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Mike Hosking: Simon Bridges needs to be more like Scott Morrison

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 6 Nov 2019, 3:25PM
Simon Bridges has been emulating Scott Morrison in recent weeks. (Photo / Supplied)

Mike Hosking: Simon Bridges needs to be more like Scott Morrison

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 6 Nov 2019, 3:25PM

If you follow such matters, there is a solid piece of reading to be had from across the ditch on Scott Morrison.

It talks of whether he is what they call an authoritarian populist. It’s a phrase sometimes associated with the right or conservatives. Trump has been labelled it, but lately it is taking on a more mainstream bent, hence Morrison’s success.

I only raise this because Simon Bridges either read the same piece or has been talking to Morrison directly.

Simon is a bit front and centre these days. He told the fun police to back off this week and let ordinary every day New Zealanders get on with the fireworks.

He’s put bludgers on notice after the extra ordinary jobseeker figures revealed yet another record of those without work and yet seemingly a country full of jobs.

He’s warned state house tenants it’s not a house for life and questions are going to be asked. He’s suggesting the spike in electricity hardship payments is a direct result of the cost of living rising under this government. He’s going after the gangs and stripping their dole and their Harleys.

Basically, he’s out of the blocks of late with what you’d call a lot of authoritarian type thinking much of which I think is probably going to prove fairly popular.

The Morrison link must not be forgotten, you can learn a lot from success if you study it, and time should not diminish our memories on what Morrison achieve. He won an unwinnable election and he did it through hard work - hard work in the suburbs and hard work with what he called the quiet Australians.

Not the noise makers, the headline grabbers, the pressure groups, the woke and the active. But mum and dad and the kids in suburbia getting on with their lives jobs and community.

Just last week he gave a blistering speech to the mining industry talking about out lawing protests from groups who target legitimate businesses. That would be your Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion crowd, people who try and disrupt legitimate activity by causing economic damage.

How he does that of course, is an interesting question, but the message is strong and it has wide appeal, and it’s awfully similar to what Bridges is currently preaching.

What I think he’s worked out, apart from needing to get his name about the place a bit more, especially now that Christopher Luxon has officially arrived, is it’s one thing to bag the government but it’s a mile more effective if you offer an alternative.

What policies will be tipped up, what ideas will be changed or cancelled and what exactly they’ll be changed to, and it’s all based on the simple premise that Morrison used so effectively - New Zealand like Australia is a can do sort of place, and all most of us want is a chance.

When you get a government encouraging and rewarding lack of will and laziness, a government that doesn’t ask as many questions around jobs and housing, resentment grows.

Bridges has worked that out and it will serve him well.

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