There could be only one winner of the coveted I’m Entitled to This Award Award in this year’s Listener review but others were a closer-run thing.
The year had barely begun when Green MP Golriz Ghahraman locked in the People’s Anti-capitalist Award for Appropriation of the Means of Production: high fashion division.
On January 10, Ghahraman stood down from her justice and foreign affairs portfolios after being accused of stealing clothes from an Auckland fashion boutique. She resigned a week later and was subsequently convicted on four charges of shoplifting.
It kicked off a year of chaos for the Greens. At the end of January, co-leader James Shaw announced his retirement and, in late February, Efeso Collins died less than a week after giving his maiden speech.
In mid-March, the party elected Chlöe Swarbrick to replace Shaw, then suspended Darlene Tana after allegations of migrant exploitation in relation to her husband’s e-bike business. Tana is the official winner of the 2024 My Work Is Not Yet Done Prize, proudly following in the footsteps of former Green MP Elizabeth Kerekere in refusing to leave Parliament at the urging of her party.
Tana insisted that she had important work left to do. This seemed to consist of inflicting maximum legal and political damage on the party that elected her. She was finally removed from Parliament in October.
In June, co-leader Mārama Davidson revealed she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was taking leave from Parliament. She has yet to return. The party’s polling peaked in February and March and has slowly trended down since then.
Politicians across the political spectrum showed strong form in March, including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon who we duly recognise with the I’m Entitled to This Award Award, for his bold decision to claim a $52,000 per annum housing allowance to live inside his own apartment, which he held mortgage free. He elected to pay back the money.
Luxon has struggled to connect with the wider electorate: being extremely wealthy and rather self-serving in an age of economic austerity may have something to do with this.
He is also the recipient of the Listener’s coveted Scalable Granular Agile Cloud Stream Pivot! Fellowship, in recognition of his well-known practise of communicating in baffling corporate jargon, punctuated by his catchphrase: “I don’t know how I can be any clearer.”
Moving down the National Party ranks, we have a three-way tie for the Breaking Out of the Traps on the Inside Straight Trophy, awarded to Erica Stanford, Chris Bishop and Simeon Brown, National’s most effective ministers.
They exploded into government like greyhounds racing for the hare, fangs bared, and eyes narrowed on the goal of effective policy implementation. (In this metaphor the Prime Minister is a cheerful labrador, trotting behind, wagging his tail and assuming everyone is cheering at him.)
All three ministers have adopted a highly unorthodox approach to government: using their time in opposition to develop knowledge of their portfolio areas then designing policies they’re now rapidly implementing.
Some political observers doubt this will be as effective as the standard technique of doing nothing in opposition, convening working groups to figure out what you want to do once you’re made a minister, and then being voted out before you can deliver on the recommendations.
Others are cautiously optimistic that this novel approach of doing things may achieve more than not doing things. Only time will tell.
Chris Bishop is also the winner of this year’s We’re All Trying to Find the Guy Who Did This Award for cancelling all of Labour’s infrastructure projects and then complaining about the cost of uncertainty in the nation’s infrastructure pipeline. (He defended his decisions on the grounds that Labour’s projects were “dumb projects”.)
Among the other impressive performers on the government benches is Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk, to whom we award the Move Fast and Make Things Prize for his realisation that the regulations preventing people from building houses might be affecting the supply of housing.
Todd McClay is the Official New Zealand Trade Minister of the Year for his diligent work in diversifying our export markets before our two largest partners – China and the US – go to war. If they destroy each other in a nuclear conflagration, the impact on our current account deficit would be devastating.
This column also grudgingly acknowledges that Nicola Willis was correct in her assertion that the tax cuts she introduced in her May Budget would not be inflationary.
We recognise this by endowing her with the rarely bestowed Gold Certificate for Making Accurate Economic Predictions While Holding the Finance Portfolio, last awarded to Liberal Party MP Joseph Ward for his meticulous fiscal forecasting during World War I.
Willis is also the recipient of this year’s Sisyphus Prize for her diligent work attempting to return the government’s books back to surplus.
