Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics: Luxon denies plan to sell off Peters: ‘He’s no asset’

Photo / Getty Images. Illustration / Greg Dixon.

Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics is a weekly satirical column on politics that appears on Fridays on listener.co.nz

New Zealand’s oldest state-owned asset, Winston Peters, will not be sold off under National’s proposed asset sale plan, the government claims.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced this
week his government will “think about” possible sales of public assets after the 2026 election. However Peters, the country’s oldest surviving state-owned edifice, would not go on the block.

“Look, the guy has been around here for 50 years and after that amount of time, he is not an asset,” the Prime Minister said. “He is more like a liability.”

Luxon said that while he has ruled out any asset sales this term, he maintained there needed to be a “mature conversation” about future governments selling stuff off. “And who is more mature than Winston? Look, the guy has been around here for 50 years.”

Luxon added it made sense to “recycle” state assets that were worn out, out of date or not fit for purpose.

“Look the guy has been around here for 50 years, so he’s probably all of those things. But frankly I don’t think we’d get much for him, even with a $1 reserve on TradeMe.”

An angry Peters said he had long been against the sale of state assets but called the reasons for not wanting to sell him off a “tawdry, silly argument”.

He disputed that he was longer an asset when in government. “Listen sunshine, I am the only thing this shabby government has still got that is worth a damn thing. Luxon and Willis are the real liabilities, they’re the ones who have stuffed the economy.”

Luxon said he was unmoved by Peters’ vitriol. “Look, the guy has been around here for 50 years, which means his views are worth tuppence ha’penny.”

Te Pāti Māori trials “move-on” law with own MPs

Te Pāti Māori says its former MPs Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris were asked to leave the party in a limited trial of the government’s planned vagrancy law.

In its first and only achievement this parliamentary term, the party ruled that Kapa-Kingi and Ferris were not MPs after all but were in fact unwanted “rough sleepers” who should be moved on elsewhere, a decision the two MPs say is unconstitutional.

The controversial move to move them on is thought to have been a way for the party to get rid of the troublesome MPs, as well as provide the government with a pilot study on how to go about harassing people it deems worthless.

One political commentator said such a blunt measure was bound to fail, both for Te Pāti Māori and the government. “It is only going to shift the problem elsewhere. In the case of Te Pāti Māori, it has shifted the problem a few seats further back in the House.”

Finance minister “devastated” not to win near record Lotto jackpot

Photo / Getty Images. Illustration / Greg Dixon.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis says further deep spending cuts were inevitable following the failure of her well-thought-out plan to boost government coffers by winning Wednesday’s $45 million Lotto Powerball jackpot.

“Winning the draw was really the only thing standing between the country and penury, so I am going to have to entirely rethink my economic gambles,” Willis said.

It is not the first time the coalition’s finance minister has had a flutter with taxpayers’ money. Willis is understood to have had money on the Melbourne Cup earlier this month, picking a box trifecta of Land Legend, Chevalier Rose and Buckaroo. The horses respectively finished 3rd to last, 2nd to last and last.

Willis said despite her run of bad luck, she was still backing herself to claw back her losses and “put wins on the board for New Zealand”.

She said she had “a cheeky $50 million” on England to beat the All Blacks at Twickenham on Sunday as well as having a good tip for the next night trots meeting at Alexandra Park. She also had a ticket for tomorrow night’s $55 million Lotto draw.

“As I have told the World Bank and the IMF, all three bets are a total lock. New Zealand is in the money.”

Things Christopher Luxon is better at than being PM #4

Photo / Getty Images. Illustration / Greg Dixon.

In the fourth of an exciting new series, Another Kind of Politics sets out to discover what, apart from accumulating enormous personal wealth, our most unpopular prime minister in a generation is actually good at.

This week, Christopher Luxon is good at … shifting the blame.

It is a little-known fact that what became known as the “Great Lynx Africa Disaster” happened during Luxon’s time as Global Deodorants and Grooming Category Director for Unilever.

During the early development of Lynx Africa, Luxon was advised by Unilever’s marketing department that the advertising campaign for the deodorant would be targeted at young men “who smelled like wildebeest”.

In a blunder for the ages, Luxon subsequently mistakenly ordered Unilever boffins to make the first version of Lynx Africa “smell like wildebeest”, leading directly to the Great Lynx Africa Disaster in which the chances of romance for millions of young men were destroyed during the summer of 2004.

However, Luxon successfully avoided responsibility for the calamity by blaming the previous Global Deodorants and Grooming Category Director, who had left the job two years before.

The rest, as they say, is history.

* Apologies to Bart Simpson.

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