Judith Tizard

TV3’s Patrick’s Gower blog on Judith Tizard, Labour and the blogs has attracted a fair bit of attention. Gower states:

Labour and Phil Goff got scared into defusing the Tizard bomb because of two right-wing bloggers.

That means Goff is scared of the blogs.

Yes, you heard me right: Goff’s office (aka the ‘Goffice’) and the Labour Party hierarchy decided their Judith Tizard strategy because of what they read on Kiwiblog and Whaleoil.

That means Labour is scared of the blogs.

I don’t really attribute it as Patrick does, but I do think Labour have handled the whole Tizard issue incompetently. I’ll explain why later on.

Judith herself also seems to credit or blame Whale and me. The Herald on Sunday reported her as saying:

Those reasons … and to “stick it up them”.

Stick it up who? Phil Goff?

“I was actually thinking of David Farrar and Cameron Slater, et al. I wasn’t thinking about my former colleagues,” she says. “I don’t think it’s a particularly worthy thing to say, but I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t.”

I’ll also come back to exactly what I have and have not said about Judith. I’ve checked through all my posts about Judith, and as far as I can tell I’ve never called her nasty names, denigrated her performance etc. Here’s my first post on 16 December 2008 about the Tizard issue for the Mt Albert selection.

But here is the problem, Twyford is already an MP. So what happens if he wins the Mt Albert by-election? Well he would then resign his seat as a List MP, and that would bring in the next person on the Labour list. And who is No 38? It’s Judith Tizard!

Now Helen has won Mt Albert with some big majorities, but a lot of that has been personal. The party vote has been much closer. And if Mt Albert voters works out that voting for Twyford means Tizard returns to Parliament, then the seat could fall to a good National candidate.

I actually had a Labour MP tell me that my analysis was correct, and mirrored conversations that Labour had already started having about Mt Albert – prior to my blog post.

I blogged again on the issue on 16 February, 25 March and 26 March. So three posts over three months. Not exactly over the top.

On the 1st of April, the NZ Herald used the phrase “Tizard time-bomb” in a headline (note reporters do not write the headlines – sub-editors do).  They reported that:

Ms Tizard said Labour would be silly to buy into the “Tizard dilemma” and try and keep her out.

“If there is not a place for a 53-year-old woman who has been in elected positions for 26 of her 31 years, I guess I would want to know what the problem was.”

Ms Tizard said she had not yet been approached to stand aside, nor had she gone to the party to ask if there was a problem.

So four months after I first blogged about it, Labour had not even talked to Judith Tizard. How incompetent is that? The very first thing Labour should have done is make sure someone was regularly talking to Judith, and working out a joint strategy with her for dealing with the issue.

Labour leader Phil Goff said the Tizard dilemma was a “red herring”, but refused to openly back her return.

So again, no strategy on how to respond, and no agreed lines. But it gets worse.

On the 13th of April, it is reported that Labour ran focus groups asking Mt Albert residents what they thought of Judith Tizard.  How pissed off and insuting is that to their next on the list? For they did it without even talking to her.

The moment we started blogging on this issue, Labour should have had someone in constant dialogue with Judith. They should have been working out agreed lines that both Goff and Tizard would use until Judith made a decision about whether or not she would want to return if Twyford did win Mt Albert.

In National the person next on the list is treated as an MP in waiting. Someone senior (the President or Chief Whip off memory) is meant to chat to them every couple of months to see how they are doing, and to ascertain what their preference would be if a vacancy came up. It’s simple person management.

Instead they spent tens of thousands of dollars on focus groups behind Tizard’s back.

Then on 22 April, Labour made Twyford withdraw. And I bet you that Judith Tizard found out about this from the media – not directly from Labour. from what I can tell, neither the Party Leader or President spoke to her in the last two years.

Even after Hughes resigned, Andrew Little went to the media saying he wanted Louisa Wall in – before he spoke to Tizard.

So if people are angry about the treatment of Judith Tizard, they should direct their anger at Labour. Even a small degree of competence could have averted this all two years ago. They just had to talk to her and meet with her, and work out a position that didn’t involve them crapping on her from a huge height.

There has been comments on a number of blogs that Tizard was unfairly maligned, as she was not the worst MP in Parliament. I agree with that. In fact I blogged on her in May 2008:

Judith is somewhat controversial, but I have to say that my professional dealings with her on Internet issues have always been cordial and constructive, and she has been a very regular attendee of the Parliamentary Internet Caucus.

And I stand by what I said. On the issues I had direct engagement with her on, she was constructive and supportive. The worst name I think I have called her on the blog was a “plonker” and in fact that was referring to the next five candidates collectively.

The blog that has probably lampooned her the most viciously (but with humour) has been the Dim-Post.

I didn’t create the perception that Judith was not the most popular or hard working MP in Parliament – I just reported a pre-existing perception (Patrick Gower suggests Matt mcCarten first popularised it). If you wanted to ask me why this perception existed, I’d state two factors:

1. Tizard spent the entire nine years of the 5th Labour Government as a Minister outside Cabinet. Ministers outside Cabinet are meant to be for up and coming Ministers or for about to retire Ministers, not as a permament halfway house for Ministers who can’t get elected to Cabinet. She was seen as protected by Helen.
2. Tizard got given Auckland Issues, but never given any power, budget or authority in that role, so it became a joke, and the portfolio eventually abolished.

It is certainly true that there were other MPs in Parliament whose parliamentary careers were no more stellar than Judith’s. Most of the next four on the Labour List fall into that category. The Mt Albert dilemma may have come into play for Martin Gallagher, just as it did for Judith, if Gallagher had been next on the list.

In summary, Labour could have saved itself a huge amount of bad headlines and acrimoney, if they had picked up the phone two years and just talked to Judith Tizard, rather than run focus groups on how unpopular she might be.