Mike's Minute: A win for common sense

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

A very good victory on Friday for common sense.

The Solicitor-General fell on her sword over the instructions to the prosecution service promoting race.

It was Monday, this time last week we raised it because it seemed scandalous.

How did this happen? How does a Government so explicitly state the race card is no longer being played in policy settings, and yet the Solicitor-General is saying what she is to the police, having been advised by a radical-sounding Maori group, drummed up out of Andrew Little's famously well-catered justice gab-fest a couple of years back.

By Tuesday the media are still asleep at the wheel and no one has touched it. We raise it with the Prime Minister, who forgot his backbone, played the independence card and couldn’t really do what he needed to do, which was close it down.

By Wednesday David Seymour wonders aloud on the tiles at Parliament why, when surrounded by the press gallery, he hasn’t been asked about it, given the question line was around the Tui billboards.

By late Wednesday, into Thursday, the media, bless them, has finally been stirred, or embarrassed, into some sort of action.

The NZ Herald tries an op-ed sort of piece, quite rightly asking a few questions around how the Solicitor-General got herself in this mess, given her experience. Radio NZ bumbles out of its slumber and gives it some coverage. Even TV3 finally slaps together a little something for their 6 o'clock effort.

On Friday Judith Collins, as Attorney-General, turns up on ZB and says what the Prime Minister should have said - it's not on.

By Friday afternoon, a very good time for a press release, the Solicitor-General says it came out all wrong, it shouldn’t have happened and sorry about it.

So - a win!

But here is the issue for the Government.

1) You can't promise policy and approach if you can't deliver.

2) They clearly have a major issue with the public service and pushback, so they need to do something about it.

Rightly or wrongly, the Government are the Government, and they make the rules.

They won the election, rightly or wrongly, in no small part because of their race direction policies. There is an expectation from voters they get delivered.

But although this has been a win, it should not have had to have been the fight it was.

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