The view from the House.<\/p>\n
Then, about half an hour later, it was into questions. The economy, stupid, dominated most discussions, with the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update<\/a> having arrived earlier that morning. It\u2019s been a long year, but surely you remember the school lunches<\/a> thing? Or when Luxon offered unsolicited parenting advice in the form of advice on making Marmite sandwiches?\u00a0<\/p>\n Anyway, those highlights of 2025 were revisited when Labour leader Chris Hipkins tried to press Luxon on food prices, but Act leader David Seymour (or, \u201cthat bloke who just stood up\u201d, in Brownlee\u2019s words) saw, as he does, the bright side of it all: we\u2019re been making school lunches with chump change \u2013 are these not the cheap eats the red team has been crying out for?<\/p>\n And Brownlee, breaking character, added his own two cents on the perfect base for a Marmite sandwich. \u201cI can\u2019t help, in this circumstance, in this Christmas season, to give a big shout-out to Coupland\u2019s Bakeries,\u201d Brownlee told the House. \u201cA great South Island institution, cheapest bread in the country by quite a long shot.\u201d<\/p>\n Point of order, said Seymour \u2013 isn\u2019t the speaker supposed to set aside all personal and private interests? \u201cI have no interest in that particular bakery other than the occasional step across the threshold,\u201d Brownlee replied.<\/p>\n Other highlights from the session included transport minister Chris Bishop showing off the new roadside drug test<\/a>, which looks almost exactly like a Covid-19 test, but for the narcs. For reasons unknown to The Spinoff (but with theories we couldn\u2019t possibly comment on), Bishop opted not to try it himself in order to show the House how the test actually works.<\/p>\n Afterwards, the two new Resource Management Act replacements, the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill, were introduced to parliament. With his RMA minister hard-hat on, Bishop sung the praises of putting property rights above all else \u2013 lest we end up like the Soviet Bloc.\u00a0<\/p>\n And later that night, the Electoral Amendment Bill \u2013 which will end same-day enrolments and ban prisoner voting, among other changes \u2013 passed its third reading. There was some tag-teaming in speeches between Green MP Tamatha Paul and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who drew on their experiences as young w\u0101hine M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is what me and Tamatha represent in this House, is young M\u0101ori w\u0101hine, and who \u2026 are unfortunately kept out of these democracy processes,\u201d Maipi-Clarke said. \u201cWe represent our constituents that I\u2019ve had engagements with across the motu \u2026 stories of \u2018if you two are in here, I feel like I have a voice in this parliament\u2019, and making sure that they still have accessibility to voting.\u201d<\/p>\n By Wednesday, much of the tension felt at the start of the week morphed into festive cheer. The press gallery rolled out the blue carpet \u2013 aka tarpaulin \u2013 for a party that night (it pays to have something to keep the wine stains off of the actual carpet), and the House adjourned a day early \u2013 so no one was very interested in getting much work done at all.<\/p>\n The end-of-year speeches included the usual trademarks: thanks to the staffers (including those working in \u201ca place called Pint of Order<\/a>\u201d, said Seymour), reflections on the year passed, hopes for the year ahead, and a few dry jokes. Luxon looked to the opposition benches, and saw a picked-over box of Favourites staring back: Hipkins is a Flake for dodging the Covid-19 inquiry, and Labour, the Cherry Ripes, \u201cseem nice on the outside, but inside they\u2019re deeply, deeply red\u201d. As for the Greens and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori, they\u2019re basically the Picnics \u2013 \u201ca bit rough and totally nuts\u201d.<\/p>\n Some were less creative, but more cutting. NZ First leader Winston Peters returned to a favourite Winstonism<\/a> while criticising Labour, the \u201capparatchiks who have graduated from some sociology department riddled with left-wing brainwashing propaganda\u201d, who \u201cthink that \u2018manual labour\u2019 is the prime minister of Mexico\u201d. And \u201cas for the Greens\u201d, well, they\u2019re the most \u201chypocritical, shallow, vacuous bunch of Marxists\u201d who have \u201cgone through more MPs than protests\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cShoplifters, cheap-labour exploiters, foreign-born Marxists, and unstable narcissists, the last two donning a watermelon yarmulke and Hamas scarf during Passover,\u201d Peters cried. \u201cJust breathtaking what they\u2019ve got away with here.\u201d<\/p>\n In a calmer goodbye to the halls of power, Bishop was able to laugh at the storm he created<\/a> at the Aotearoa Music Awards as he talked the House through his Spotify Wrapped: \u201cDon McGlashan, sadly, did not feature, and nor did Stan Walker.\u201d The minister made some stabs at what those around the House would have been listening to this year: \u2018We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together\u2019 for Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and T\u0101kuta Ferris, \u2018Stuck In The Middle With You\u2019 for Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke and Oriini Kaipara, and \u201cDavid Seymour has had one song on repeat this year: Backstreet Boys\u2019 \u2018I Want It That Way\u2019. Now, he sings this a lot in Cabinet meetings, followed up by Mr Peters finishing up with Frank Sinatra\u2019s \u2018My Way\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Ikaroa-R\u0101whiti MP Cushla Tangaere-Manuel one-upped Bishop by doing more than just listing off songs, instead singing a Labour Party remix of \u2018What\u2019s Going On?\u2019: \u201c\u2018Cut cost of living\u2019 is what the PM said, but our wh\u0101nau out there still can\u2019t buy bread, oh man! What a situation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Health minister Simeon Brown, the last to give a speech in the House for the year, read out his Christmas cards. To Labour candidate Michael Wood, who famously failed to declare shares when he was a minister: \u201cI do hope you\u2019ve received Christmas cards from all your old friends: Auckland Airport, Chorus, Spark, National Australia Bank.\u201d To another Labour candidate, Council of Trade Unions economist Craig Renney: \u201cMerry Christmas, Craig, and may your economic theories remain theoretical.\u201d To Chris Hipkins: \u201cI wish you a very Merry Christmas and may your hundredth mention of \u2018different\u2019 be the charm.\u201d<\/p>\n It was all over by 6pm \u2013 just in time for MPs to head down to the press gallery party, and let go of the past year\u2019s aches over bottles of wine, not to join together again until late January. By Thursday, the only zombies left on the parliamentary precinct found themselves under the clouds on the speaker\u2019s lawn, desperately clinging to life with the help of sausages and Powerades provided by the Labour Party, as its leader hosted a barbecue while wearing a \u201cfrickin\u2019 Chris Hipkins\u201d<\/a> tee. It\u2019s a good way to curry favour ahead of an election year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parliament slogged its way to the finish line \u2013 and got an early day off as a result.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[44152,11508,23067,54505,42,43,135,119537,40,38,41,39,136],"class_list":["post-191699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-chris-hipkins","tag-christopher-luxon","tag-david-seymour","tag-echo-chamber","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-question-time","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-winston-peters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191699","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=191699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}So long, Seymour \u2013 until next year.<\/p>\n
A reminder that cannabis can stay in your saliva for up to 72 hours.<\/p>\n
Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clark<\/p>\n
Gonna miss this guy. He\u2019s not dead or anything, just going on holiday.<\/p>\n