This post contains sarcasm. Now now lefties and assorted progressive types, John Banks becoming Minister of Regulatory Reform, for Small Business, and Associate Minister for Education and Commerce isn't all bad.
You just need to stretch your thinking muscles a bit and I'm sure you can see the upsides of this dandy new arrangement that involves ACT and National agreeing to implement policy that wasn't in either of their election manifestos. Really, everyone is totally overreacting.
Sure Banks has a long history of homophobia, misogyny, racism and general all purpose bigotry, not to mention being of the Drowning Government in the Bathtub frame of mind, but he's just a man, man. Chillax.
Here's a list of the upsides to help you be as relaxed as our fabled Prime Minister:
- Key will have another multimillionaire called John to drink tea with.
- Adolf won't be the only person regularly using the third person to talk about themselves.
- Everyone will be able to spell transmogrification.
- John may be able to afford to buy another pair of glasses so we don't have to always look at those hipster ones that constantly remind me of Paul Goldsmith.
- Banks will be too busy to put any serious time into re-building ACT, even if he wants to
- He may have to duel with the Ministers for Medium and Large Business for Budget funding.
- Banks will probably be in Auckland less, and when he is he'll be in meetings, lots and lots of meetings. So a significantly reduced chance of bumping into him in Newmarket.
- At least he's not Minister of Corrections.
- Or Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, Maori Affairs, Women's Affairs, or Local Government.
- We'll now get lots of use for our Outrage Faces.
Feel free to add your contributions in comments.
2 comments:
Banks is sure to further increase the number of New Zealanders earning the average Australian income, thus bringing us closer to "catching up with Australia". Core election promise, that one.
Bank may even increase the average Australian income by giving Key an excuse to sell our most easily-exploited state functions to Australian companies at a generous discount.
Honestly, this whole "Minister for Small Business" and "Minister for Regulatory Reform" translates to "I have something that looks snazzy to go on my business card"
He'll have no departments, no policy staff and no real infrastructure to contribute to either portfolio. It's not like they're about to set up a Ministry of Small Business, after all.
OK, I'm being slightly facetious. I'm sure it'll lead to some speaking engagements, and as Minister of Regulatory Reform he will doubtless be responsible for shepherding the Regulatory Reform Act (or whatever it ends up being called) through the House.
But I think he will actually get more policy grunt out of his associate roles. This is why I find the whole thing sadly amusing. Twenty years ago, Banks was Minister of Police. Now, he's Associate Minister of Education. For all ACT's talk about ambition and upward mobility that is a less than compelling career path.
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