Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

The end of Kiri Allan’s political career throws up a couple of key questions. One, does it also spell the end of the government as in, the final straw? They look too unstable as a party, they are losing too many ministers, they have no one else to take on serious portfolios and the management of our country now looks like a school project. And two, was enough duty of care employed by the Labour leadership to look out for her? Labour is desperately trying to paint itself as not responsible for any of this. They did their best, they offered her help, counselling, mentorship, they say. Hipkins says he spoke with her and was reassured she was fine. But how often do people in a hole, or a bind, tell you they are fine when they are not? How much exploratory work was done on whether she truly was fine? And given many of us could tell just from the small snippets we saw of her in the media and from what we were hearing that she was clearly not fine, how did the Labour leadership misread it so badly? There is an onus