\nGiven the choice, Chris Bishop wouldn\u2019t keep MMP<\/p>\n
Chris Bishop on ditching MMP, Linda Clark on waiting for Winston and plenty more from Wellington\u2019s one-night-only trip back to the 90s.<\/p>\n
On Thursday night, Wellington\u2019s Embassy theatre was heaving with political nerds. The crowd was a mix of people who clearly remembered the 90s and those who didn\u2019t, people aligned with the Act Party and with the Greens, normies and Ruth Richardson. But they were all there for the same reason: to be soothed by the dulcet tones of Toby Manhire talking about the budgets and fiscal holes of the 1990s for the launch of Juggernaut 2. In other words, it was the most Wellington event to ever happen in Wellington.<\/p>\n
It could\u2019ve been a silent disco where a bunch of political dorks \u201cgurned out\u201d to the hit 1990 campaign song \u2018Positive Action\u2019, or one of those gimmicky events where you listen to an entire album (podcast episode, in this case) while lying down in the dark. But better than all that, it was a panel discussion between Manhire, former TVNZ political editor Linda Clark, former RNZ M\u0101ori issues correspondent Chris Wikaira and National minister Chris Bishop.<\/p>\n
Couldn\u2019t make it? Here are the five most important moments you missed.<\/p>\n
On stage from left, Chris Bishop, Chris Wikaira, Linda Clark and Toby Manhire (and you might even be able to spot David Seymour in the front row (Photo: Shannon Doyle)
\nGiven the choice, Chris Bishop wouldn\u2019t keep MMP<\/p>\n
Bishop was but a 13-year-old at the time of the 1996 election, the first to be held under the mixed member proportional electoral system, and back then, the biggest political issue in his life was puberty. He remembers the kingmaker\u2019s first rodeo clearly, though. \u201cIt\u2019s just instilled in my memory, watching the 6pm news in our old house in King\u2019s Crescent in the Hutt, as Mr Peters came to do the big reveal. Everyone said, well, that\u2019ll never happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
MMP has undoubtedly brought us many joys since then, like the entire plotline of the 1999 documentary Campaign<\/a>, or that iconic photo<\/a> of Christopher Luxon, David Seymour and Winston Peters all smiling through the pain. But would Bishop vote to keep MMP, should a referendum be held again?<\/p>\n \u201cOn its face, MMP has a lot going for it, right? Because the simple thing that people focus on is it\u2019s fair \u2026 And it\u2019s done a lot of good things. It\u2019s made our parliament more diverse, made it more representative. That\u2019s definitely true,\u201d Bishop said. \u201cI\u2019ve got mixed views about it. I mean, I voted to change when we did the referendum [in] 2011. I\u2019d probably vote to change it again.\u201d It was a bold thing to say with his coalition partner, Act Party leader David Seymour, sitting in the front row.<\/p>\n Former finance minister Ruth Richardson and her \u201cmother of all budgets\u201d loom large in any memories of the fourth National government. That 1991 budget \u2013 its nickname coined by Richardson at the time after some prodding from Frontline host Ross Stevens \u2013 is the focus of the second episode of Juggernaut 2<\/a>, and remains a painful memory<\/a> for many New Zealanders.<\/p>\n Asked where that budget sits in terms of the modern National Party\u2019s proudest moments (or not), Bishop answered: \u201cThere are a lot of things that annoy me about the Labour Party.\u201d Which is fair, you know, because they did \u201ccook the books\u201d, but also they should be proud about their work through 1984 to 1990, because they were \u201calmost certainly the best government we\u2019ve ever had\u201d, Bishop reckoned.<\/p>\n But wait, what does this have to do with Richardson and her budget? Undeterred by the classic political move of not answering a question and giving a really long spiel about something else instead, Manhire pressed Bishop for an answer. And eventually, encouraged by some scoffs from the crowd, Bishop delivered.<\/p>\n \u201cAll political parties are proud of what they\u2019ve done in the past up to a point \u2026 I think like most New Zealanders, many people in the National Party would have a mixed feeling about 1990 through 1993,\u201d Bishop said. \u201cWe don\u2019t really talk about the Muldoon years in the National Party any more. No one goes out there saying, \u2018remember the 1980s budget when we froze wages and prices? That was cool.