Ardern said she had "asked and will ask the Cabinet office to just make sure they're in touch with the minister to be really clear on how those rules apply," she said.
"I'll have the Cabinet office contact the minister and walk through with her the remedies and I'll give a bit of a reminder to ministers as well."
As Ardern is the ultimate arbiter of the seriousness of Cabinet Manual breaches, this was quite the slapdown. Looking back, Ardern might have received overly zealous advice from the Cabinet office, but she still made an active choice to softly discipline Davidson. Had she wanted to support Davidson, she could have killed the story in its tracks.
Ardern did not even break the ticking-off to Davidson in person, leaving that for officials - a decision that invites comparison with Ardern leaving it to her allies to tell former Green co-leader Metiria Turei that she'd been ruled out of serving in a future Ardern Cabinet, essentially ending her career.
The Greens will be worried Ardern is developing a quinquennial appetite for defenestrating Green co-leaders, the fact Ardern capitulated to a scandal in which the first stone appeared to have been cast by right-wing blogger Cameron Slater won't make them feel any better, and does nothing to disabuse Greens of the notion Ardern's little more than a woke John Key.
Cabinet Manual enforcement is ultimately a question of taste. Ministers regularly post images which, like Davidson's could be interpreted as an endorsement of a particular product.
Ministers regularly post to social media images and text that would appear to violate the same rule. Stuart Nash, for instance, posted earlier this year: "For good health I always start the day with a glass of warm lemon juice from the Limery. An awesome Wairoa company doing awesome things with limes and lemons".
Like Davidson, who was promoting te reo Māori, not Whittaker's, Nash was arguably wearing his "local MP" hat, promoting a business from his region, rather than as a minister.
Hours after Ardern's criticism of the Whittaker's post, the Beehive Theatrette was used to host a screening of Disney's The Lion King, which had been translated into te reo Māori. Minister Kiri Allan, in attendance, posted to Instagram in support of the effort.
In this instance, Ardern appears to understand Allan was posting in support of the te reo, not in support of Disney. This was somehow different to Davidson's post was in support of Whittaker's, not te reo Māori.
None of these breaches deserve a ticking off. Nor is the principle of the rule a bad one. Ministers should be careful about being seen to endorse products, but there's a world of difference between supporting Māori language chocolate and adding sponsored content tags to Hansard.
If Ardern has any consistency in the application of these rules, it's that inconsistencies in their application seem to depend on party affiliation rather than the seriousness of the breach. She whacks ministers from support parties harder than her own ministers: witness her polite request to Shane Jones last term to read the Cabinet Manual on his holiday after he took part in a key funding meeting for a project he had earlier declared a conflict of interest in.
Although, again, Greens might feel aggrieved that Davidson was sat down for a lecture with officials for a fairly light breach, whilst Jones was given a tongue-in-cheek telling-off for something far more serious.
Perhaps the only lesson to draw from this sad excuse for a scandal is that the enforcement of ministerial standards has more to do with party (and that party's importance to a governing arrangement) than it does with the standard being broken.
It's a good lesson for Davidson - who Ardern might otherwise be grateful to for holding her own party together despite its recent leadership wobbles - about the extent to which Labour is willing to support its support parties in even minor scandals. Under weaker leadership, the Greens' wobbles might have undermined confidence in the entire Government.
And that lesson is a good one for the Greens as a whole. The party knows not to criticise Labour too strongly. Strategists point to NZ First's disastrous 2020 campaign, and research from their own supporters to prove that attacking Ardern isn't a pathway to electoral success.
This is true.
But Ardern's flick to Davidson is a useful reminder to the Greens leadership to take nothing for granted in their party's relationship with Labour.
