Opposition Labour and Green parties missing in action on Queenstown issues
Labour's Environment Spokesperson has mystery “conflict of interest” - Crux declines 15 minutes with National's South Island Minister
Analysis
The refusal of the current National coalition government to get involved or take a position on key Southern Lakes issues continues to be puzzling and problematic – but where’s the Opposition Labour and Green parties in all of this?
Crux approached Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking a few weeks ago for her take on the current sewage crisis. We assumed it would be slam dunk in terms of an Opposition party being able to hold the Government and local council to account.
Instead, we got a brief reply from Rachel Brooking’s office saying that she could not comment due to a “conflict of interest.”
Labour’s Environment Spokesperson Rachel Brooking.
This raised a number of red flags in terms of what we thought was a straightforward request. How could a major NZ political party have an Environment Spokesperson who could not comment on a major environmental story, in the country’s number 1 tourism hot spot?
We pushed back, asking what the nature of this conflict was.
No reply.
We then went to various Labour sources at the Beehive with the same question.
No answers.
There was though a phone call from a senior Labour communications person. She indicated that Opposition Leader Chris Hipkins was planning to travel to Queenstown in the future and that he would be interested in talking about the issue. After that there’s been no follow up, apart from a statement today (June 5) from Labour that they had not seen sufficient coverage on other (non-Crux) media to warrant following up on our coverage.
So, what’s this all about? Is our taxpayer funded parliamentary opposition machinery incapable of statements or action unless we are in the thick of a general election?