Originally Posted by
Blue Skies
Repeated comments I've been hearing around Christmas social gathering are Luxon panicked under time pressure in coalition negotiations & caved in to way too many demands from the minor parties.
Winston esp played him like a fiddle, ran rings around him in negotiations.
Luxon should have drawn a line in the sand at repealing Smokefree 2025, threatened Winston he would walk away from negotiations & force another election rather than agree to NZF demands to repeal it.
Shane Reti was asked to swallow a dead rat & may even be struck off for this as repealing Smokefree2025 will harm so many people, breaking the hipocratic oath.
He's doing his best to put as much distance between himself as Minister of Health and repealing it as he possible can, to save his own reputation & in private apologising for this appalling concession to Winston & NZF.
No matter what they do, cancelling Smokefree 2025 with the deliberate resulting thousands of avoidable deaths & huge future costs to the health system that will cause, will become Chris Luxon & Shane Reti as Minister of Health, future legacy, its so shocking & disgraceful that's what they will be remembered for.
Other comments were that due to so many reckless & irresponsible concessions to NZF & ACT they can't possibly fund them and tax cuts, hence Willis & Luxon now trying to shift responsibility & paint the economy in a far bleaker state than they supposedly realised.
And repealing so much legislation so quickly is going to leave massive holes which they will struggle to fill, esp while slashing the Public Service & contractors, leading to inevitable failure of this govt.
New govt's don't usually slash & burn because you can't just leave a vacuum & replacing legislation takes time.
And that's if Winston doesn't sabotage it first.
Hense Hipkins and Robertson deciding to stay around to rebuild Labour & pick up the pieces in 3 years time.