Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

You can always tell when a topic has hit a nerve... The text machine blows up with texts, people email me before, during and after the show has gone to air.  And this was the case yesterday over the latest crazy suggestion from the Government – that Aucklanders could face being set allotted time slots to travel this summer. It was such a stupid idea that no sooner had Chris Hipkins uttered it out loud than Grant Robertson was shooting it down. And therein lies a lot of the problems with this Government’s response to this pandemic. It’s chaotic, all over the show, and smacks of knee jerk reactions. I’m not sure why they say stuff out loud when it hasn’t been given the sniff test but, having Ministers on the hop make stuff up, is sure to backfire. And so it did. And the problem is, this wasn’t just any Minister, this was the Covid-19 Response Minister. It is literally his job to manage this stuff. And sure enough, not long after Chris had said it and Grant had poo-pooed it, Chris was putting it back on the tabl