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John MacDonald: National needs more than road signs to get on track

Author
John MacDonald,
Publish Date
Wed, 31 May 2023, 1:07PM
 Photo / Mark Mitchell
Photo / Mark Mitchell

John MacDonald: National needs more than road signs to get on track

Author
John MacDonald,
Publish Date
Wed, 31 May 2023, 1:07PM

Did you hear National Party leader Christopher Luxon talking to Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB this morning?

I saw a message someone sent Mike after the interview, begging him to make Luxon look good! When you start seeing that sort of thing, you know you’re looking at a party leader on the ropes.

Or is it the whole National Party on the ropes?

In the past few days, we’ve had two examples of National having no idea what it stands for. First-up, we had the party flip-flopping on its housing intensification agreement with Labour. Which came about after Christopher Luxon started mouthing off about it at that public meeting last week.

Granted, it is something Gerry Brownlee hinted at a few weeks back on Politics Friday. And really, if National thinks that it doesn't want a bar of the deal Judith Collins and Nicola Willis cooked up with Labour, then good on it.

But don’t announce it in a way that looks like the leader’s making it up on-the-fly during question and answer time in front of a few dozen people at a public meeting.

It just looks like you’re flailing and don’t really know which direction to go in.

Then, speaking of direction - or lack of - we have the shambles National’s created over Waka Kotahi’s plan to have bi-lingual road signs in both English and Te Reo Maori.

As you'll know, Waka Kotahi has started consulting people on having more signs in both languages. We’ve already got the road signs that tell us we’re approaching schools in both languages - you know the ones, which say kura and school.

Now, it’s come up with 94 other signs that it wants to make bi-lingual. They include signs for bus stops, shared zones, destinations such as city centres. Those sorts of things. And Waka Kpotahi says it wants to do it to support the revitalisation of the Maori language.

So straight away, National’s Transport spokesperson Simeon Brown gets a rush of blood to the head and shoots his mouth off saying National does not support bi-lingual road signs. Here’s a quote: “Signs need to be clear. We all speak English, and they should be in English. Place names are okay, but when it comes to important signs saying things like 'Expressway', they should be in English, as it's going to be confusing if you add more words."

Then we had National’s Chris Bishop saying, actually, we support them in principle. And then a reporter went around some of National’s Maori MPs and asked them what thought about it, and they give bi-lingual road signs the thumbs up.

Talk about all over the shop. Which brings us to the latest instalment in this train wreck, which was Christopher Luxon on the radio this morning claiming that all the MPs were pretty much saying the same thing.

Which, again, he was just making up on the spot because they clearly weren’t all saying the same thing at all. And that’s why that person I mentioned earlier, messaged Mike begging him to try and make Luxon look good.

Now don’t care whether road signs are bi-lingual or not. If Waka Kotahi wants to do it - go for it, because it won’t cause me any confusion.

But, like Christopher Luxon, I wouldn’t put it ahead of fixing potholes and doing other maintenance on our roads. But Waka Kotahi isn’t doing that, because the bi-lingual signs will be rolled out as signs need to be replaced. So Simeon Brown wouldn’t be finding himself dazed and confused straight away - it would just happen when a sign needed replacing.

So I think we can agree, National has made a complete mess of this.

Surely, if it knew where it stood, then it would’ve had the discipline to be clear from the start. “We don’t oppose it and, as long as it doesn’t mean less money being spent fixing potholes, we’re happy for it to proceed.”

But it didn’t say that. It had different people saying completely different things - and its leader on the radio this morning desperately claiming that they were all pretty much saying the same thing. A shambles.

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