As we say goodbye to 2024 and welcome in 2025, it’s a good time to catch up on the very best of some of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to business, these are some of the voices and views our audience loved
Cabinet report card: The ministers thriving and those just surviving - Audrey Young
Ministers after being sworn in by Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro, centre front, in November 2023 at Government House, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Audrey Young
Audrey Young, Senior Political Correspondent at the New Zealand Herald based at Parliament, specialises in writing about politics and power.
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He has the same energy but he is tougher, busier and a little more impatient.
He has been battle-hardened by a successful election campaign and the realities of Government.
He developed a large Coalition agreement with two of the prickliest operators in politics, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters and Act leader David Seymour.
Some of his own ministers have been performing extremely well, such as Chris Bishop, Simeon Brown and Erica Stanford who have scored highest in the Cabinet report card.
Luxon dealt with the ones who were struggling, Melissa Lee and Penny Simmonds, more swiftly and ruthlessly than his mentor, the “smiling assassin” Sir John Key.
The ratings are out of 10 and reflect a judgment about how effective ministers have been in delivering the Government’s policy, how effective they have been in their public dealings and in leadership roles where relevant. The ratings are not about the merits of policy.
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In August Audrey Young ran the ruler over Cabinet’s best and worst performers, based on their public dealings and their effectiveness delivering policy.
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My memorable last interview with Nikki Kaye - December 5, 2024
There was one stand-out line from my last interview with Nikki Kaye: “I feel loved,” she said during a weekend on her beloved Great Barrier Island.
She was talking about the people who had continued to check in on her after her sudden departure from politics and having served 53 days as its deputy leader to Todd Muller.
It was easy to see why she felt loved. She was energetic, passionate, clever and full of fun. She came from a close family and had a loyal set of friends. Her political mentors, including Sir John Key, were helping her adjust to a new life and hoping to harness that seemingly infinite well of energy on boards inside and outside New Zealand.
She would work with anyone who shared her particular goal at the time as she did with former Green MP Kevin Hague on social issues and Labour’s Chris Hipkins on education issues.
She won the former Labour stronghold of Auckland Central because of her hard work and because she was probably the most acceptable Tory they had ever been presented with.
She was a fantastically flawed politician. She threw herself into whatever she was doing, sometimes to the point of obsession. As Key put it, she was among the most intense people he had met.
After a year she left politics, I thought she had been given enough time to lie low and suggested a novel assignment. It would allow me to visit her spiritual home, Great Barrier Island, for the first time with her as a guide, and to let readers catch up with what she had been doing outside politics. Surprisingly, she agreed.
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It was one of the most fun assignments ever.
Nikki was nervous though. She knew she had no control over what was going to be written. We had barely got out of the airport before she asked what I was going to write. She need not have worried, then or now. She was loved and admired, flaws and all. Read more >
Disturbing undertones in Te Pāti Māori’s messaging - May 31, 2024
Te Pāti Māori organised a large protest across the country on Budget day, although the issues that drew the crowds were clearly not the Budget, because they turned up despite not knowing what was in the Budget.
The rallies around the country were peaceful but there were violent undertones in Te Pāti Māori’s messaging that are highly disturbing. The ads promoting a day of action featured guns against a fiery backdrop. Co-leader Rawiri Waititi now talks openly about revolution inside and outside Parliament, and his wife, Kiri, in a much-publicised TikTok post, talks about overthrowing the Government.
There is no shortage of Māori policies within the coalition against which to foment dissent and convince a new generation that the Government is hell-bent on making Māori second-class citizens in their own country, and on “exterminating” Māori cultural values.
But how this should be responded to politically is difficult. Read more >
Government ropes in old mates for new jobs - March 29, 2024
This week, two more former National Party ministers were roped into jobs advising the new Government.
Former Foreign Minister Murray McCully is leading a ministerial review of the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function for Education Minister Erica Stanford, his successor in East Coast Bays. And former Finance Minister Steven Joyce is leading a panel advising the Treasury on the design of a new infrastructure agency promised by the Government.
As well, former Prime Minister Sir Bill English is conducting a review into Kainga Ora; former National Party leader Simon Bridges has been made chair of Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency; and former minister Roger Sowry is on a ministerial review into KiwiRail’s inter-island ferry service.
If they weren’t all so capable, the Government could be accused of cronyism. Read more >
Opposition party power rankings: The top 10 - November 11, 2024
It has been just over a year since the New Zealand election, and much of the focus at the one-year anniversary has been on the parties of Government and their performance.
But it has also been a year since Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori were cemented as members of the Opposition.
And that is a much harder place from which to make an impact.
With new policies being rolled out month by month and serious new issues presenting themselves, there is not a great appetite to hear from the losers of last year’s election.
Calibration is required in Opposition. You have to pick your fights and the intensity of them. The level of opposition to contentious new policy has to be balanced against the mandate the Government has been given to implement it.
In identifying 10 of the best Opposition MPs at present, we have not counted the party leaders or deputies. Read more >
