Meh

Meh - is my reaction to this week's Cabinet reshuffle. One of the commentators (Espiner?) were close to the mark when they said the reshuffle was like painting the walls and cupboards and replacing the taps without doing anything else to the kitchen - fundamentally its still the same beast.

For all his previous great work, Finance Minister Cullen now appears arrogant and seems to have come down with what Jane Clifton called i-know-best-itis. I think at the very least he should have been shifted to a shared Treasurer/Minister of Finance role with the popular and very electable Phil Goff.

In saying that, I didn't really expect that to happen anyway. I only hope Labour hasn't missed yet another opportunity this year. Rightly or wrongly, people in New Zealand and Australia have been attracted to their respective fresh and enthusiastic opposition leaders. I think the reshuffle was a chance to neutralise that in the NZ case by promoting someone like Goff to the pivotal Finance role.

Anyway, you will remember that earlier in the year I gave my suggestion for a reshuffle - now I was almost entirely wrong - but I was saying what I wanted rather than what I thought would happen. Regardless, of the five people I suggested be promoted to the Ministry (Jones, Street, Chadwick, Chauvel and Hughes), only Chauvel missed out. I guess four out of five ain't bad. Although I'm still not sure why Chauvel didn't get in - at least to a role outside the Cabinet? He is clearly as capable as Hughes or Chadwick.

Its good to see new blood all the same though. I was also happy with how Law and Order has been shut down - King/Goff vs Power will be a much better contest than Burton/O'Connor vs Power ever was. Cunliffe has performed well in Immigration and Comms and IT, and although he will be outside his comfort-zone, I think the Health portfolio could make him. I worry about Carter in Education - he was controversial in the junior Housing and Conservation portfolios - I hope he gets it together now. King running Electoral Finance (EFB) could be something to watch too. She failed to get any sort of cross-party consensus on the ANZTPA (Therapeutics) - which is what is needed now on the EFB. I really hope she can turn that Bill into something that at least upholds Labour's values.

So on the whole, there are some great bits, and well, some 'other' bits - hence my reaction: meh.