Petulence and Arrogance no replacement for Responsible and Coherent Response

Simon Bridges captured on Campbell Live on Monday night.

Last night voters in New Zealand were given a demonstration of how to not respond to an interview if you want to convince the listener-viewer of the strength of your position or argument when the young and arrogant member of Parliament for Tauranga, Simon Bridges, appeared on Campbell Live (TV3).

Mr Bridges is the Minister responsible for Employment and, in this case, Energy & Resources. The latter ministry being the one that has granted permission for Anadarko (the Oil exploration company involved with the disasterous oil spill off the Mississippi coast ) to begin exploration and possible deep water drilling in the Pegasus trench off Kaikoura.

Legitimate questions have been raised by Kaikoura locals, by venvironmental groups, by Greenpeace and the opposition political parties. Campbell Live had canvassed the concerns in an earlier programme which Bridges had been unavailable for. On Monday night, after being challenged to appear by TV3 Programme Managers,  Bridges appeared, pumped and powered, to defend his decision to allow Anadarko to begin exploration in the Pegasus Trench.  The performance was a classic demonstration of "When in an indefensible position attack, play the interviewer and, when all else fails, haruange and shout loudly and faster while claiming the fall back position of bias and prejudice against you".

New Zealand learnt very little of substance from Bridges as he resorted to rhetoric reminiscient of Muldoon and the American Joe McCarthy at their most pugnacious and vindictive.  It was, however, obvious that Bridges was not aware of the risks involved with drilling at the depths of the Pegasus Trench, was ignorant of the resources needed to be available to cope with a similar  disaster to that in the Gulf of Texas and the presumed economic return  exploitation of an oil field would give to both NZ or the Kaikoura area. (the financial returns are geared to advantage the foreign corporates rather than New Zealand whose reserves would be being exploited).

Simon Bridges gave credibility to this Billboard slogan when he appeared on Campbell Live.

 Bellman Syndrome alive and well in Key Cabinet.
One was left to conclude that, like Lewis Carrol's Bellman in The Hunting of the Snark, the National-ACT government of John Key is consumed with the arrogant belief that if one shouts loudly and often enough (three times according to the Bellman) that the indefensible becomes a truth and that  he and it have the right to dictate and denigrate opposition or fair criticism of their policies and individual behaviour and to hell with democracy and to hell with the consequences.