The Taming of the Kaye

This morning National's Deputy Leader Nikki Kaye fronted up to Jack Tame on Q&A to talk about National's week of lies.

For a detailed timeline, I wrote about it all for the Sunday Star Times, which you can read on this link here (for free!) 

I just wanted to talk about Kaye's interview with Tame this morning, which I highly recommend you watch by visiting TVNZ's on-demand site here. 

First up, kudos to Kaye for even showing up. At the top of the interview Tame said they'd asked Hamish Walker, Michelle Boag, and Michael Woodhouse to appear. All said no. They'd also asked National leader Todd Muller to appear. He too said no, which follows a bizarre trend where Muller's media strategy seems to be to do as little media as possible (maybe a sensible plan given this).

The two spent a bit of time going over the timeline of events, which Kaye said she understood was the media's prerogative, to go over the "forensic timeline". 

Kind of her.

One interesting little moment occurred in this part. Kaye was explaining that Woodhouse had told Todd Muller about his reception of Boag's emails on the Tuesday night. Tame replayed this back to her saying that Woodhouse told "Todd and you about this on...", when Kaye cut him off to say that no, Woodhouse told Muller, and Muller had told Kaye. 

I'm not sure why you'd feel the need to highlight that fact, it seems so trivial. My only guess is she's trying to distance herself from the whole issue, instead of fronting up as a team.

Kaye also went on to say that when Muller was asked if Boag was a source of Woodhouse and had said no, that this was accurate. She said that the team then saw the 6pm news, and that the perception of how the media ran the story made it look wrong. This is what caused them to issue the corrective statement on Friday morning.

Couple of things.

That. Is. Some. Bullshit.

Basically that's a fancy dressed up way of saying "fake news!" It's also her saying it was the media's fault for asking a simple yes or no question that Todd said "no" to when he should have said "yes". And thirdly *that* was the reason you issued a statement from Woodhouse saying he'd had Boag emails? Not because it was the right thing to do? But because of a perception issue? National...you so dirty.

Tame then asked Kaye how, after all this blatant bullshittery and hypocrisy can people trust National on these issues. Kaye's response? 

"We have an incredible track record of delivering on infrastructure".

Which I mean isn't actually a reason to trust someone. It certainly wasn't asked about. And also it isn't actually true. New Zealand has a big ol' infrastructure problem due to successive governments neglecting it.

Another reason to trust National was, she said:

"We’ve got a great track record of holding the Government to account on these issues of COVID."

Which again isn't a reason to trust someone. And again National also has a track record of leaking private patient's data, of fabricating homeless people breaking into quarantine and then ridiculing the Government for looking into it, and for then being pretty shady with the truth about the leaking of private patient data. So, ummm...not sure if you have given us any good reasons to trust you there Nikki.

There were some other interesting tidbits in the interview. Kaye at one stage fell back on the fact that Hamish Walker is a man with a young family and now he's lost his job as an MP. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Walker? Is he the innocent victim in all this? I mean sure, you can run with that line. If the very next breath didn't involve you attacking the Prime Minister for not sacking David Clark sooner. Does he not also have a family?

Just own your bullshit National.

Finally, after all of Tame's criticism Kaye had this robust defence to offer:

I do not accept that people have not taken responsibility in a timely way.

Which is cool and all. But that wasn't any of the myriad criticisms leveled at you.