagreed with — a clear breach of the Cabinet Manual.
Nash, last night again under a cloud over donations, had also been investigated for possible contempt of court over comments after the arrest in the killing of Police Constable Matthew Hunt and had also approached a MBIE official about an immigration case of a health professional.
We need to know what our elected representatives think and, to achieve that, they need some license to speak their minds. That accepted, when speaking as ministers, they should couch their words, given the weight that their warrant affords them.
Breaching the Cabinet Manual is one thing, but many would have agreed with Nash’s sentiment about soft sentences and the desire to prosecute those who shoot at police. Few would concur that violence is solely the product of straight, white men.
Davidson, then, was wide of ministerial convention as well as offside with her fellow New Zealanders.
