Welcome to Inside Politics. Parliament broke up yesterday for the election on November 7 and a few honourable mentions are in order.
Most perceptions about politicians are formed outside of the debating chamber, but the House still matters as an arena of accountability and performance. These are the five MPsI consider to be the high-impact players in the House this term:
1. Speaker Gerry Brownlee: For his judgment, which is usually excellent, and his humour, which is always excellent.
2. Minister Chris Bishop: For his ability to think on his feet, answer questions comprehensively and rark up his own side all at once.
3. Finance Minister Nicola Willis: Whose delivery style has transformed from Johnsonville amateur dramatic society to sheer Hollywood. (It’s also impossible to ignore the svelte physical transformation as the weight we didn’t know she had has melted away.)
4. The Greens’ Lawrence Xu-Nan: Parliament’s question machine. Has fulfilled his ambition to be the most inquisitive MP with an unparallelled contribution to quizzing ministers in the committee stages of legislation. See my profile of him this week and what he made of Winston Peters’ attack.
5. Labour’s Arena Williams: Impressive command of her specialty subjects and detail inside the debating chamber, and chairs the nerdy Regulations Review Committee.
Haka, the sequel
The haka begun by Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke during a vote on the Treaty Principles Bill in November 2024 resulted in the suspension of three MPs from Parliament for an unprecedented length of time – three weeks for Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, and a week for Maipi-Clarke. It was outrageously disproportionate to previous suspensions, but was recommended by the Privileges Committee, which was chaired by Judith Collins.
Before then, the last MP suspended by the House on the recommendation of the Privileges Committee was Sir Robert Muldoon in 1987, for three days, and there was one prior to that, for one day.
As Speaker Gerry Brownlee said yesterday: “The suspension of members in this term for as long as three weeks therefore represents a change in the House’s practice.”
The Standing Orders Committee recently recommended that a framework for reaching recommendations for punishing members for contempt be developed, and one of Brownlee’s last actions in the 54th Parliament was to refer that recommendation to the Privileges Committee.
“For the public to have confidence in the House’s disciplinary procedures, it is important to avoid perceptions that they may be arbitrary in their operation,” he said.
By the way, Ngarewa-Packer’s team have posted a message on social media this morning to say that her mother is unwell and she will be scaling back her campaign plans.
The Hager saga
The Herald ran a military-style operation on Tuesday night to cover the publication of Nicky Hager’s latest book, Dirty Work, based on the growing influence of the Taxpayers’ Union on New Zealand politics, principally co-founder Jordan Williams. The book also looks at the MO of other groups, namely the Free Speech Union and Hobson’s Pledge.
Allegations and plenty of denials have been covered extensively in our news pages, but special mention should be made of the astute commentary by political editor Thomas Coughlan and top journalist David Fisher, who has become a specialist in Hager’s various books over the decades. Fisher talked through the book on the Herald podcast The Front Page (see video at the top of this story).
By the way, if you saw the livestream from the book launch and the press conference afterwards, the person behind Hager, whom he consulted on at least one question, was Felix Geiringer, a Wellington lawyer. I suspect there is going to be plenty more work for the lawyers involved in this book.
Shared titles: If you wanted to read Nicky Hager’s Dirty Work on Kindle or can’t wait for a delivery to a bookshop nearby, you might have done a search for it on Amazon, as I did, only to discover there are at least 20 other books of the same title, many of them of a more sexual persuasion. And, by the way, Hager’s book isn’t there.
Sounds of music: Over his long career, Winston Peters has often alluded to song. Of late, there has been a burst of musicality from the New Zealand First leader – first at the opening of the CRL in Auckland as Rail Minister, when he literally channelled Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues with “I hear a train a coming; It’s rollin’ round the bend...”, then on Monday this week, as Foreign Minister at the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, where he channelled Bing Crosby singing the first few lines from Far Away Places (“Far away places with strange-soundin’ names, Far away over the sea, Those far away places with the strange-soundin’ names, Are callin’, callin’ me”). The next day in an interview on RNZ about his speech on the need for diplomacy, he made a reference to the Phil Collins number Both Sides of the Story. Last week, when highlighting the fact that National had just announced the same policy as New Zealand First on splitting up supermarkets, he played The Great Pretender on his phone to reporters on his way into Question Time at Parliament.
Students reunited: Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick revealed in her adjournment speech yesterday that she and National’s Simeon Brown and Labour’s Arena Williams were all at Auckland University together. As it happens, the year was 2012. Inquiries suggest they were all active and known to each other. Williams was the president of the student association, Brown was active in the pro-life, anti-abortion group on campus, and Swarbrick was a commentator at the time on student radio station bFM.
Food fight continues: The sparring over food prices continued this week after Labour released its supermarket policy on Sunday, to separate the wholesale and retail arms of the current duopoly. And again, as happened last week, the mascot in the debate was a tin of spaghetti. An attempt by Arena Williams to seek leave to table the tin was declined.
Quote unquote
“Winston Peters is living proof that Māori never ceded sovereignty.” Chlöe Swarbrick reaches for a colourful metaphor in Parliament to explain how Peters is a law unto himself.
Micro quiz
Who is Labour’s foreign affairs spokesperson? (Answer at the bottom of this article.)
Brickbat
Goes to MBIE chief executive Nic Blakeley for confirming to MPs yesterday that the now-dumped biometric capability upgrade project has cost just over $50 million, not just under $40m as previously thought. Any advance on $50m?
Bouquet
Goes to retiring Act MP Brooke van Velden, who not only thanked the VIP drivers for being like aunts and uncles (one quietly satisfied her pregnancy craving for apricot danishes), but invited several of them to her valedictory. All the best for the baby, which is due around election time.
This is a transcript of the weekly Premium Politics newsletter. To sign up, click here, select ‘Manage newsletters’, then click on ‘Inside Politics with Audrey Young’ and save your preferences.