It must be a red letter day: for once I am in agreement with Patrick Gower as he slays the attack on Maureen Pugh by her own leadership. He describes Christopher Luxon’s handling of the issue as “demeaning” and “all for show”.
National leader Christopher Luxon’s handling of controversial comments made about climate change by one of his MPs is “demeaning”, Newshub’s Patrick Gower believes.
West Coast-Tasman-based National list MP Maureen Pugh on Tuesday walked back the comments, after earlier saying she was awaiting evidence humans had contributed to climate change.
In an interview with AM on Wednesday, Luxon promised Pugh now understood how her comments came across.
Her comments came in the wake of the devastating Cyclone Gabrielle and the disastrous Auckland flooding late last month.
Luxon said climate change was “real and happening” and had an in-person meeting with Pugh after she made the comments.
But Gower, a Newshub journalist and former political editor, said this was “demeaning” towards Pugh.
“It’s all for show,” Gower said of Luxon’s response, appearing on AM’s panel.
“I’m not going to come out on the side of Maureen. Obviously, I don’t agree with what she said… but Maureen’s had views like this for a long time – the National Party knows it.
“Christopher Luxon should let Maureen be Maureen. She’s a good person, fundamentally.
“It’s a free country – she’s allowed to say what she wants.
“I just think there are bigger things to worry about in this country than piling on Maureen Pugh.”
Newshub
Luxon’s solution of remedial reading smacks of Stalinist re-education camps for someone daring to hold their own opinions.
Group think and dogma is the enemy of freedom and Christopher Luxon has shown that he most certainly is no friend of freedom.
How many examples does one need to see that Luxon is unfit for office?
His reluctance to meet protestors at Wellington? His scampering off in the face of people challenging him at a public meeting? His demeaning attack on Maureen Pugh?
Silencing people for thinking differently to you is what the left wing do.
Christopher Luxon is supposed to be the leader of a party founded on the basis of free will, free enterprise and individual choice. Instead he is showing us that he’d be right at home in Stalin’s Russia, or Mao’s China or Kim Jong Un’s North Korea.
The problem that Christopher Luxon has, and which is becoming increasingly apparent to voters, is that he actually has no core beliefs. He runs with the hares and hunts with the hounds and, like Jacinda Ardern before him, he simply mouths platitudes and slogans hoping that’s what people want to hear. He is inauthentic and it shows. He’s as fake as a copy watch from a Hong Kong suitcase vendor.
That inauthenticity is now glaringly obvious, as is his woke virtue signalling. He’s no conservative leader. He’d be more at home in the Labour party than in the National Party.
The longer he keeps on agreeing with Labour the more people will think he’s controlled opposition and a plant.
National is sleep walking their way to another three years in opposition with Luxon leading them.
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