Larry Williams Drive

Two days on, it’s fair to say Christopher Luxon’s swift and brutal demotion of Penny Simmonds and Melissa Lee hasn’t met much opposition. I appreciate these are early days for the new government and all Ministers are bedding in, but I don’t think I’ve heard a single person publicly argue that Lee or Simmonds was doing a sufficiently good job. Not one.  Of course, opposition MPs feel duty-bound to attack in these kinds of moments. Chris Hipkins said it showed the PM had terrible judgement in appointing his Ministers in the first place.   But the co-leader of Te Pāti Māori found a different reason to criticise it. It wasn’t that Melissa Lee simply wasn’t cut out for Cabinet and that Penny Simmonds was lost at sea. It wasn’t that facing pressures in their portfolios, the new Ministers hadn’t adapted quickly enough. Apparently, it was misogyny.  Based on what? Well, as Debbie Ngarewa-Packer noted, Luxon hasn’t been as forceful with male MPs in his Cabinet who’ve made public comments out of turn. But, of course, t