However, there are times when people would be better off keeping their thoughts to themselves — especially when they are in positions of influence and they wade in to an area of controversy.
Three of our local MPs have recently found themselves in hot water of varying temperature for things they have said which, with hindsight, they might have reworded or withdrawn.
Waitaki National MP Miles Anderson and Act New Zealand Southland list MP Todd Stephenson both featured in Saturday’s Otago Daily Times, on the controversial application to open a Super Liquor outlet in the burgeoning township of Hawea.
However, where each MP might have given thought to pausing was their insistence that Health New Zealand perhaps should not have submitted on the issue.
"HNZ has bigger issues to worry about than wading into a hyper-local decision around a single bottle shop," Mr Stephenson said. "We have district licensing committees so locals can have their say — that’s the whole point."
Mr Anderson said: "I’m certainly aware of police and other organisations having the opportunity to submit against or for liquor licences all around the country, but what new information have HNZ provided that we are not already aware of?"
What each MP has overlooked is that an HNZ employee, the local medical officer of health, is one of the three statutory reporting agencies (alongside the police and the licensing inspector of the local council) who must be notified and asked to comment on an application for a liquor licence.
Police too regularly oppose liquor licence applications. Such disapproval, just like that of a medical officer of health, might be disappointing from an entrepreneurial viewpoint, but it is difficult to imagine a politician criticising police for opposing a liquor licence application.
Although there is no suggestion that the politicians were doing anything improper, it would have been better had they moderated their language and allowed HNZ, like the police and the licensing inspector, to be left alone to fulfil their statutory role.
On Wednesday National Invercargill MP Penny Simmonds, found herself high up in the One News bulletin that evening for a letter written to Horizons Regional Council last month.
The letter was drafted following a meeting between herself and a group of farmers in the Manawatu, during which concerns about delays in obtaining replacement groundwater extraction and irrigation consents had been raised.
Ms Simmonds asked the council why a decision had not been made: "I am now seeking to understand ... why there have been delays, and what needs to be done to achieve a timely solution for the affected farmers, particularly given the government’s commitment to helping the primary sector grow New Zealand’s economy,"
Ms Simmonds was careful not to state what solution she preferred: to have done so would have been inappropriate. However, she wrote the letter knowing that among the affected properties was a farm owned by the family of National Rangitikei MP Suze Redmayne.
Given that posed the potential for the perception of a conflict of interest, Ms Simmonds might have been wiser to deputise the letter writing job to an associate.
The One News report quoted a Horizons regional councillor, but did not disclose that they had formerly stood for the Green Party in the Otaki electorate and was standing under the party banner in the ongoing local body elections.
Although that was germane, the councillor’s questions were reasonable. So was the government’s response that the conflict was known and been managed.
Ms Simmonds’ language in the letter to the regional council is strikingly similar to that in a letter to all councils sent by her and fellow National Cabinet ministers this week calling on them to streamline consenting processes, reduce "onerous" requirement and "ease the consenting burden".
Although her letter is consistent with party policy, in this case Ms Simmonds might have been better off to have asked someone else to speak on this issue.
