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Tim Dower: Can National repair the damage before September?

Author
Tim Dower,
Publish Date
Wed, 8 Jul 2020, 10:51AM
National Party leader Todd Muller, pictured with Amy Adams, left, and Nikki Kaye last month. Photo / Mark Tantrum

Tim Dower: Can National repair the damage before September?

Author
Tim Dower,
Publish Date
Wed, 8 Jul 2020, 10:51AM

Ten weeks is a long time in politics and by September 19th we may well have forgotten about this covid privacy scandal.

But is ten weeks long enough for the National Party to repair the damage?

Bad enough that Hamish Walker sent this information to the media, we can only read that he was trying to fix things up after what he said a week ago.

Maybe...just maybe...you can put that down to inexperience.

Or maybe I'm being too charitable.

In the Herald today, Audrey Young isn't so gentle.

She calls his mea culpa 'an apology for an apology', saying it smacks of self-righteous post fact justification, and downright deception.

The gall of it.

The so-called leak itself, the actual disclosing of privileged confidential information to a person who shouldn't have it, now that's down to Michelle Boag.

To say she should know better would be the understatement of the year, I really couldn't believe it when I first heard that last night.

So, where to from here?

National's leader has said he'd have sacked David Clark for his covid stuff-ups and he has in effect sacked Hamish Walker, by taking away his portfolios.

Should he go further, should Walker even be standing again in that plumb Clutha seat. I guess that's for the local Party Committee.

And what of Michelle Boag?

Someone with such a glittering reputation...until this.

Disappointed is a word we hear so often these days it's really lost all meaning.

Gutted and appalled are closer to what I feel.

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