Charlotte Rietveld is counting down to #3 and had plans for transformational change onfarm.
In an attempt to match the Green Party’s carbon miles, The Boss and The Chief Inspector have been jet-setting overseas for the past month. A highly anticipated trip, and I’m sure they were looking forward to it too. I’d been making indelible ink notes on the While He’s Away list for weeks beforehand. Grand, lofty plans of transformational change. Finally my chance had come to arise from the back benches and make my mark.
All was going so very swimmingly until a water leak sprung, then the neighbour’s rams jumped the fence just as a snow storm arrived and lingered. Lofty aspirations began to falter, my well-voiced bravado dropped decibels daily as transformational change was quickly reduced to the bare basics of farming 101.
While winter onfarm is a far cry from the shiny steps of the Beehive, I can’t help but draw comparisons between my month of action to ’Cinders’ Year of Delivery. My progress was rather hindered by an eight-month gestated person on my front, whereas ’Cinders’ progress appears to be hampered by a lack of people at her heel.
A most unremarkable cabinet reshuffle only proved to highlight the snail-paced progress and pointless policies of pre-election bastions such as Kiwibuild, first-year fees free, poverty reduction, tax reform and budget responsibility rules. Add to this the Provincial Growth Fund and Zero Carbon Bill both appearing to lack robust ministerial insight and the cracks are beginning to show.
As a dyed-in-the-wool Corriedale fan, I am used to slow progress and lacklustre results, but get halfway through a governmental term promising transformational change and I think it is fair to begin judgement.
While there is little doubt that ’Cinders is an extremely talented leader who most certainly knows how to court the world’s media’, Down Under the drums of resistance are beginning to sound. The most intriguing aspect is that dissatisfaction is not only coming from traditional quarters.
Obviously, dissent is mounting in the rural world, but similar murmurs can be heard from the education sector, Coasters feeling the brunt of anti-mining legislation, the social service hoping for greater movement on poverty reduction and Maori tiring of Oranga Tamariki’s tactics. The fact is, no-one likes being told exactly what to do and yet this Government is starting to show its socialist stripes by giving us all increased instruction at lower likely return.
And so it is that I can’t help but delight in the unofficial leadership coup emerging on the right; cometh the hour, cometh the Crusher. Who knows whether she’ll be enough to topple the Government but we sure would get some entertainment.
With wellbeing and climate change issues joining the untouchable, holier-than-thou ranks that health and safety nestled into several years ago, Crusher is precisely the antidote to the sickly sweet kindness rhetoric. Having already married and procreated at national average levels, she’s unlikely to be quite the same global media darling but that’s irrelevant when you can murmur liquid arsenic like Crusher can. Add invaluable assets such as the nation’s most enigmatic eyebrows and a smirk that could wither even Winston and it is game on.
On the home front, with #3 due any day it’s game over for yours truly. All too pleased to welcome The Boss home, I’m happily back to doffing my cap and following in carefully laid footsteps.
Clearly farming is a slow game generally requiring conservative decision-making and hard-nosed judgement. Neither are trendy, nor headline grabbing. They’re simply prudent means of remaining profitable when the ship is already pointing in the right direction. While transformational change most certainly still has its place, those who seek it should be careful what they wish for.
Roll on 2020.
