David Clark stepped down as Health Minister after making the Prime Minister’s position heading into an election untenable, according to political commentator Tim Watkin.
Clark had been under pressure since the start of the government's response to Covid-19 some months ago. He had previously been demoted after driving his family 20km to a beach to go for a walk in the first weekend of level-4 lockdown. He also moved house during level-3 lockdown, insisting he ever breached any rules.
Photo: RNZ / Dom Thomas
More recently, he was vilified for appearing to let Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, take all responsibility for lax containment procedures at New Zealand’s border, which resulted in several Covid-19 positive people leaving self-isolation for a period on compassionate grounds.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern accepted his resignation today, saying Clark had accepted his presence was creating an unhelpful distraction for the Government.
RNZ Podcasts boss Tim Watkin told Jesse Mulligan that Clark had failed to show the type of political astuteness expected from a senior minister and had left Ardern vulnerable in the run-up to the General Election in September.
The timing of the move is intriguing but the decision had not been unexpected, Watkin says.
“It was a matter of when not if, but curious that it is now.
“As recently as a week ago Jacinda Ardern was asked if Clark would make it through to the election and she said he would. So, I don’t know if anything has changed specifically in the last week or it was just generally they thought things had settled down enough for them to pull the switch.”
Watkin says Clark’s handling of an interview about the border botch-up may have been the last straw, as he was widely perceived to have put Bloomfield solely in the firing line over the matter following footage released by Newshub.
“Fascinating that more than anything a great bit of camera work by a Newshub operator was the guts of that story,” Watkin says.
“It was the fact that a slow pan across to a very crumpled-looking Ashley Bloomfield was the story. You could make an argument that Clark was only really repeating what others had said and what Bloomfield had said himself, that he’s taking responsibility of operational matters, which officials do take responsibility for.
“The problem was no one made that argument. Everyone was seeing Clark as the villain in that picture. It doesn’t take much of a political mind to see that Ashley Bloomfield is sanctified right now and to not actually say ‘yeah, we are all responsible for this issue, Ashley Bloomfield has been doing a marvellous job’ shows, I guess, something that has popped up a bit with Clark, that he has not read the politics of situations very well.”
Clark’s apparent inability to publicly signal he was stepping up to his leadership role as the nation faced an unprecedented health emergency set the stage of scrutiny and criticism of his position as Minister, Watkin says.
“The underlying thing that always surprised me and underlines a lot of people’s opinions of him is that at the start of lockdown when the country and the world was going into the biggest health crisis of people’s life times, he went to Dunedin. He went home. That was an odd choice and I think that has undermined his position as well.
“Surely, that is the time you stay in Wellington as a minister. If you see yourself as a leader in this space you insist that you stay and are seen to be a leader, instead of going home and having a walk with the family. That’s very bad politics.”
The net result of all those missteps was an increasing exposure of the government’s soft underbelly, something the Opposition was all too happy to give a kick at every opportunity.
“He’s just someone who doesn’t reflect well on the Prime Minister and we’re about to see an election starting and everything has to reflect well on the Prime Minister when you’re going into an election campaign. So, if she looks indecisive, or weak, sticking up for someone who’s the butt of a political joke that’s an untenable position for her to run a campaign on.”
Watkin says it’s a bitter-sweet development for the opposition - they have a ministerial scalp, but now lack of a political punching bag going forward.
“A scalp goes for a couple of news cycles and then people move on, but if you keep getting punched that becomes a liability.”
There has been much speculation that Dr Ayesha Verrall, a top epidemiologist who consulted on the Government's Covid-19 response may become Health Minister long-term after being ranked 18th on the Labour Party's list for the General Election.
Verrall’s expertise on contact tracing saw her called in to perform an audit of the health sector's ability to locate people who may have been exposed to Covid-19 during Level 4 lockdown.
But Watkin says her credentials don’t necessarily make her an ideal candidate as health minister.
“Yeah, she’s had a profile briefly but just because she is an expert and useful for these times doesn’t mean she’s the necessarily the right person to manage one of the biggest budgets and one of the biggest ministries of government. They will be looking for a senior political leader for that role.”
Clark's temporary replacement, Chris Hipkins, who is currently Education Minister and Leader of the House, offers National the opportunity to again highlight Labour’s perceived lack of seasoned political heavy-weights.
“It’s not a new observation and it’s hard to argue with it terribly much. There were limited options within Labour in terms of having people who have the ability,” Watkins says.
