As reliable maxims go, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” remains a solid gold no-brainer for any government.
Unfortunately, when it comes to some of this country’s infrastructure, a succession of New Zealand governments have also adopted the opposite view, that if it is broke, don’t fix it. And it’s not just hospitals, schools, roads and all the rest of our broken things.
Thanks to its nickel-and-diming politicians, the country has been left red-faced for the second week in a row by what those in marketing would call the “customer-facing” bit of New Zealand. Last week, it was the parlous-rather-than-parliamentary state of Premier House. This week it was the parlous state of New Zealand’s equivalent of Air Force One.
Embarrassment number one was that the official residence of our prime ministers is what a real estate agent would call “a doer-upper needing loads of TLC”. Our current PM, the down-to-earth multimillionaire Christopher “Luxe” Luxon, has said that the state of the place means he won’t live in it, though it was liveable enough for former prime minister Jacinda Ardern to raise a baby there — and for a big Luxon family do last Christmas.
Instead the Luxe choses to rest his shiny head in one of his seven mortgage-free properties, a pied-à-terre in Wellington’s Kate Sheppard Apartments building, which is described on its website as the city’s “first premium quality, inner-city apartment complex purpose-built for luxury living”.
To add insult to the dilapidation, while hosting the Australian cricket team at Prem House last week, the Luxe pointed out the state of New Zealand’s White House to his foreign visitors, which is not unlike Basil Fawlty saying not to mention war, and then mentioning the war.
Premier House is unlikely to be fixed anytime soon because the Luxe’s sometimes glitchy political radar has registered that it’s problematic to preach fiscal austerity on one hand and agree to spend $30 million to fix up Premier House on the other.
So, that was last week. This week’s nickel-and-dime embarrassment was in the same vein: the state of the Defence Force’s two Boeing 757 planes, which are supposed to ferry our prime ministers to and from important overseas engagements.
On his way to meet eight southeast Asian leaders on the sidelines of the Asean summit in Melbourne on Tuesday, the Luxe was forced to go commercial after the 757 he was due to take failed pre-flight checks.
This meant the PM of NZ — and former CEO of its national carrier — missed two meetings with Asian leaders because his prime-ministerial plane is also “a doer-upper needing loads of TLC”.
Part of the reason the Luxe had gone to the summit in the first place was to assure Asian leaders that NZ is open for business post-pandemic. Though quite how that message goes down overseas is unclear when the country can’t even successfully export its PM to a conference in Australia without a cock-up.
Like the state of Premier House, the condition of the 30-year-old 757s isn’t something that’s just arisen. Prime ministers as far back as John Key have suffered embarrassment because of them.
However, Defence Minister Judith Collins made it clear this week that replacing them would, like repairs to Prem House, cost multiple millions, which is “simply not something we can justify right at this stage.”
Which begs the question, is New Zealand a serious country or not?
That neither Labour nor National has taken steps during the past decade or more to provide successive prime ministers with a residence up to a standard befitting his or her office, let alone a reliable aircraft to engage on the world stage, suggests not.
It also indicates that successive governments have been led by poll-driven politicians too craven to fix things that represent us all.
Sure, the world sees us as clean and green. Sure, we’re nuclear-free. But do we have to be a punchline too because both our major political parties have been too cheap or too fearful of public blowback to provide our prime ministers with the sort of bog-standard trappings of office even third-world leaders seem to have?
Until last week, it was unlikely many of us could have identified National’s first-term MP Tim Costley if he was the one wearing a clown costume in a police line-up.
However the member for Ōtaki has remedied that situation with his apparent obsession with bathrooms.
First, during a debate on the Local Government Amendment Bill last week, Costley got stuck into the previous Labour government, accusing it of telling NZers how long they could stay in the shower. Thundering that he fundamentally disagreed with Wellington telling us how to live our lives, he added that, “I don’t like the thought of Grant Robertson inspecting me in the shower, quite frankly.”
Robertson is, of course, gay. Costley is not, making the comment … dubious. Which is why National’s leader of the house Chris Bishop and his Labour shadow Kieran McAnulty agreed Costley should apologise.
He did this in the House on Tuesday, looking somewhat like a naughty schoolboy — which was entirely appropriate given a post on his Instagram account the previous day indicated the sense of humour of a schoolboy.
After visiting the opening of some public toilets at Te Horo Beach on the Kāpiti coast, Costley posted not one but two photos of himself seated on one of said toilets pretending to read, for reasons known only to him, the Education Gazette.
His caption read: “They say a good local MP will turn up to the opening of an envelope. I see your envelope and raise you a toilet.”
Here’s something the schoolboy should keep in mind from now on: he might think this sort of thing amusing, but the rest of us don’t want to have to inspect him while he’s pretending to use a toilet, quite frankly.
