With Simon Bridges currently being overseas it has been left to Paula Bennett to look after publicity and handle press interviews.
And yesterday she had an interesting day. She waded into the great climate change education is brain washing our children debate and suggested that National in Government might withdraw the resource.
Why you may ask? Well the reasoning was somewhat garbled.
She criticised the Government for emphasising that use of the resource was voluntary even though the material was clearly labelled as a resource and anyone who understands education will be aware that this is a nice to have and not part of the core curriculum.
She then said this:
“It’s ridiculous. There’s some absolute parts of it, and that’s one of them,” said Bennett. “It’s just feeding into the hype and hysteria without the research behind it. We all know we’ve got some of the best produce in the world – why on Earth wouldn’t we be encouraging our children to have a balanced diet, which is what they’re being taught in other aspects of the curriculum? … Don’t get me going on that one.”
It appears that comprehension is not one of Paula’s strengths. Because the material says:
When you buy local food or products it means that your food hasn’t had to travel so far (in a vehicle which uses fossil fuels). You are also helping our economy.
It also emphasises eating less meat, not giving up meat altogether.
Paula then went from casting doubt about a phenomenon (climate change) that is, or should be, a given, to proposing a theory about the cause of something that she had no evidence whatsoever to support.
It appears that National’s Auckland Regional Office was recently burgled. A window was forced and three laptops taken.
Bennett went into hyperbolic overdrive on the issue. From Dan Satherley at Newshub:
The National Party headquarters in Auckland was broken into overnight, MP Paula Bennett said on Monday.
She told Magic Talk three laptop computers were taken from the offices in Epsom.
“It looks like they’ve jimmied a window and come in through there which of course… triggered alarms. They’ve grabbed laptops and run.”
She said as the headquarters is “down underneath – it’s quite an unusual place”, she suspects the theft was targeted.
“If it was kind of an opportunist – you wouldn’t expect it to be kind of opportunist, would you?”
Bennett said they want to make sure they’ve got all the facts right before saying more.
She wasn’t sure if there are security cameras.
“We’re still working our way through details with police… You have to kind of sit there and go, ‘National Party headquarters, three laptops gone – it does really trigger some suspicion, that’s for sure.”
A National Party spokesperson said yesterday afternoon that the party would not be making any further comment until the matter had been investigated fully. Paul Goldsmith can’t have got the memo because he was on Checkpoint last night and claimed there was a “distinct possibility” that the theft was made by someone trying to gain National’s election campaign material.
Then this morning the conspiracy theories were blown out of the water. Glenda from the Accountancy firm next door confirmed that they had also recently been on the receiving end of a burglary where several laptops were also stolen and other items such as wine were left behind.
From Radio New Zealand:
But a woman who works for Brunton New Zealand isn’t convinced and told the party so.
“I did tell them, I told the guy at the National office, I said ‘well we had the same thing happen to us a few months ago’,” she said.
She was surprised when she heard speculation about it being politically motivated.
“Yea, I just wanted them to know I don’t think it could be that because we had the same thing happen to us.
“And a lot of businesses it’s happening with, that area down there, it’s probably quite easy to break into too with those windows,” she said.
There is some speculation that the media knew before the police knew about the burglary. If so this whole episode speaks volumes about National’s cynical approach to politics.
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