Beehive Diaries: A visit from the Colonial-in-Chief

Princess Anne visits the National Crisis Management Centre in the basement bunker of the Beehive as Cyclone Gabrielle causes chaos around the country; Photo / Pool

Parliament was meant to return properly this week with the Prime Minister’s statement and the first question time.

Alas, Cyclone Gabrielle put paid to those plans, forcing this week’s sitting to be rescheduled before being dropped entirely, save a brief sitting on Tuesday. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was able to time his travel well, heading up to Auckland for the Ed Sheeran concert and sticking around for the floods (knowing of course, he might be trapped there when Cabinet was set to meet on Monday - he was able to attend, but via Zoom).

Pity his Opposition number, Christopher Luxon, who was at home in Auckland over the weekend, but made the decision to travel down to Wellington on Sunday to make sure he wasn’t stranded when Parliament resumed. This came at the cost of much-desired photo ops of the leader, cocooned in hi-viz, surveying flood damage.

After Parliament rose, Luxon tried to head back to where the disaster was, but via a roundabout route most unbefitting a former airline chief executive. He tried to fly to Auckland, but the airport closed, diverting his flight to Hamilton, which closed too, forcing him to divert to Rotorua and complete the rest of the journey by car - a four-hour drive.

Quiet bit out loud.

Princess Anne picked an unfortunate week to visit New Zealand (no one ask what she thinks of the country - we would not be amused).

The Princess Royal had to can parts of her trip. She was forced to ditch a visit to Linton Military Camp in favour of a brief internment in the airless confines of the Beehive bunker. The bunker still operates with a 2021-style approach to Covid-19, requiring daily negative RATs and a mask to enter.

Anne squeezed in a visit to the Governor General Dame Cindy Kiro. In an instagram post following the meeting, Kiro called Anne the Colonial-in-Chief of the NZ Corps of Signals, instead of the Colonel-in-Chief. The post was later corrected.

Hot air

Many parties have trouble with their ex-MPs (just look at National’s troubles with vaccine sceptic and protest enthusiast Matt King), but the Greens have the added problem that many of their ex-MPs are extremely online.

On Wednesday former MPs Russel Norman, Catherine Delahunty, and Nandor Tanczos seized the means of thinkpiece production and logged on to Twitter for a right to-do about what to do about climate change

A grumpy Delahunty took at shot at current co-leader James Shaw for talking a good game on reducing emissions but not following up with action. She was backed up by an equally grizzly Norman.

In Shaw’s corner was Tanczos, who was more sympathetic to the Greens’ unfortunate position of having portfolios in a majority Labour Government, being both inside and outside the tent. Tanczos was backed up by current MP and former Minister Julie Anne Genter.

The debate devolved, as these things often do, into a debate over what constitutes a Labour Government as opposed to a Labour-Green Government.

We’re not sure if anyone got to the bottom of that, but we do know that the climate spat emitted its fair share of hot air. And for a party supposedly dedicated to the selfless virtues of collective action, the former MPs showed a remarkable tendency to make the tragedy of Cyclone Gabrielle about themselves.