National party leader Christopher Luxon spoke to the media at Fieldays.
Video / Mike Scott
The secret liaisons of David Seymour and Christopher Luxon
We haven’t been treated to a good, old-school staged cup of tea between a National Party leader and an Act leader since 2011, when a recording device left on the table in a Newmarket cafe scandalously captured a conversation betweenJohn Banks and John Key.
However, it transpires it’s reappeared on the down-low.
A photo of Act’s David Seymour and National’s Christopher Luxon hunched over a small table in the corner of a Remuera cafe appeared on social media on Tuesday.
Asked about it, Seymour said the two occasionally met up to chew the fat and even described them as friends. No, it wasn’t the start of the coalition negotiations.
Neither Seymour nor Luxon will be that pained about getting sprung: In fact, the next day Luxon referred to it as evidence the two would have a good working relationship in the event they moved to the government benches.
The “cup of tea” was originally a way for National to signal to its voters in Epsom that they should support the Act party candidate in the seat, to ensure Act made it into Parliament and National had a potential governing partner. These days, Act is doing a lot better and National may well be keen to trim the number of Act MPs rather than boost them.
Chris of the Week:
The discovery that Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr’s dreams had been answered with a recession – albeit by a squeak – should have been enough to deliver this week to Christopher Luxon, especially in an election year when recessions are not usually compatible with winning an election.
Chris Hipkins and Chris Luxon duke it out for Chris of the Week. Photo / Rod Emmerson
However, we don’t like to reward politically expedient u-turns or stupid comments.
National’s decision to u-turn on its previously strong support for He Waka Eke Noa and push agricultural emissions charges out to 2030 reeked more of an attempt to tackle Seymour’s target of 15 per cent than keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees.
As for Luxon’s clanger that New Zealand was a “wet and whiny country”, it won’t be quickly forgotten - Hipkins will make sure of that. On the scale of stupid, it’s around the same level as former Labour leader David Cunliffe’s “sorry for being a man” - but at least that only insulted half the country.
Chris of the Week goes to Chris Hipkins.
The not-so-friendly meeting of NZ First leader Winston Peters and Chris Hipkins at Fieldays
Luxon and Seymour’s catch-up was much more of a meet-cute than the catch-up between PM Chris Hipkins and NZ First leader Winston Peters at Fieldays. Peters is still facing flak among National-friendly voters for choosing Labour in 2017, and after their lunchtime chat was clearly keen to make sure people knew that Hipkins had come up to him – not vice versa.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins at Fieldays at Mystery Creek near Hamilton. Photo / Mike Scott
After someone on Twitter mentioned the lunch, Peters replied, “Get it right sunshine. I was having lunch when he came and interrupted me. Understand that during this campaign any lie will be met with the truth whether you like it or not.”
Whether the National voters are convinced by his declaration that he would not side with Labour again is debatable: The crowd gathered outside The Country’s open-air studio at Fieldays applauded loudly for Christopher Luxon and David Seymour, while Hipkins and other ministers got silence. Peters was heckled and heckled back.
One of the loudest cheers during Seymour’s appearance was when he called Peters “a muppet”.
