Remember this guy?
He was the perfect National Party leader. When he was young he grew up for a while in a state house. He was superficially liberal and managed to get on the right side of some social issues. He was goofy and did some funny stuff. He was the sort of guy most kiwis would like to have a beer with. He had cut through with swinging voters.
As leader he managed to temper and divert the morally conservative tenndancy of the National Party and seduced them with power. Who cares if your world view is not being put into place as long as you are in power.
He sold off public assets and smashed our health and education institutions into the ground but slowly enough so that with a smile and a wave he could deny wanting to do anything evil.
He was the opposite to Ruth Richardson. Instead of shock and awe we had smile and wave. Instead of revolution we had the frog in a boiling pot gradual change so that only the most observant of us realised that the country was being wrecked.
And it took a decade for most of us to realise that under his rule our environment was being wrecked, poverty was soaring and our climate change response had been completely undermined.
Key has been making a bit of a publicity comeback recently. It is strange but a leadership vacuum causes that. Simon Bridges must be hating it.
Over the past week he has crashed into National’s leadership contest by publicly endorsing Chris Luxon. If Key has his way the leadership putsch will have to wait until after the election,
And his work as a director for Air New Zealand and ANZ Bank has suggested that his commitment to sustainability as well as ordinary battlers’ way of life may have been superficial.
His commitment to the ordinary bloke is exemplified by what he recenntly said to a Remuera Real Estate company. From Andrea Fox at the Herald:
Key believed companies would, after lockdown, operate with significantly fewer people – another looming issue for commercial landlords.
“Everyone is going to kick out 20 per cent of their people . . . even if the company is doing well . . . their worst performers. Never waste a crisis.
“I don’t want to be doom and gloom but property might take longer [to recover] – it just has to go lower over time.”
Get that? A big fuck you to one in five employees. But with a bit of care the property market may recover. Never waste a crisis. And lets sacrifice everything so that the landed gentry can recover their privilege over time.
It is funny but among the left when we talk about never wasting a crisis we are referring to a chance to do something meaningful about climate change, creating jobs for people building sustainable infrastructure. Or we are talking about a universal basic income, so that poverty can be eradicated.
Only someone with really stuffed up class ideals would think that you should not waste a crisis by sacking one in five people with jobs.
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