Dunne's opposition to Christine Rankin

This a is a great quote from Garth George's column today;

I'm not a bit surprised that Mr Dunne has expressed his displeasure at Ms Rankin's appointment since the last thing a fence-sitter needs is for someone to shake the fence.

To be honest I was mildly confused at Peter Dunne's reaction to Christine Rankin's appointment as a Families Commissioner. Dunne would have been dismayed to have his Commission hijacked by "the lefty liberals who so appealed to Labour and the Greens." At the outset, during the select committee stages, the controversy was about defining the family. The 'inclusive' approach won the day;

The Commission will not work on behalf of individual families, but will advocate on behalf of all families, in all their forms. It will not be prescriptive about what a family is, or what form it should take.

This approach guarantees and sanctions the continuance of family formations that rely on the state. If the Families Commission was ever going to achieve anything it would have been to question what role government has played in weakening families, not what role it should play in strengthening them. But no. They took the easy, anything goes, approach.

Rankin is undoubtedly in the marriage-and-two-parents-is-good-for-children camp. The same camp I would have thought as Dunne.

So I think his fierce opposition must come down to personality. The sometimes purse-lipped Mr Dunne must disapprove of Rankin's style more than her substance.

Or he suspects that Rankin could threaten the very survival of his Commission and he would rather have it as the useless entity it is than not at all. That would be somewhat pathetic.

Whatever is behind his opposition isn't well-motivated. He isn't a left Liberal yet is taking their side. Perhaps it is just the usual 'putting Peter first' modus operandi we have all come to know....which I guess is what Garth George was saying.