Judith’s first act has been to promote Dr Shane Reti and punish Michael Woodhouse by making him the Pike River Recovery shadow minister.
Given that the government has wisely abandoned recovery attempts, the message is clear. Michael must go into the mine personally and single-handedly pull out the bodies.
Woodhouse told the media he was “absolutely delighted” with this brief. Yeah right! Where’s the Tui billboards when you need them?
More to the point, I’m picking Judith will do something I’ve urged our newspaper editors to do for years, namely introduce a morning caning to sharpen everyone up.