'Chris Hipkins is usually good at picking issues to prosecute against the PM. But it was dud after dud yesterday.' Photo / Mark Mitchell
Audrey Young is the New Zealand Herald’s senior political correspondent. She was named Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards in 2023, 2020 and 2018.
OPINION
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Welcome to the Politics Briefing. Christopher Luxon was right; it was an unusually petty line of questioning yesterday from Chris Hipkins compared to the many issues deeply affecting Kiwis at the moment.
Instead Hipkins asked about two issues that have been largely done and dusted to within a speck. But he picked them up nonetheless. One was about Trade Minister Todd McClay having made a stupid remark to Mexico-born MP Ricardo Menendez March (“we’re not in Mexico now”), for which he has already fulsomely apologised and which Hipkins suggested was workplace harassment and that such harassment is often defended as friendly banter.
The other was the issue of the Act Party and their botched and unsuccessful stance to defend the right to wear Act logo pins in the House when they were instrumental in banning other party logos from display.
Hipkins danced on the head of the Act pin and suggested that Children’s Minister Karen Chhour had effectively refused to answer a question as a minister because she chose to keep on her badge when the Speaker had said she could only participate in Question Time if she took it off. In fact, the Speaker had made it clear that no Act MP could ask or answer a question until all its MPs complied with the rules. Todd Stephenson removed his pin but was still not allowed to ask a question until all Act MPs had done the same.
But these mere facts belonged to last week, as did another issue Hipkins prosecuted - a Winston Peters tweet on the gender row in the women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics. Why Hipkins would resurrect these topics this week is a mystery. He is usually good at picking issues to prosecute against the PM. But it was dud after dud yesterday. Perhaps he threw it open to the caucus to pick the issues that irked them.
Hipkins has one question to ask himself when deciding what to challenge the PM about, and it is this: what do New Zealanders care about most at present? It sure isn’t a failed attempt at humour, a lapel pin or a bizarre Winston Peters tweet.
The other issue Chris Hipkins raised with the PM was the matter of Paul Goldsmith in his capacity of Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister amending a letter drafted by an official to an Australian Cabinet minister to remove te reo Māori references in the greeting: Tēnā koe was replaced with dear, Aotearoa New Zealand was replaced with New Zealand, and the sign-off, Nāku noa, nā, became Yours sincerely.
Goldsmith had been inviting an Australian minister to a Matariki event and thought it best to use English. The official invitation had used te reo. A request by Labour’s Willie Jackson for an urgent debate on the matter was appropriately declined by the Speaker as not meeting the threshold. This was definitely worth a question from Jackson to Goldsmith given the Government’s broader Māori agenda, but not much else.
The one good thing that came out of it was a humorous answer by the Prime Minister in response to Hipkins - he said in his dealings with Australians, it paid to be simple and clear (see Bouquet below).
Children’s Minister Karen Chhour last week and on Tuesday refused to address pressing questions from the Opposition about funding cuts to social service providers contracted by Oranga Tamariki. Oranga Tamariki was one of those agencies originally explicitly excluded by National from the razor gang, as was Health, Education, Corrections, Police and Defence.
The promise was ditched in coalition talks and OT has not only had its own significant staff cuts, it is now cutting funding from community providers. As colleague Adam Pearse has reported, Oranga Tamariki is ending more than 330 community service contracts and cutting its service provider spend by $139 million following a review. Chhour has not endeared herself to the sector by referring to Oranga Tamariki as a “cash cow for community service providers who say they will provide services, and then don’t”.
“There has been no reduction in frontline services,” she said. “Oranga Tamariki is simply funding those who do the work, and not those who don’t.”
On Tuesday, Finance Minister Nicola Willis effectively warned the House that the cupboard was bare. Having set a small allowance of $2.4 billion for new spending in the Budget for 2025, precommitments for health and cancer drugs have already been booked against it. That meant there was less than $1b spare in new spending. Anything beyond that would have to come from new streams of revenue or cuts to existing spending.
Willis has come up with a new measure to control spending: ministers are now required to come up with a fiscally sustainable “performance plan” for their respective agencies. The directive was issued as part of a Cabinet Office circular last week, and a “workforce policy statement” has been issued telling public service chiefs they will have to fund staffing and wage increases from existing budgets or future cuts.
The performance plans look like a departure from state sector reforms and will necessarily bring ministers much closer to the management and operations of the agency for which they have oversight. Quite how obligations such as meeting pay equity claims are to be accommodated in the workforce statements is not clear.
The unemployment rate went up yesterday to 4.6%, rising by 33,000 in the past year to 143,000. Several large companies are under threat of big job losses as they face a huge spike in energy costs.
I’ve had a couple of substantial pieces recently that are worth a read.
The first was an interview with one of the rock stars of geopolitical analysis, the distinguished Australian academic and author Professor Hugh White. It was about Aukus and what it really means for the United States. He also gave a lecture in Auckland earlier in the week and one in Wellington last night to the NZ Institute of International Affairs on what happens after the US loses its primacy in the Asia-Pacific region. Both his hosts were there - former Prime Minister Helen Clark and former National Party leader Don Brash.
The other piece was the rating of the Cabinet from zero to 10. Spoiler alert: no one got a zero or a 10. It coincided with the National Party conference that Claire Trevett and Simon Wilson have written about.
“Our Te Tiriti is under threat. Time is important. Intention is important. Strategy is important. Energy is important. Stay well and look after each other, because, as we’ve said, the next karanga will be big. That is why we’re calling on the necessity for our own Parmata [Parliament], because, whānau mā, this is not the way for our mokopuna to be living in Aotearoa” - Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa Packer in the general debate yesterday. Something’s brewing and my bet it is about the foreshore and seabed bill.
The president of which country is currently visiting New Zealand? (Answer below.)
Goes to Police Minister Mark Mitchell for a word beginning with H. He has turned down a request by Labour’s Ginny Anderson to visit a police station, which may not be a federal case - except he made a federal case out of Labour having refused his own request in Opposition to meet district commanders and the Police Commissioner.
Goes to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon for his zinger in Question Time yesterday: “... in my dealings with Australians, it always pays to be incredibly simple and clear and use English”. The best transtasman joke since Muldoon said the exodus of Kiwis across the Tasman raised the IQ of both countries. Peter Dutton’s quip comparing 501s to putting out the trash doesn’t count. That was designed to hurt.
Public sector funding: Finance Minister Nicola Willis has warned most Government departments not to expect cost pressure top-ups in next year’s Budget.
Analysis - drug funding: Correspondence released under the Official Information Act reveals the Government’s scrabble to fund new cancer drugs in the face of public backlash, writes Derek Cheng.
Blocked visit: Police Minister Mark Mitchell is refusing to allow Labour’s police spokeswoman Ginny Andersen to meet an Auckland police inspector.
Opinion - National Party conference: Despite a lot of “back on track” posturing at National’s annual conference, there were signs the party is subtly evolving, writes Simon Wilson.
Opinion - Cabinet report card: Audrey Young runs the ruler over Cabinet’s best and worst performers, based on their public dealings and their effectiveness in delivering policy.
Race relations: Former National Party leader Sir John Key has called on people to “take the temperature down a wee bit” in the debate around race issues.
Opinion - National Party conference: It was no surprise Prime Minister Christopher Luxon reached for education when it came to delivering a policy move at his party’s annual conference, writes Claire Trevett.
Quiz answer: The President of India, Droupadi Murmu
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Expectations tempered around return to surplus in 2027/28.