The farce of Ardern hiding the secret section of the coalition agreement

Claire Trevett writes:

When NZ First and Labour signed their coalition agreement, few people expected Winston Peters to be the beacon of transparency and Jacinda Ardern dragging him into the swamp of secrecy.

Yet as she stood beside him during her weekly post-Cabinet press conference yesterday, it looked very much that way.

Ardern was seeking to justify why she would not release a document Peters had said she would release.

When Winston is the more open person, you know you have trouble.

Peters had revealed the existence of a 38-page document soon after signing the agreement with Labour, indicated it contained the flesh of the agreement signed and details of the way the parties would work together.

 He said Ardern would release it soon.

Soon did not come and so an Official Information Act request was put in. Ardern refused to release the document.

Confronted with this, Ardern said the document Peters had put so much store on as setting a strong foundation for the coalition was mere “notes” rather than official information.

I understand media have complained to the Ombudsman on this. Merely calling information “notes” doesn’t mean it isn’t official information.

What Ardern was trying to say was that the coalition agreement was not a full and final settlement – but could be added to. There was, it seemed, a long wish list by NZ First which Labour had not unequivocally said “no” to.

The public might be entitled to presume that what was in the coalition agreement was the cost of NZ First’s support for Labour.

It now seemed that may have been only a down payment – but nobody will know what else might be extracted until it is done.

Watch this space!

Peters did little to try to save Ardern her blushes.

At points it verged on satire.

When Ardern was asked if Peters had been wrong to say it would be released, Ardern said no.

Peters then watched as she sallied down a path of tortuous illogic trying to explain why Peters had been right all along to say that a document would be released when it was not going to be released.

His contribution was to clarify that the document in question had since been whittled down to 33 pages.

Otherwise the best he could come up with was an analogy to the Bible.

“I mean Moses came down from the mountain, he only had 10 commandments, right? But there’s a lot in the Old Testament as well. Get it?”

That maybe so, but the Bible is a public document.

It was like something out of Monty Python’s A Life of Brian. Blessed be the cheesemakers.

We have the Monty Python Government!