Armstrong delivers a kicking

Hoo boy; does John Armstrong ever give Rodney Hide and John Boscawen a kicking this afternoon. Under the headline Act's wall of silence a disgrace he writes:

Not good enough, Mr Hide. Not good enough at all.

The press conference held at Parliament early this afternoon featuring Act leader Rodney Hide, the party's new deputy leader, John Boscawen, and party president Michael Crozier was little short of a disgrace.

Act is the one party which bases its sales pitch on the notion of accountability. Not a skerrick of that concept was apparent during the 20 minutes or so that Rodney Hide and then Boscawen repeatedly refused to utter one word which might have added up to an explanation as to why Heather Roy had been dumped as the party's deputy.

Voters - especially Act voters - deserve better.

No doubt Hide and company were advised to put up a brick wall to any questioning about what happened at this morning's caucus in the belief the media will soon tire of the story and move on to other things.

If so, those advisers should be sacked.

The shambles which passed for a press conference will be bad enough publicity in itself once excerpts are shown on television news tonight.

We will indeed be watching the 6pm news, and we may well update this post after that. But it's certainly a dreadful look for Act, and as Armstrong notes, makes a mockery of Act's claims to be accountable and transparent.

And just in case you thought Armstrong went easy after that, he didn't. He delivers a final kicking in his closing paragraphs (our emphasis added):

Perhaps, as the person who is supposed to communicate and mediate between Act's parliamentary wing and the wider party membership, he understood one thing that both Hide and Boscawen seemed to have forgotten: if you treat people like idiots, they tend to rapidly come to the same conclusion about you.

It's hard to disagree with any of that. This has not been Act's finest hour.