Frank Greenall: Simon says same old, same old

Bridges to nowhere: National's new leader won't make Whanganui MP Harete Hipango's job any easier.

Our local MP, Harete Hipango, at times must wonder if she's jumped on board the right stage coach.

Harete proudly referenced her Maori heritage in her maiden speech in Parliament, and with a Maori leader now holding National's reins and a Maori deputy riding shotgun,

Maori constituents could be forgiven for expecting a change of direction from the party that thinks it should still be in the driver's seat.

But she — and they — have a problem. The party she's allied to has just come off a nine-year stretch as government. During this time, while they made a mantra of how impressively the "economy" was doing, all the crucial stats pertaining to quality of life for Maori in general were in free fall.

Unemployment (particularly youth), housing affordability and ownership, child poverty, health services, domestic violence, crime and incarceration rates, mental health issues and youth suicide, to mention just some, were all tanking — not just locally but by OECD standards.

Unsurprisingly, most Maori had trouble identifying with this phantom "growth" economy John Key was continually at pains to spin.

Bill English continued to talk the talk, but just kept kicking the can down the road before being blindsided at election time by the coalition.

But the subsequent "generational" regime change in party leadership has disappointingly seen new leader Simon Bridges simply stick to a well-worn trail as John Key Lite.

Bridges' cracked record keeps parroting National's nine years of "sound economic management" — artificially engineered "surpluses" and all.

Unfortunately, he too seems to have got in with the wrong crowd during university days, and come away thinking that the economy is a beast that exists independently of the people and environment making up its constituent parts.

In other words, an "economy" can be supposedly pumping while major components comprising that economy are bleeding big-time.

Key's long-term vision only ever extended as far as next week's Digi-Poll. With the big picture issues, Bridges also plays Mr Magoo.

Take climate change. Here, he's sagely advised by his faithful deputy, Paula, who's believed to have read articles on the subject during her time as Climate Change Issues Minister.

Frank Greenall

Yet Bridges still doesn't seem to have grasped the nub of the matter inasmuch as planetary collapse is quite likely to bum-out company balance sheets. Accordingly, Simon is bravely in favour of such remedial strategies as cutting back on fossil fuel consumption and so forth, but only on condition that nothing actually changes.

But while most of the Nats' Old Guard have hightailed it, Simon luckily retains the unalloyed loyalty of Nick Smith, former Minister for the Environment, rewarding him a highly respectable 26th ranking in the Shadow Cabinet.

Simon is well advised to keep Nick sweet, as he's quite literally a miracle worker worthy of mention in the New Testament. Just as Jesus of Nazareth conjured the lame to walk with but a touch, so Nick instantly cured our sick and dying waterways.

When told all those waterways coloured red on the map were toxic, Nick simply dug out his old box of colouring pencils, coloured the red bits green, called them "wadeable", and thereby instantly made them good to go.

Money can't buy this sort of master class on how to really get things done without actually doing anything.

Of course, Harete represents all Whanganui rohe residents. But, particularly for her Maori constituents, her situation is reminiscent of Jane Fonda's eponymous role in Cat Ballou, in the scene where Cat waits for the stagecoach to disembark the fearsome gunslinger she's hired to blow away the town baddies.

After all the regular passengers have alighted, a comatose Kid Shelleen (Lee Marvin) spills out of the rear boot — her erstwhile hero! For Kid Shelleen, read Kid Bridges.

In the movie, the Kid finally gets it together enough to do the business. But that's Hollywood for you …