{"id":444591,"date":"2026-05-25T16:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T16:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/444591\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T16:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T16:16:11","slug":"willis-accepts-edmonds-apology-over-duck-faced-horse-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/444591\/","title":{"rendered":"Willis accepts Edmonds’ apology over ‘duck-faced horse’ comment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finance Minister Nicola Willis says she’s accepted Barbara Edmonds’ apology after Labour’s finance spokesperson referred to her as a “duck-faced horse”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The comment was made during a media question-and-answer training exercise at a Labour candidate list conference over the weekend. <\/p>\n

During the exercise, MPs were asked: “Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?”<\/p>\n

In leaked audio sent to media, Edmonds replied, “Every week I have to stand up in the House and ask a duck-faced horse \u2013 did I get that right? \u2013 questions every single week”.<\/p>\n

The MP for Mana today told RNZ she felt “terrible about it”.<\/p>\n

“I do apologise for any offence that it caused,” she said. <\/p>\n

“Especially to the Minister of Finance. That was not my intention, and I apologise for it.”<\/p>\n

Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who was not at the event, told reporters the audio leak was a “good reminder that all of these events are public events, even if they’re internal party events”.<\/p>\n

“MPs and candidates need to be aware that the information could be shared more widely.”<\/p>\n

In a tongue-in-cheek response this evening, Willis said she accepted the minister’s apology, adding that it was “water off a duck’s back, really”.<\/p>\n

Willis added that the “bigger revelation” from the training camp was Labour’s “utter disdain for answering the public’s genuine policy questions”. <\/p>\n

“The duck-horse antics came from a session in which MPs and candidates were being coached on a formula for avoiding answering voters’ questions.<\/p>\n

“I think Kiwis are too smart to be fooled by that kind of horse play.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finance Minister Nicola Willis says she’s accepted Barbara Edmonds’ apology after Labour’s finance spokesperson referred to her as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,135,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-444591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444591","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=444591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}