NZ POLITICS DAILY: No spade is safe from politicians in Tauranga

No spade is safe from politicians in Tauranga at the moment.

Together with the media, MPs are turning up on the beaches to be photographed and filmed in the oil clean-up. This is a point well-made in the brief Dom Post item, Visiting politicians dig in. The item says: ‘Labour leader Phil Goff flew in yesterday to help with the cleanup of the oil spilling from the ship Rena. MP Darien Fenton joined him shovelling. John Key diverted there, and Health Minister and local MP Tony Ryall stayed at home to be near the action. Russel Norman and Green MP Gareth Hughes were there tweeting up a storm and Transport Minister Steven Joyce was back again. But it may be a one-day blitz. Mr Key is opening an Auckland supermarket today and Mr Goff is talking to Invercargill Grey Power’.

So is it political opportunistic to use the Rena disaster in election campaigning? In a sense, some of the political output does appear to be grandstanding and purely shaped for electoral calculation. But then again, the anger is surely mounting amongst many voters, and the issue is now very much an election issue – see: Jessica Mutch’s Politics and pollution and TV3’s video item Rena cleanup becomes election issue. So to expect the politicians to refrain from finger pointing over the crisis would be naïve. And those politicians that want the Rena crisis to be a ‘politics-free-zone’ are surely the same that want to artificially take politics out of other major societal issues. And in terms of whether the ‘blame game’ is fair or not, it’s probably irrelevant. As Scott Yorke says, ‘Did the government do enough to respond to the ship's grounding? Who knows? Is there a perception that they didn't? Absolutely’ – see: Imperator Fish’s This Is All Bad For National.

Other important items (of the many) include Derek Cheng’s Rena spill: Key challenges critics: What could we have done?, Dom Post’s Editorial - Doubts over Rena crisis management, Global Dialog’s New Zealand: could Rena open the door for Peters?, Matthew Hooton’s Rena debacle hurting National, Anthony Robins’ Key’s Katrina, Local bodies’ Laila Harre Predicted Rena Wreck, the Maritime Union’s Responsibility for Rena lies with the Govt, and Ian Llewellyn’s Will Ministerial Heads Fall?

There’s plenty of interesting – and perhaps, outrageous or silly – images circulating online at the moment that relate to the Rena oil spill. Much of these are heavily political or part of the partisan ‘viral’ electioneering. This is to be expected – after all, the Rena oil disaster has struck in the middle of an election campaign, and therefore what was already a heavily political issue is now going to be strongly campaigned upon and used visually in all sorts of smalls. So there’s plenty of satirical newspaper cartoons, photoshopped images, blogosphere creations, and even simple photographs that display certain aspects of the politics of the Rena oil disaster. I’ve attempted to comprehensively aggregate many of these images in a blog post – see: Politics of the Rena oil disaster - in images. The post will be updated regularly.

Other important items today include: John Hartevelt’s Don't expect a lolly scramble – Labour. Anne Salmond’s Our small country needs a change of heart, Brian Fallow’s Pre-poll forecast likely to take dark turn, Andrew Geddis’ You have the right to free speech as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it, Laura Frykberg’s Politicians look to sway swing voters, and Andrea Vance’s Labour accused of homophobia cover-up.

Bryce Edwards, NZPD Editor (bryce.edwards@otago.ac.nz)

Today’s content:

Rena oil spill

Jessica Mutch (TVNZ): Politics and pollution

TV3: Rena cleanup becomes election issue

NZN/TV3: Harawira blasts Rena response

Dom Post: Visiting politicians dig in

Local bodies: Laila Harre Predicted Rena Wreck

Maritime Union: Responsibility for Rena lies with the Govt

Rachel Tiffen (TV3): Govt should have had response vessel - Greens

RNZ: Key won't be drawn on blame