Jordan on National frontbench

In a post where Jordan explains it is a choice between “high handed dishonest Nats” and “the Labour government they have today” (got to love the epitaphs) Jordan says:

But if you look at the core of the National Front Bench (English, Ryall, Brownlee, Collins, Williamson, Lockwood Smith) you are looking at the past. Those are the people who implemented the policies people threw out in 1999, after trying to throw them out in 1996 as well.

First of all Jordan is straight out wrong.  Judith Collins only became an MP in 2002 and Gerry Brownlee did not have an Executive role between 1996 and 1999.  And Lockwood is not even on the front bench.  There are more errors than non errors in his assertion.

Also note that Jordan to try and make a point has randomly selected some front benchers.  He skips over three others who all came into Parliament in 1999 or 2002.

Not that I think there is anything wrong with those who were in Government in the 1990s.  For all Jordan goes on about how their policies were rejected, Labour have changed relatively few of them, and I doubt the average NZer is as obsessed with the 90s as Labour activists are.

The irony in all this is if you take the top eight in each party, well the ones most associated with the past are Labour. All but two of them entered Parliament in or before 1984 and their average age is just over 58.  Contrast with National whose average year of entry to Parliament is 1996 and  average age is just under 44.