Lighting shit on fire isn’t the worst thing that’s happened on the parliamentary steps, but it is a new one.
It’s no surprise that the wheels would fall off in the final week before the school term ends. Attendance was pitiful, the naughty kids got told off by the principal for starting a fire on campus, and some students were handing in their maths homework without showing how they figured out their calculations. All this to say, the upcoming week-long recess period is much-needed.
Public service minister Judith Collins decided to kick off this week by penning an open letter to the whole of New Zealand – something or other about how people who work hard jobs have been politically brainwashed into thinking they deserve a higher income. And something or other Palestine. Anyway, by Thursday Collins had successfully paid off Big Weather to at least cancel rallies in Wellington headed to parliament.
Oh, and there was a new economic policy announced by New Zealand FirstLabour on Monday, a surprise health-related one teased the next day, and a pledge to up the gaming industry subsidy on Wednesday. If the quick succession in which the red team has decided to policy dump this week has made your head spin, you’re not the only one – even Chris Hipkins was surprised to find out that Labour’s health spokesperson managed to pen some words for NZ Doctor on how to fund GPs.
Chris Hipkins announced some policies this week, against all odds.
All this may remind some on the left that Te Pāti Māori was supposed to reveal some policies last week, but supporters might have to wait for the inter-whānau feuding within the party to cool down before they make any meaningful announcements.
When question time kicked off on Tuesday, there were plenty of stops and starts between Hipkins and Christopher Luxon over the 3.04% rise in inflation, because the prime minister’s mind was stuck on the 7.3% increase “the last lot were at”. And a chirpy Hipkins was still at it three questions later: when housing minister Chris Bishop said he stood by his statement of putting more effort into his Uber Eats order than Labour had in its Future Fund policy, Hipkins let him know “it shows”.
Following question time, two big (and controversial) bills passed after the dinner break on Tuesday: the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Amendment Bill (MACA) and the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill. The latter amends the Children’s Act 2014, the Crimes Act 1961, the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 and the Public Records Act 2005 in line with some recommendations (such as the repealing of strip searches for children) from the royal commission’s abuse in state care report – but the opposition cried that making some recommendations really isn’t the same as following them all.
Karen Chhour gave Marama Davidson some what-for.
Which clearly ground children’s minister Karen Chhour’s gears, who told the House she couldn’t believe the “rubbish” being spouted by the opposition. Specifically, Greens co-leader Marama Davidson, who was told by Chhour to “just calm it down and allow people to have their own opinions”. A few speeches later, Labour’s Willie Jackson traded blows with Act leader David Seymour, and assistant speaker Greg O’Connor got lost in the crossfire when he thought Jackson’s comment about Seymour being “stupid in the head” were directed at him. “My apologies, I was calling Mr Seymour stupid,” Jackson explained to the speaker. “All right? Is that OK?”
And as for MACA, the Greens’ Steve Abel couldn’t help but notice the dissonance between the government of the day and the government led by the late Jim Bolger. Abel shared a moving anecdote from poet Sam Hunt, who had sat next to Bolger and his wife Joan on a plane, the three of them headed to an Anzac memorial service. Hunt recited James K Baxter’s The Gunner’s Lament to the former prime minister: “In a Viet Cong’s blazing eyes – we fought for the crops of kūmara, they are fighting for the rice … And go tell Keith Holyoake, sitting in Wellington, however long he scrubs his hands, he’ll never get them clean.”
Steve Abel had one of the most moving speeches on MACA.
“Sam Hunt turned to Jim and Joan Bolger, and both of them had tears streaming down their faces because they are people of empathy, and they understood the meaning of that poem and its context of our colonial history,” Abel told the House. “If the patterns of colonisation are still present, then how can we say we are in a post-colonial era?”
By Wednesday, speaker Gerry Brownlee found a new issue over which to go to war with Te Pāti Māori. To be fair, co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and MP Tākuta Ferris’s burning of a copy of the MACA bill in front of the parliamentary steps, in high winds, probably is “the dumbest thing you could possibly do”. Although, when you think about other stunts made on the steps this year …
Wednesday was also a wobbly day for the Greens, with co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick slightly prickly with reporters who dared ask why the party hadn’t organised a press release on climate-related disclosures – a law championed by her predecessor, James Shaw. And a blip by Davidson, who was 20 seconds too late to answer the call to read her Right to Repair bill in the House, meaning it was dropped from the agenda.
Marama Davidson was there, she was just 20 seconds late.
It’s a bill which isn’t likely to pass anyway, and when Davidson later tried to get it back on the agenda of the day, she was voted down by the government. Davidson certainly isn’t the first member of parliament to miss their own bill reading, but being the butt of the joke on the government side, alongside dealing with the ramifications of a shrunken communications team, will probably have her and the rest of the Greens feeling particularly grateful to catch a break from this place next week.