The Prime Minister hosted a party at Premier House. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The Prime Minister hosted a party at Premier House. Photo / Mark Mitchell
It’s Christmas party season in Wellington (as everywhere else).
The Prime Minister hosted a rare party for media with ministers at Premier House on Thursday afternoon - her first since early 2020.
The party is some evidence of a theory that the number of parties hosted by politicians exhibits aninverse correlation to that party’s polling.
Labour’s last proper knees-up was in early 2020 when the party trailed National. National once hosted regular mid-winter and Christmas drinks but hasn’t put anything on this year now it is comfortably in front of Labour in the polls.
To ensure the guests did not outstay their welcome, the party was cannily scheduled for the evening of the Homewood Ball, hosted by the British High Commission, and known to be one of the best Christmas parties in Wellington (after the Press Gallery party, of course).
That meant editors and journalists had to leg it from Premier House up to Karori by about 7pm.
Those ministers present were cautious not to imbibe too much in case they succumbed to the perils of in vino veritas. Just ahead of the drinks, Jacinda Ardern did her end-of-year interviews, telling media that a round of resignations would be announced next week. It was intended as forewarning to ensure it did not catch people by surprise - but instead it sparked a frenzy of interrogations of MPs in the corridors.
Commerce Minister David Clark all but outed himself as someone in line for retirement - the rest have so far stayed mum.
Grant Robertson has had to cancel or postpone a fair few events in recent times - the reason is a ruptured disc in his back. It is a very painful state of affairs indeed which appeared to be the result of a combination of house cleaning and the aggravation of an old rugby injury. He reported it was too painful to sit for long, and that had meant he could not fly and had to take part in meetings while standing - as a result of which he also now had sore feet.
Question Time in Parliament was also proving problematic, given it involves a lot of sitting and standing - and it is against the rules to stand while anyone else is also standing.
Out of country, out of trouble?
Happily for Labour, one minister who can still fly is Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson, who is jetting off for a quick four-day visit to Paris and Dublin today after being in the headlines all week over the RNZ-TVNZ merger.
Cartoon / Rod Emmerson
Jackson was putting on his Māori Development Minister hat to attend a Unesco conference for the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. The trip had been in the diary for about six months - but the timing will be a relief for Jackson and his bosses, taking him out of the country and out of trouble for the last week of Parliament before MPs break for six weeks over summer. Carmel Sepuloni will take over as Acting Broadcasting Minister in his (short) absence.
Hair of the dog
National Party MP Mark Mitchell took a break from hammering Labour on crime to fulfil his annual duty of judging a dog obedience class at the Hibiscus Coast Dog Training Club.
But owners of some dogs in the competition were warned: Mitchell admitted he was a biased judge, noting that having owned two German shepherds in his days as a police dog handler, he now had two schnauzers in his life. Sure enough, Reggie, a schnauzer, appeared to be Mitchell’s favourite for the competition.
Reggie was not the only dog stealing hearts this week. As MPs made their way into question time on Wednesday, some would have seen a small black pooch wandering the Speaker’s office corridor alone - apparently without an owner.