Ayesha Verrall is the 2024 Opposition MP of the Year: fish, barrel and smoking gun category for her prosecution of Associate Health Minister Casey Costello, whose pro-tobacco company policies raise questions about the role of ministers promoting the sale of addictive carcinogens while holding a health portfolio.
Chris Hipkins has achieved runner-up with distinction in the Silent but Deadly Tournament. He drifts lazily on the surface of politics like an innocuous tree trunk then lunges out of the water whenever the government lets its guard down, his razor-sharp teeth tearing and shredding its soft flesh. Current polling has Labour impressively close to National.
But the clear winner in this category is the Opportunities Party, which has no leader or media presence yet averages 2% in recent polls. It’s an inspiration to all the parliamentary parties: in politics, less can be more.
Labour’s Māori caucus leader, Willie Jackson, has distinguished himself in the field of being Neither Silent nor Deadly but a Mysterious Third Thing for his dedication to campaigning on behalf of his political rival, Te Pāti Māori, and maximising media coverage for his deadly enemy, Act.
Of course, more can also be more, ably demonstrated by Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke for her heard-around-the-world haka, earning her the I’m Not Locked in Here with You, You’re Locked in Here with Me Taonga.
There’s an old Philip K Dick novel featuring a talkshow host – Buster Friendly – who somehow appears on TV for more than 24 hours a day, every day, and the 2024 Buster Friendly Award for Media Ubiquity can go only to David Seymour.
The Act Party leader has enjoyed the most prolific and productive year of any minor party leader in government, from charter schools, expanded funding for cancer treatments and legalising pseudoephedrine to provoking an incipient civil war.
Many of Seymour’s policies are designed to be polarising, but he’s the only senior MP who is looking at the rather sorry state of the nation and proposing systemic change rather than technocratic tinkering. This makes him disproportionately powerful. In six months, he’ll become the Deputy Prime Minister.
Our final parliamentary award is the Distinguished Winston Peters Prize for Advanced Winston Petersism in the Field of Winston Petersing: senior category. It goes to Winston Peters for the 49th consecutive year.
He continues to do unparalleled work in this field, ranging from scolding UN Security Council members for talking during his speech and his feud with former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr to dismissing a Te Pāti Māori MP’s statement during Question Time as a “retard comment”. The Deputy Prime Minister remains unchallenged.
The Listener also recognises local government politicians, notably Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, recipient of the Get Off My Lawn Cup. Brown won the hearts of the nation for his eloquent expressions of hatred towards Wellington and its politicians, referring to Auckland as “my city, not theirs”, dismissing the capital as “a dump”, and following up this statement by writing an op-ed for the Post, Wellington’s local newspaper, explaining in great detail why he hates the capital.
Speaking of which, Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau is hereby awarded the Dude! Where’s my Car Prize for Sustained Incoherence in a Mayoral Role, after telling a radio interviewer she was selling her car to pay the bills, then denying this in a subsequent interview, only to have her staff issue a press release confirming that she did.
Whanau also confidently assured Q + A interviewer Jack Tame that a vote to prevent the sale of shares in Wellington Airport would succeed, before changing her mind mid-interview and declaring it would fail. The vote succeeded.
The public servant of the year was surely Treasury chief economist Dominick Stephens, to whom we award the Now I am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds Cup for his detailed and persuasive speeches documenting the upcoming and seemingly inevitable bankruptcy of central government.
Lastly, in recognition of the many millennials serving in local and national politics not yet named, all politicians will receive the 2024 People’s Participation Trophy, in recognition of whatever they did all year. It has been a grim 12 months – we’re still in recession, our naval survey ship HMNZS Manawanui sank, the Interislander ferry Aratere drifted on to a reef – and next year looks less promising with every new economic forecast.
The impending Donald Trump restoration squats over the planet’s future like a blond monster on a yoga ball. So, in gratitude for reading, we would like to honour you, the reader, with a Summer Without Politics prize. You’ve earned it.
