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'Writing's on the wall' for Health Minister David Clark after lockdown breaches - Jessica Mutch McKay

April 7, 2020

1 NEWS’ political editor and John Campbell discussed what’s next for Dr David Clark.

The Health Minister gets to keep his job for now, following his new admissions of breaking the Government-enforced four-week coronavirus lockdown, but 1 NEWS political editor Jessica Mutch McKay says  "the writing is on the wall" for him post-pandemic.

It's been revealed Dr David Clark broke lockdown rules by driving 20 kilometres to a beach with his family the weekend after the lockdown began, and driving his family to a walking track in another instance. The new admissions came after he drove to a mountain bike trail last week.

This morning, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, "under normal conditions I would sack the Minister of Health. What he did was wrong, and there are no excuses.

"But right now, my priority is our collective fight against Covid-19. We cannot afford massive disruption in the health sector or to our response. For that reason, and that reason alone, Dr Clark will maintain his role."

Instead, Dr Clark has been demoted to the bottom of the Government's Cabinet rankings and stripped of his Associate Finance portfolio.

"We've got this situation where the Health Minister, the person in charge of leading us in this health pandemic, has repeatedly broken the rules," Mutch McKay told TVNZ1's Breakfast host John Campbell this morning.

The Prime Minister said that “under normal conditions” Dr Clark would’ve lost his job as Health Minister.

Mutch McKay also said he dragged out the confession for days and refused to front after the story of him going to a mountain bike track last week broke.

"If you make a mistake, make several errors of judgement, you have to own it straight away because it's always going to come out," she said.

"He's re-oxygenated a story that was running out of air, he should have come clean from the outset," Campbell agreed.

Mutch McKay added, "it's the people sitting at home who are watching this who are matching the sacrifices, who are following the rules, who are trying really hard to listen to everything that the Prime Minister and the Health Minister says, and then you've got the Health Minister going and breaking the rules, and talking to his wife about it and saying, 'oh should we do this? Actually yeah we should, we're fine'."

Dr Clark fronted Breakfast shortly after it was announced he’d been stripped of his Associate Finance portfolio by the Prime Minister.

Dr Clark was apologetic and called himself a fool on Breakfast earlier this morning.

But Mutch McKay said regardless, it's going to make his job really hard to come back from.

"I just wonder if he may stay in place for the lockdown perhaps and then we'll have to see because the writing's on the wall with the Prime Minister coming out and saying in a different circumstance he'd be gone."

David Clark told TVNZ1’s Q+A it was about New Zealanders following the rules that impact the time period in Alert Level 4.

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