ZB ZB
Live now
Start time
Playing for
End time
Listen live
Listen to NAME OF STATION
Up next
Listen live on
ZB

Andrew Dickens: Where's Bridges on the big stuff?

Author
Andrew Dickens,
Publish Date
Mon, 29 Apr 2019, 11:58AM
Leader of the opposition, Simon Bridges. Photo / NZ Herald.

Andrew Dickens: Where's Bridges on the big stuff?

Author
Andrew Dickens,
Publish Date
Mon, 29 Apr 2019, 11:58AM

It was sobering yesterday to turn on my phone and see a news alert that eight people had died in a car crash on State highway one at Atiamuri in the middle of the North Island. Sobering because I had driven that very stretch of road not days before.

The scene was reportedly horrific, with two doctors by chance first on the scene. One man received 30 minutes of CPR but still died at the scene. One of the cars had crossed the centre line. An investigation has started as to why?

The Taupo Mayor, David Trewavas, told Mike Hosking this morning, “you come across the mighty Waikato, at Atiamuri you come across a pretty new bridge, come up a double passing lane and around an easy left-hand corner, so what can I say?” You can tell his disbelief. After that description, I know exactly where the accident happened and I’m in disbelief. One of the drivers has made a small, catastrophic mistake.

There’s nothing wrong with the road. Except for the obvious design fault. A fault that for all her own virtue signalling, pregnant pedalling pomp, Julie Anne Genter has correctly identified and the sooner work starts on it the better.

This is a nation whose main highway linking North and South is, for the most part, a winding two-lane, sometimes three-lane, road. Unlike most of the world, we drive on the right side of the car and I wasn’t surprised to hear this happened on a left-hand bend.

Genter wants to put median barriers on the black spots. She’ll get $1.4 billion in the budget to do that. The sooner SH1 gets a basic common sense safety update, the sooner we won’t be ruing the loss of eight lives in one second's worth of inattention

And there’s that word. Budget. Just one month to go until the very first well-being Budget in history and there is a lot in play. Today we started a five-day junior doctors' strike. Five days! They want better hours but the only way they’ll get that is with more doctors which won’t come cheap. Add that to the sector-wide industrial action amongst teachers from early childhood to secondary with all of them putting their hands out for a billion or more. Add that to Chris Hipkins revamp of Tomorrow’s Schools estimated today to cost $2 billion. Add that aged care workers and nurses complaints. Add that to Pharmac dissatisfaction of their drug rationing. Add it all to a raft of funding crises

Boy, there’s a lot on this Government’s plate, some of their own ideological making and some they’ve inherited from the tightwads who underinvested before them. So this Budget is a biggie and can anyone else feel a fiscal hole starting to open up or will Grant Robertson’s Budget Responsibility Rules mean that we’re going to carry on with underpaid people and half-arsed infrastructure, which seems to be the New Zealand way. We'll see. Fascinating times

With all this in play, what is the Leader of the Opposition worried about? Slushies for prison guards, of course. Now maybe a million was too much to spend but in the scheme of things, this was a petty piece of political click bait. At the regional conferences, Simon Bridges has been demanding loyalty and his people have been demanding leadership. Slushies ain't cutting it.

Leave the slushies for your Corrections spokesperson Simon (a guy named David Bennett by the way) and get stuck into the big stuff because you’re starting to appear strangely irrelevant.

Take your Radio, Podcasts and Music with you