John Key Success or Failure?

I believe history will not be that kind to John Key, New Zealand's now retired Prime Minister. When he came into office he had a lot of potential, the previous nine years had been competently led by Helen Clark but her Labour party reign had been typified by Nanny state trying to control Kiwis everyday lives.

John Key promised to reverse that and give Kiwis their lives back. He failed to do it. About the only thing I can recall him doing to stop this creeping intrusiveness was his National party let us have our incandescent light bulbs back. That's about it.

National promised a lot but delivered very little. They were going to get all school children into sport, this was a top priority they said. What happened to that idea? It sank.

Soon after taking office, Key made speeches up and down the country about unleashing NZ's mining potential. They surveyed the country for rare earth elements, it was all go. Then the Pike River mine disaster happened and Key became jumpy, he was like a possum caught in the headlights. So mining was now off the agenda.

Then we had the GFC. He's credited with doing something for NZ there but the reality is the GFC did not impact Kiwiland all that much. So on that score, Key gets a free pass.

Then the earthquakes happened, starting in September 2010. All of a sudden real leadership was needed and Key did not seem to warm to the task. The mayor of Christchurch stood up, as did Gerry Brownlee Minister for earthquake recovery and Roger Sutton, most importantly Roger Sutton who headed CERA, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. When it suited the government, they unceremoniously dumped Sutton in what can only be described as an appalling act of betrayal.

Don't forget Key has blood on his hands over Allan Hubbard, the highly reputable, honest businessman, and tireless benefactor who was put into statutory administration by Key's toady, Bill English. Hubbard was an old man forced to defend himself and he died in a car crash while returning to Timaru after seeing his lawyer in Dunedin. The only way to describe this shameful matter is he was treated shabbily. Scales Corp was one of his companies and it is now listed on the NZX in some nightmare scenario.

Then just to confirm how selfish John Key is he's doing a runner before the hard work on rebuilding Kaikoura and the main trunk rail line and State Highway 1 begins. Key is all about window dressing, he can't face Kaikoura as he must be running out of mugs to do his work for him.

Under John Key, New Zealand continued to drift and it's worse off now than when he took over. He's running away, and that has to be considered failure.