Parliament will wind up next week for the summer break and MPs will return in late January.
The cartoon attached to this column for Politician of the Year gives away the game a bit. For those who only read the words and do not look at the pictures, spoiler alert: it is Simeon Brown.
You can skip to the end if youonly want to read about the winner.
However, there were several names in contention at the start of deliberations.
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi proved to be experts at capitalising on the Government’s moves and (with a lot of help from Act leader David Seymour) managed to get tens of thousands of people into a hīkoi to Parliament. They end the year as the only party ending the year in a significantly better position in the polls than they started it.
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi (left) and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer at Parliament. Photo / Marty Melville
Act leader David Seymour is definitely a good politician and knows how to get what he wants. However, at times he has caused more strife for the Government he’s a part of than all the Opposition parties combined have. That is also the reason none of the Opposition MPs are getting this accolade.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon might want credit for managing to hold his coalition together – sometimes at the cost of his own ego - and for his focus on keeping his ministers’ eyes on their jobs and churning through their work.
However, he’s had a few clumsy and unnecessary own-goals and thus far has not managed to improve his polling. He has also found himself pushed and pulled by distractions delivered up by his coalition partners more than he would have liked.
The most glaring example of that was the amount of time he has had to dedicate to Act’s Treaty Principles Bill. Luxon has no choice but to have to address such matters.
Illustration / Rod Emmerson
His ministers can more easily tune out all of that white noise and focus on the job in front of them.
Luxon’s - and National’s - longer-term success depends on those ministers delivering in the areas he had promised: most notably, the economy and cost of living, law and order, health and infrastructure.
In the first year of a new government, delivery should be king – not least because you only have two more years before the next election, when you have to point to what you have delivered.
The job of a new government is to get things done for that time, not to create havoc for the sake of a few points in the polls now.
Getting things done is also a suitable metric for judging the politician of the year at this stage of the electoral cycle – and so it will go to a minister.
The freshly hatched gang patch ban and wider law-and-order push has been valuable for keeping the National Party base happy at a time most ministers have to compromise for the sake of the coalition. It has also delivered a lot of hard-hitting headlines, and law and order - accompanying social media memes included - has eased as a concern in voters’ minds.
It was tempting to give it to Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith for ushering through the legislation in that area. However, that would only be for the fun of winding up Police Minister Mark Mitchell, the gangbuster-in-chief, by giving Goldsmith all the credit for a lot of Mitchell’s work and tough-talking sales job of it. So, sorry Goldie, it isn’t you but it also isn’t Mitchell.
Education Minister Erica Stanford’s name was raised by many, both for her changes in education and dealing with the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care.
In education, she knew her target audience was parents and the pivot back to teaching “the basics” well has served to please those parents. She has also managed to avoid rubbing the teacher unions up the wrong way too much – a heroic achievement for a National Party Education Minister. However, the results of those efforts will not be known yet.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis with Minister for Rail Winston Peters. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has an unenviable and often thankless task. It has helped her that the cost of living has eased as inflation drops, and interest rates along with it – but that is not something she can claim all the credit for.
Next week’s Half-Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update seems almost certain to show that the path to surplus is a longer one than she initially aimed for – and the deficit not a pretty one.
That is a blunt but traditional (and often self-imposed) measure of success for a Finance Minister, regardless of the headwinds they face. She has had to drive the painful cuts to the public sector. Then there are the ferries. She can thank Winston Peters for making that harder than she wanted.
So when it comes to getting things done without major mishap, none have been able to rival Simeon Brown, who holds the Transport, Auckland, Energy and Local Government portfolios. He has gone at his portfolios like a bull at a gate, he has impressed his boss and has gained the respect of Cabinet.
The only one he is yet to grab by the throat is the Energy portfolio. That could yet come, once his review of the electricity market is completed.
Brown does not exactly cut a commanding presence but he has proved to be highly effective, unflappable and competent – with just enough of an edge of the retail politician not to be too boring.
In some ways, his job has appeared easy – partly because he has made it look that way.
He has not had to water down National’s campaign promise list much to accommodate coalition partners’ desires, nor compromise on National’s own promises.
People like roads and he gets to build them – a lot of them (the hard bit has been paying for them).
People also do not like lower speed limits, potholes or speed bumps and raised crossings every 200 metres, and he got to declare their demise. His potholes fund seemed like a gimmick at the time he came up with it, but he has proved a master at squeezing every drop of publicity out of it.
Come 2026, those roads will be one of the tangible things National can tout to show they are doing what they said they would.
He has not been afraid to make a politically unpalatable decision if he can argue the ends justifies the means – as evidenced by his announcement on Friday that three of the new Roads of National Significance would be tolled to pay for their upkeep.
He has not faced as many headwinds as other ministers, although he has withstood the bracing breezes of a Transpower pylon falling over, energy prices spiking and Auckland’s Mayor Wayne Brown. Perhaps their mutual loathing of road cones has assisted in building a constructive and productive relationship between government and Auckland Council, most recently seen with the overhaul of Auckland Transport.
A large part of Simeon Brown’s success is because he has proven to have a very good political radar. He has been quick to move when he sees a problem, rather than let it fester to the point it becomes a bigger problem.
When he has moved, it has been fast but not over the top. On Wellington Council, for example, he settled on a Crown observer rather than the more muscular intervention he could have opted for.
He has not tried to use a crisis as an excuse to make major changes. When energy prices surged over winter, he opted for a review rather than a big shake-up of the sector. Shane Jones was not alone in considering that too timid, but Brown’s approach is a steady one.
Unlike other ministers, he has not tripped up in his haste to make change, and has avoided having to embark on embarrassing backtracks and fix-ups later.
That is because he has usually got it right to start with.
