{"id":391740,"date":"2026-04-22T07:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T07:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/391740\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T07:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T07:35:10","slug":"nicola-willis-demands-apology-after-chris-hipkins-medical-help-jibe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/391740\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicola Willis demands apology after Chris Hipkins\u2019 \u2018medical help\u2019 jibe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Willis: \u201cI take offence to the statement that I need medical help, which I find offensive … I would like to assure all members of this House that I\u2019m in great health and I went for an excellent run with the Treasurer of Australia, the British Chancellor in Washington DC recently and I find it offensive and in a long line of politicians in this House making personal aspersions on people. And in this case, I find that is disreputable for the Leader of the Opposition to have conducted himself that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hipkins: \u201cI withdraw my statement if the member has taken it out of context. I was referring, of course, to the noise that she made, and nothing else.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Question Time, Hipkins was speaking to reporters in the foyer of Parliament, explaining that his comment was in response to \u201can unusual noise\u201d and he said that if she was genuinely offended by it, he would be happy to restate that.<\/p>\n

\"ChrisChris Hipkins insisted his comments were only about the unusual sound Nicola Willis made, and nothing else. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n

At that point, she approached him in front of reporters: \u201cWould you like to apologise?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hipkins: \u201cI\u2019m happy to if you were genuinely offended by what I said. I was referring to the noise that you were making and nothing else.<\/p>\n

Willis: \u201cI think you know exactly what you were meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

She then walked off.<\/p>\n

Willis has been asked for further comment on what she thought Hipkins was really meaning.<\/p>\n

It is no secret that Willis has lost a lot of weight in the past year, through diet and exercise. <\/p>\n

\"FinanceFinance Minister Nicola Willis out for a run in Washington DC last week with other finance ministers, Rachel Reeves, from the UK, Jim Chalmers from Australia in black and Arcadi Espana, from Spain. Photo \/ Instagram<\/p>\n

That appeared to be the point she was making about her having been running with counterparts from Australia and Britain (and Spain) at the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Willis: \u201cI take offence to the statement that I need medical help, which I find offensive … I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,53633,3246,57344,3276,119857,51502,84587,246,71,42,5838,13480,2944,202523,6721,13489,3523,6722,23362,43,20484,14727,2215,1865,40,38,41,39,792],"class_list":{"0":"post-391740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-after","9":"tag-apology","10":"tag-both","11":"tag-chamber","12":"tag-chris","13":"tag-debating","14":"tag-demanded","15":"tag-demands","16":"tag-finance","17":"tag-from","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-help","20":"tag-hipkins","21":"tag-inside","22":"tag-jibe","23":"tag-labour","24":"tag-leader","25":"tag-medical","26":"tag-minister","27":"tag-needed","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-nicola","30":"tag-outside","31":"tag-suggested","32":"tag-today","33":"tag-top-news","34":"tag-top-stories","35":"tag-topnews","36":"tag-topstories","37":"tag-willis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391740","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=391740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}