Kate Hawkesby: Why would Stuart Nash stay in the political game?

So Stuart Nash is off and I don’t blame him. Who’d hang around at this point? It must have been a tough call to make given he seemed to love politics, love people, love his portfolios and enjoy representing his home town of Napier.  But it was unsustainable that he stay on after the start to the year he’s had, and no doubt greener pastures are awaiting him. And by greener I mean maybe a job in his beloved forestry sector.  Still, it’s never nice to leave on a downer, it’s always preferable to leave on your own terms and he didn’t get to do that. Leaving under a cloud is a tough way to go out. He said in his post about quitting politics that, he’d had “the privilege of serving in the Ardern Cabinet during the darkest of days, managing crisis after crisis after crisis, while driving forward an ambitious and progressive agenda of continuous economic and social improvement and transformation.”  Just to unpack that a little bit, did they manage crisis after crisis? Or lunge from crisis to crisis to crisis? There’s a small difference. And in terms of driving forward an ambitious and progressive agenda of continuous economic and social improvement and transformation, where are we seeing the fruits of that exactly? Where is this continuous economic improvement he speaks of?  We have an economy in dire straits, inflation at record levels, we’re in a wage inflation spiral, and interest rates on mortgages are through the roof, to name but a few.  Where’s the social improvement? Crime’s out of control, youth crime at all time highs, they haven’t moved the needle on poverty, social housing is a shambles, mental health money that hasn’t been spent, kids not attending school, those who do, not achieving as they should. There’s quite a long list of divisive social ills choking our society these days, in fact.  So I’m just wondering about this transformation Stuart speaks of. What’s been transformational? And therein lies part of the delusion for these guys, not just him but the whole Labour government and their devout echo chamber of followers too, they can’t see the wood for the trees. They probably still think they’ve been the most open honest and transparent government ever too. They probably believe New Zealand is better off for their leadership.  But I’m struggling to see it, the metrics and the data’s just not showing it.  I do however believe that he’s been a good MP, after he got sacked we got mixed feedback from his constituents to be honest, some saying they absolutely loved him as an MP because he was visible and always got back to them, others saying he was a waste of space.  But at least they knew him, and he had a presence in his community, which is more than you can say for a lot of MP’s. So good on him for reading the room and going. I mean he says it’s also time to address the balance with family and friends – and I get that – when you have a job that takes it out of you, those relationships do suffer, so I wish him well with his renewed connections with loved ones. I wish him well in the corporate world or wherever he ends up. I also wish that the Labour ministers left actually do a slightly better job of walking the walk, on all that big talk.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.