Sorry for Christopher Luxon
Plus: Remember Melissa Lee, Claire Curran and Sam Uffindell?
The Shame of Mt Albert MP Melissa Lee
In 2020, Jami-Lee Ross1, National MP turned whistleblower, spoke of the Hunger Games approach Melissa Lee and his other National Party colleagues took towards “taking down” then Labour Minister Claire Curran.
He confirmed very clearly in a now regretful account -
“We wanted to break her.”
“I was in the morning procedures meetings as Melissa Lee would share what her latest hit on Clare was going to be...
National wanted to break her.
And we did….[and] at the time all we felt was excitement and success.”
Speaking to Spin-Off’s Donna Chisolm in 2018, Curran spoke of the trauma she experienced at the hands of her political opponents:
“People could see that mistakes were made but they were mistakes and I paid an incredibly high price.
I was set upon by what felt like a pack of dogs to tear me to shreds.”
Curran identifies National, Cameron Slater and Erica Stanford supporter Matthew Hooton in that “pack of dogs”.
Remembering one particularly difficult Question Time, Curran said:
“I’m not Shane Jones. I didn’t have a pat answer. I don’t do bluster and I was trying to answer honestly and I couldn’t come up with the words and my mind went blank. It was the worst nightmare in front of everyone.”
And that is the problem with politics - a lot of it is performative. Humanity is lost. We frequently badger well intentioned mistakes, reward narcissism, or say ‘this is how it should be’, without setting foot in the arena ourselves.
When I wrote about Sam Uffindell plotting to steal Labour’s retirement villages policy last month, it wasn’t so much the policy emulation that struck me.
It was how Uffindell spoke of the issues.
According to him, Leary was “cunning” for caring about old people and their families, even though she has championed this cause for many years.
According to Uffindell, it was critical National acted soon to capture the elderly vote, or ‘they will say Labour cared and we didn’t.’
At no point did the Tauranga MP express any concern for the people or their plight. At no point did he express empathy or responsibility.
It’s just a game for these types of politicians.
And I emphasise that I thoroughly reject any assertion that ‘all politicians or all parties are the same’. That’s just a line that benefits the worst of them. Having observed politics over the last 18 months, I see many ones who care.
Incidentally, Melissa Lee remains unrepentant about her actions. Ditto her remaining colleagues. The incompetent Lee also killed off our media industry in substantive ways.
During Curran’s tenure, Lee spread disinformation on Curia Market Research David Farrar’s blog, that Labour’s “Public Interest Journalism Fund” was a “bribe” and promised to end it. She claimed: “We need to sort out our media sector – now.” and promised to fix things if National were elected.
And indeed, under Lee, our media landscape capitulated rapidly, with Newshub’s demise, increasing corporatisation and job cuts.
The remaining content focuses on poll analysis, Christopher Luxon’s hubris, and Labour’s hard job ahead.
