Kerre Woodham: What was National's selection panel thinking keeping this quiet?

On a day when National should be soaring, and scoring all sorts of points with the latest political poll giving National and ACT enough votes to form a Government and Labour at its lowest since 2017.

When Andrew Little has had to concede that just nine nurses have applied to come to New Zealand when he said look, there's thousands. We don't need to change anything around immediate residency because we've got thousands of nurses who want to come here - so far, just nine.  

And when the office of the Auditor-General has delivered what the opposition calls a scathing indictment of the Three Water’s proposal. A damning analysis of the overlap of proposed governance structures, lack of access to information by the public to scrutinise the proposed water entities, a lack of performance measures and a lack of integration with other reforms and local planning.

So pretty damning.

But instead of being able to capitalise on the polls and the fact that New Zealand is not a land of milk and honey for overseas trained nurses, and instead of being able to point to the Auditor General, having real concerns about the accountability and transparency of Three Waters.

What do we find National doing? Defending the selection of a candidate who was a schoolboy bully.

Sam Uffindell told the selectors when he stood for Nationals Tauranga electorate, that had been expelled from prestigious Kings College 20 years ago for being part of a group that committed an unprovoked assault on a younger boy.

So he disclosed that, he said you need to know. He did not tell his Tauranga electorate, or indeed the rest of the public. So now this dormant grenade of information has exploded and it's leaving National in damage control.

And really you can interpret this how you wish. If you want to see this as yet another example of National selecting a privileged private school, born to rule bully boy, you will.

If you want to see this as a poor decision made by a 16-year-old for which he was punished, he was expelled from Kings and had to finishes schooling elsewhere. And besides, Trevor Mallard's done worse. That's how you'll see it.

I don't think people should be damned for their past if they've shown they've changed. I mean, surely none of us would want to be 16 forever.

I’d have been a pimply virgin in perpetuity. But seriously, what was National’s selection panel thinking and keeping this info to themselves?

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