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But the most illuminating conversation about the 1991 budget came from Linda Clark, and how cuts forced her mother, who was on the benefit, \u201cto penury\u201d. \u201cI don\u2019t want to sound like John Key, but I grew up in a state house,\u201d Clark told the crowd, to laughter. \u201cI grew up in a family that didn\u2019t have a lot of money \u2026 The mother of all budgets gutted people like my relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell-intentioned policy often has really terrible impacts. And one of the things about the relationship with Jim Bolger and Ruth, it always seemed to me, is that he was discomforted by that quite quickly,\u201d Clark said.\u00a0 \u201cHe went along with it: they needed to do it, there was no question. Politics is hard. Politicians have to make very difficult decisions, often when there isn\u2019t enough money.\u201d<\/p>\n Clark saw Mike Moore\u2019s coup in action<\/p>\n As one punter rightly observed, the sole woman on the panel was the one the audience liked the best. Clark spoke at length about the press gallery of days gone by, and though the following is technically a yarn related to the first season of Juggernaut, it\u2019s still a good one.<\/p>\n \u201cThe relationship between journalists and politicians was so different [in the 80s\/90s] that when Mike Moore did the coup [to oust] Geoffrey Palmer, I literally was allowed in his office for the week before the coup with a camera,\u201d Clark said. The team signed an NDA, and promised to get rid of the footage if the coup never came to fruition, but Clark had a good feeling it would: Helen Clark let herself be filmed for the segment.<\/p>\n These days, you\u2019re more likely to see a coup being planned over Instagram.<\/p>\n Clark also charmed the crowd with memories of the two months spent waiting for Winston Peters to choose which party to form a government with after the first MMP election in 1996. it was \u201ca crazy, crazy time\u201d, she said. \u201cEvery single day there was a photo opportunity of nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n She recalled running into Peters decades later, at the Boulcott Street Bistro, by which time she\u2019d become a lawyer. \u201cI went up and said, \u2018oh my God, Winston\u2019; cause I have spent so much of my life waiting for this man. And not in that way. And he stroked my hand and said, \u2018congratulations on taking the law\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n The memories of the 1996 election and Peters brought Chris Wikaira\u2019s mind back to snooping on a 1998 hui at Auckland airport involving NZ First\u2019s \u201ctight five\u201d M\u0101ori electorate MPs, Tuku Morgan, Tau Henare, Tuariki Delamere, Rana Waitai and Tu Wylie, soon before the coalition fell apart and most of them quit the party. They were discussing rumours that NZ First was holding a fifth birthday party in Tauranga, and they weren\u2019t invited.<\/p>\n \u201cTuariki got very quiet, and he sat there and he looked out the window and said, \u2018the boss doesn\u2019t want us there, does he?\u2019 And I think that for those M\u0101ori MPs, that was the key moment where it was past the point of no return,\u201d Wikaira said.<\/p>\n Doug Graham tugged at the heartstrings<\/p>\n In a strange twist of events, a clip of former Treaty negotiations minister Doug Graham reflecting on the Ng\u0101i Tahu Claims Settlement Act (which became law in 1998) provided the most emotional moment of the night. Graham remembered speaking with a man who had spent a whole day sobbing after the negotiations.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018I was brought up by my grandfather and we survived by farming the road sites. And I went to school the long way on foot because I could go past the horse trough and there was some molasses in there and I had that for breakfast,\u2019\u201d Graham said, getting weepy. \u201cMy whole team were in tears. You just wonder sometimes, how could this happen?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Bishop on ditching MMP, Linda Clark on waiting for Winston and plenty more from Wellington\u2019s one-night-only trip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[82265,492,89648,11507,111,43,139,69,135,93194,52,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-136376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-chris-bishop","9":"tag-comments-enabled","10":"tag-juggernaut-2","11":"tag-national-party","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-the-embassy","18":"tag-wellington","19":"tag-winston-peters"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Chris Bishop, in 90s graphic glory on the big screen
\nBish didn\u2019t want to talk about that budget<\/p>\nIt took some time, but Bishop managed to answer the question (Photo: Shannon Doyle)<\/p>\n
Chris Wikaira, Linda Clark and Toby Manhire (Photo: Shannon Doyle)
\n\u2018Every single day there was a photo opportunity of nothing\u2019<\/p>\nWellingtonians showing up and showing out (Photo: Shannon Doyle)<\/p>\n