The PM refused to sack her Minister of Health because to do that would be an admission that David Clark was not performing his job to a level of competency expected for a Minister of the Crown.
In the same conversation where Jacinda Ardern called people who disregard COVID-19 recommendations idiots, she said of David Clark “under normal conditions I would sack the Minister of Health. What he did was wrong, and there are no excuses.” Flouting the “stay home” and “exercise locally” recommendations by the minister of the office that produced them smacks of stupidity, so why didn’t she sack him?
Ardern said in her COVID-19 briefing of 7th April it would be worse for the country to sack Clark than it would be to retain him. The Minister of Health role requires “a good understanding of workforce issues… an intimate knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of our health system which we have been working so hard to rebuild, and, of course it requires knowledge of the nature of this global pandemic and what it means here in New Zealand.”
Is this simply a case of better the idiot you know than the one you don’t?
David Clark agreed with the PM, calling himself an idiot.
“The message was it has to be local, clearly I wasn’t thinking straight. I was focused on making sure we were keeping in our bubble, but I made an error of judgement,‘ he said.”
What is the value of Clark’s knowledge of our workforce and health system if he can’t think straight and lacks judgement over the issue of staying home?
Others are critical of Clark’s performance because, despite his portfolio being front and centre in the COVID-19 crisis, Clark has been missing in action.
“Trish Sherson, PR expert and former ACT Party secretary, told The AM Show Dr Clark has been “absolutely hopeless” lately, calling his apology “absolute nonsense” and “absolute dribble”.
“David Clark has been about as useful as a teddy bear in a window through this,” she said, referring to a recent trend of putting teddy bears in windows for passing children to spot.
“Think back to when Tony Ryall was health minister through… swine flu, Ryall fronted every day twice a day… David Clark has been absolutely missing in action, even when he was in Wellington.“
In this Monday, March 30, 2020, photo, a teddy bear hangs upside down in a window of a house in Christchurch, New Zealand. New Zealanders are embracing an international movement in which people are placing teddy bears in their windows during coronavirus lockdowns to brighten the mood and give children a game to play by spotting the bears in their neighborhoods. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
The PM’s lapse in judgement is on the back of a serious error in judgement from the minister of currently the most important portfolio in parliament.
“I think David Clark should absolutely step down. He’s not doing anything anyway,” Sherson added.
Left-leaning commentator Chris Trotter said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield had performed “pretty well”, as had Finance Minister Grant Robertson.
“When you look around for other politicians and senior civil servants, they’re pretty thin on the ground. I would have thought frankly in a time such as this, the Health Minister would have been absolutely front and centre.”
He said Dr Clark needs to “decide what he wants to be – a Cabinet minister, Health Minister or a private citizen”.
Could this be the reason Ardern was reluctant to send Clark packing – she has no one even remotely competent enough to replace him? Despite Clark setting a very low bar, the idiot you know is always better than the idiot you don’t.
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