Simon’s 14 points

The valedictory by Simon Bridges’ last night was one of the most substantive I’ve been to. The core of it was 14 pieces of advice for his 14 years in Parliament. I’m summarising them below, as they are so good:

1. New MPs: don’t breathe through your nose
2. New MPs: don’t let anything ruin your sleep
3. To more senior MPs, don’t be quite so poll and focus group driven – “Polls and focus groups don’t, or at least shouldn’t, tell you what to do. They should only ever be an aid, helping you to decide how to get to where you think is right.”
4. Have less small-target, short-term political tactics and more large long-term strategies
5. Independent thought and differences of opinion are actually good
6. This point about independent thinking also applies to the press. If every one of you has the same basic position on a complex matter, you are probably all engaged in group thinking, quite probably wrong.
7. The most important job of the media is to hold the powerful to account, and let me give you a clue: it’s the Government that has the power
8. Experts don’t know everything. Nothing in politics and government comes down to the science says this: there are always wider social, economic, and normative implications as well, which we have a duty to have an opinion and a side on.
9. To MPs on select committees: spend less time arguing where the comma goes in a report no one will read, please, and more time debating from your principles and values for your electorates and communities.
10. MPs in Parliament should be bold and without fear or favour as Clark, Cullen, Hide, Peters and Mallard have been. We over-sanitise this place at our and, more importantly, society’s peril.
11. Parliamentary reform to strengthen it against the executive is important. Select committees should not be rubber stamps for Government. The Speaker should be elected by secret ballot.
12. National is and must be a very broad church of urban, provincial and rural and of liberal, centrist, and conservative. We must be scrupulous to allow all these views through without too much control, let alone censorship, and seek to keep the balance, the peace, among all those values and interests without letting one dominate the other.
13. They say politics is Hollywood for ugly people but it’s far from all glamour and glitz, however, and I do think politics is getting harder.
14. This job done well is tough and not actually that well-remunerated for what it entails. So on MPs’ pay, let’s all remember that we need the highest quality people here—not just the very wealthy, for whom money doesn’t matter

Simon is a big loss to Parliament.