"We must be scrupulous to allow all these views through without too much control, let alone censorship and seek to keep the balance, the peace, amongst all those values and interests without letting one dominate the other," Bridges said. He said that while leader, he had been conscious of the need to balance liberal and conservative views. The remarks suggested he believed the party was in danger of a centrist drift.īridges warned that if National believed that "prevailing views in central Wellington and Auckland make up New Zealand" it would "cease to be the strongest, most representative political movement we have". He saved his final points for his own party, National. And by the way if they are good enough they'll more than withstand the pressure," Bridges said. "f the government of the time is giving you your best talking points every single day you come to this place, maybe you've got the balance wrong. National MP Simon Bridges during his last media conference at Parliament. He said the press gallery should hold the powerful to account and that too often it was preoccupied with the National Party and not the government.
Our press gallery can hunt as a pack," he said.īridges had some criticism of his treatment by the media. More viewpoints are tolerated, actually encouraged in their deeper media environments. "I do… despair how narrow the viewpoints are as opposed to in the UK, the United States, and even Australia. He also challenged the media to diversify its coverage. "We overly sanitise this place at our, and more importantly society's, peril," Bridges said. "The jaw jaw, even if sometimes a bit hee-haw hee-haw in here, is better than war war out there – and we have sadly seen a little of that very recently," Bridges said. He said that he reckoned some of these MPs, perhaps even Speaker Trevor Mallard, would be "cancelled" today.īridges said that alongside Parliament's role as legislator, it also had a "primal" role which was to say "what needs to be said", which "lets off society's steam like a pressure valve at a difficult or delicate time". He joked that 14 years ago, Parliament was still home to "bold" MPs like Helen Clark, Michael Cullen, Rodney Hide and Winston Peters. Both bodies had a far greater degree of freedom than in New Zealand where backbench MPs are tightly whipped and are often punished if they do not rigidly toe the party line. He joked that the "two perfect political jobs in the world" were those of a backbench British MP, or a US Senator. And the alternative, as we are seeing in Australia right now, is contests fought just on personality and 'competence' and is truly depressing," Bridges said. "'Big bold battles of ideas' won't hurt us. He said politics had become "small target" at the expense of longer term, more strategic contest.
"Nothing in politics and government comes down to 'the science says this,'" Bridges said. That is an abdication of our responsibility as elected officials, elected to weigh, and as I have said bring our values and principles to bear on the issue at play,
"Politicians' – and journalists' job I might add - isn't to slavishly follow experts.
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