The foreign affairs minister may have the most famous window in all of New Zealand, and it put the spotlight firmly on him for question time.
Do you ever get a late night message from a co-worker, and already know your next work day will be a bit of a nightmare? Maybe it’s an email heads-up saying everyone’s got the stomach flu, so you’re on your own and good luck. Or maybe it comes as secondhand news in the form of an RNZ push notification, letting you know that the grumpy older codger at work recently got his window smashed in, and you can’t help but think, fuck, I know what I’m going to be hearing about all day.
So naturally, everyone at parliament on Tuesday heard about foreign affairs minister Winston Peters’ window getting smashed in all day. To be specific, the window was smashed in by a protester who threw a crowbar, the infamy of which is starting to rival the first brick thrown at Stonewall. Fortunately for Peters, there was someone at work he could pass all the blame onto – unfortunately for Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick, she was standing next to one of the Peters protesters earlier that day.
And as it happens, Tuesday was also October 7 – the two-year anniversary of when the deputy prime minister thinks Israel and Palestine first heard of each other – so there was plenty to say. Peters opened the afternoon session in the House by recognising the ongoing war in the Middle East, and on his window, and by pointing his finger to the closest possible foe. “Do they feel so morally righteous that you and your supporters are justified to break any law, any taboo, any political norm?” Peters proclaimed. “We say shame on you.” And a chorus from the government benches cried out the same s-word too.
Peters delivers his statement on the Middle East.
It took about 45 minutes for question time to properly kick off, following bickering between speaker Gerry Brownlee and Labour leader Chris Hipkins over standing orders and a point of order that was more of a speech from Act MP Simon Court, imploring Brownlee to consider that the “allegation of genocide” in Gaza could lead to violence against Jewish New Zealanders. But even when the show moved onto oral questions, it was hard to move past the Palestine-shaped cloud over Peters.
After all, the decision not to recognise a Palestinian state wasn’t the only major announcement from the government since parliament was last gathered in the House a fortnight ago. But the lads (aka Christopher Luxon and the other Chris, Hipkins) sped across the bulk of it with questions on changes to the Jobseeker benefit, the brain drain and the fact that there’s not a whole lot of jobs around. So, Hipkins asked, “when [the prime minister] said, ‘if you want a job, you go where the jobs are’ … did he mean go to Australia?”
Then questions moved to finance minister Nicola Willis and Labour’s finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds, but Willis’s choice to begin her first answer with “the road to recovery is not always smooth” only earned her a round of roaring laughter from Labour. And when Swarbrick tried to question the prime minister on Jobseeker changes, there was a niggly little voice sounding off in the background which sounded suspiciously like Shane Jones’, crying about leaving the tea towels at home.
The face of a woman who hasn’t been able to catch a break from a party scandal for about two years.
It didn’t take too long to come back to the window. After NZ First MP David Wilson’s questions to Peters on the feedback he’d received on “the government’s approach to the Middle East” and how it had impacted “New Zealand’s international reputation” (“it’s shattered,” Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer offered), the subject line turned to the government’s stance on people protesting outside homes.
Peters sounded off about the “mobs and bludgers” who were “violently attacking politicians’ homes”, and how the “members opposite … should be utterly ashamed of their hypocritical selves”. Which was a nice segue to the next question from National MP Tom Rutherford to justice minister Paul Goldsmith, about “demonstrations outside private residences”, to which Goldsmith took the opportunity to remind the House – “and particularly the Greens” – that “banging pots and pans” in the name of intimidation is not acceptable in Aotearoa, just in case anyone missed the memo.
Some big sheriff energy from Goldie in this screen grab.
All the while, Ngarewa-Packer and her co-leader Rawiri Waititi bickered away with Peters and Jones, sitting only a metre away. When Ngarewa-Packer tried desperately to remind the duo of their “anti-trans” and “anti-wāhine” stances, she was brushed off by both of them as well as the speaker.
“Calm down, Debbie,” Jones warned her, though Peters – grinning from ear to ear – didn’t seem particularly hurt by it all. A broken window and a vet bill for glass getting into the family dog is just a small price to pay to be able to get your groove back, and the country back on your side.