Kate Hawkesby: I don't blame Bloomfield for throwing in the towel

This time yesterday I was talking about the disconnect between Wellington and Auckland and how much of an echo chamber it is; how out of touch they are. I referenced the way Ashley Bloomfield had dismissively written off the red light as no big deal. He seemed dismissive and over it, and just a few hours later we learned why.  
He’s going. And who can blame him? I get it. 
Who wouldn't be over it by now? For a while now we’ve been saying how tired he looked, how sick of the politics he looked, and maybe he’s figured out he just doesn’t need all that stress anymore. That explains why he may’ve been so dismissive. What a relentless couple of years working that closely and that intensely with the Labour party for that long, that would surely take its toll on anyone.  
He was quick to rule out any future in politics when asked and that’s completely understandable. If you think about his role, as a public servant, he was never supposed to get that politicised anyway, but the past two years of such a close working relationship with the government did turn him into a political animal. When he was stationed next to Chris Hipkins or the PM day in day out for press conferences, which were always loaded with politics let’s be honest, then he just couldn’t help but get sucked down that rabbit hole. 
And a very revealing comment from Hipkins I thought, when he said that Ashley had a terrible poker face. Was he meaning that he doesn’t lie as smoothly as other politicians? Why did they need him to have a poker face? That was an odd thing to say. 
The reality of the role was that Bloomfield held enormous power over our lives, and we very early on lost the ability to scrutinise him because he was deified by the media into some kind of Women's Weekly pinup. On top of that, the public decided he was a celebrity, instead of an incredibly powerful public servant requiring accountability. Turning him into tea towels and t-shirts did us no favours, nor him. 
For us, it became sacrilege to ask questions like where's the PPE you promised? Where are the flu vaccines? Where are the Covid vaccines? Where are the RAT tests? Why are we still in lockdown? The push back on questioning or critiquing Ashley was insane. And for him, that intense worshipping in the public eye, alongside looking like an extra member of the Labour party, muddied the waters of what his role actually was.  
Add to that the PM's constant interrupting and answering for him at press conferences, and it was very difficult for Bloomfield to look like anything other than another Labour party puppet. 
But it's not just him heading for the exit, top Ministry figures are following; Caroline McElnay and her Deputy are also off. 
So, what does that tell you about the future of the health reforms in this country? 
The Health Ministry these guys signed up for, will be a very different beast by this time next year given the sweeping reforms coming, and I don't doubt for one second that they haven't seen that as a cluster waiting to happen and they're bailing. 
Who needs all that bureaucracy and even more stress to deal with, when you’ve already had two years of a pandemic to handle?

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