Hooton on Cullen on Key

Matthew Hooton writes on how Labour has tried to portray John Key over the years.

When Key first became nationally recognised in 2005, Michael Cullen’s tactic was to kiss him to death, praising him for his integrity, life story and moderation.

But when Key proved he could better Cullen in any TV debate, the finance minister’s veneer faded. Key became “adolescent”, “silly” and “hysterical”. By October last year, Cullen was labelling him a “working-class scab”.

Then Matthew quotes from last weekend when Key got criticised over the fact that even though his family was poor, he had “middle class aspirations”. Good God how dare someone has aspirations.

As the Star-Times revealed last week, Key’s critics now deny he was ever truly working class at all. “The Key family, they say, was working class only in income. Its culture and its aspirations were middle or even upper-middle class.”

Hooton then comments on the debate about is there an under-class:

Key’s underclass is not about whether people are in work or between jobs, the size of their benefit, or whether their teenage kids get into trouble from time to time.

Key’s underclass is made up of people who experience material deprivation but, more importantly, cannot even imagine the aspirations that were clearly part of Key’s home – aspirations Labour and its cronies apparently so deride.

It did the prime minister no credit this week that she so quickly became our first official underclass denier. She also offered the flawed view that, if there is an underclass, it is all the fault of the “failed policies of the past”.

Every New Zealander knows there is an underclass, if only because we know we too often avert our eyes.

If we’re not being partisan, we also know the causes are complex and probably global.

An underclass exists in almost every developed country, from socialist France with its massive youth unemployment to the bastion of capitalism, the United States.

It is silly to say it is all the fault of welfare changes 16 years ago or too much mollycoddling by Labour. Just as silly is to say Working for Families handouts to the middle class, or tax cuts alone, are the answer.