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So, 2024, it’s almost a wrap – and, from me to it, good riddance.
This was the year we were meant to bounce back, but all we did was go backwards. Jobs have been lost (thousands of them) and retail is flat. People and businesses appear to have put their money away and general confidence is hard to find.
The only things that grew were the departure queue to Australia and the unemployment queue here at home. This year saw Brisbane and Sydney become the most visited destinations for us Kiwis for the first time. Many purchased only one-way tickets, a real vote of no confidence in the opportunities - or lack of - here at home.
So, let me make some judgments: My winners, losers and those who deserve a mention for good, bad or indifference.
Parliamentary winners: Winston Peters & David Seymour
These two men couldn’t stand each other 18 months ago. They get on now because, well, they have to. It suits their political ambitions to be reliable coalition partners, and they are at the centre of most government announcements. Both are relevant and appear at times, or rather most of the time, to be running the show.
Forget Seymour saying Peters is the least trustworthy politician ever and would be impossible to work with. Those days are gone; Seymour has moved on. He now commands daily headlines not just for his Treaty Principles Bill and charter schools’ work, but because he says something and stands for something.
He’s not wishy-washy like the man who runs the government, and his polling off the back of the treaty principles debate has jumped significantly. Far too often, small parties get dominated and consumed by the larger one in a coalition deal, but that’s certainly not the case here. Seymour is adamant he will not be swallowed up by a vanilla, timid and stand-for-nothing National Party.
His plan is to be re-elected in 2026 with even higher results, and so far his polling is looking strong. His numbers are up and he’ll become Deputy PM when Peters hands over the reins in May. But Peters, too, has been no slouch and has the skip in his step of a born-again Christian (which, I can assure you, he is not).
The new Minister of National Party Hospital Passes – sorry, rail – is close to 80 and he’s just been given the dud job of sorting the Cook Strait ferries. The plan is a blank canvas. In typical National Party style, the job description reads, “do it twice as good for half the price and blame Labour all the way”. It’s a huge cock-up and the reason why politicians are the last people to ask when it comes to what should be built and where.
As Foreign Minister, Peters reigns supreme. He’s widely respected and known, and his age carries weight overseas and puts New Zealand on the map. He’s more effective than Nanaia Mahuta was - to put it nicely – and he hasn’t forgotten home base. Shane Jones runs Peters’ lines for him when he’s overseas - even if voters have no idea what Jones is on about. I mean, why use three words, like Peters, when you’re far more comfortable using hundreds?
Parliamentary losers: Christopher Luxon, Nicola Willis and Labour
For a man who cobbled this coalition together and became PM after just one term as an opposition MP, this might seem a little harsh - but it’s not my job to massage egos. Sure, Christopher Luxon and his government inherited an economy with the confidence of a late-night meeting of the anxious, but there’s no shortage of evidence to show they have fixed it.
Yes, inflation and interest rates have dropped but they were going to fall anyway as part of the economic cycle. They’ve also dropped because the economy is on life-support. The outlook for growth is low, productivity is poor, tourists have gone elsewhere, consumer demand is weak, unemployment is up and going higher, record numbers have fled to Australia and the projected surplus will likely be delayed a year or three.
Luxon and Finance Minister Nicola Willis, his party’s deputy leader, are ultimately responsible for the performance of the economy. But when the good news comes out, Luxon is quick to claim it.
He needs to because this year he’s failed to win hearts and minds. His social media accounts are cringeworthy. He told us he’s really rich and sorted, he wouldn’t live in Premier House until it was upgraded. But he took his family there to stay and had last Christmas there anyway. He claimed a $1000 a week accommodation allowance despite living in a debt-free apartment he owned in Wellington, which looked terrible after he’d been telling us the country was sick of people using the government as an ATM machine. He agreed to repay it only after a media storm.
Then there are the Treaty Principles Bill debacle, the interislander ferry fiasco, and his poor judgment in selling his rental properties in front of the nation - as the tax-free gains slosh around not just on the front pages but in his bank account.
And, to top it all off, Labour’s Chris Hipkins is the preferred PM. Now that has to hurt Luxon, as Hipkins has barely been seen all year. Maybe that’s the Labour approach - hide and don’t remind people how woeful you were in office.
But Labour, for all this talk of Hipkins being ahead, must work out how it becomes relevant in the lives of New Zealanders again. Is a capital gains tax debate going to reignite interest in the party? I’m doubtful. Labour was set up to represent the working man, but when was the last time one of its MPs stumbled across a battler and had anything in common with him?
Party shocker: The Greens
The Greens have had their worst year on planet Earth. Yet somehow their supporters forgive them, and the brand remains okay, if not a little dealt to by a series of own goals.
Chole Swarbrick has handled the heat that has come her way and, no doubt, the departed James Shaw looks in the mirror each day and drops to his knees thanking the lord that he got out alive.
They used the party-hopping law they’ve always opposed to get rid of Darleen Tana; Golriz Ghahraman resigned when it dawned on her money must change hands if you take something from a shop; Efeso Collins, a fine man who promised to bring much-needed humility and kindness to the caucus, died; and co-leader Marama Davidson is fighting cancer. To top it off, new MP Kahurangi Carter would have endeared herself to almost no one when she told Parliament that many New Zealanders would rather run into a gang member than a police officer in a dark alley in the middle of the night. In touch with public sentiment? Hardly.
Activism and recruitment award: Te Pāti Māori
Te Pāti Māori should really send Seymour a Christmas card for giving them an opportunity to sink their teeth into something relevant. Te hīkoi was well planned and executed and many, many more people are now on the Māori electoral roll and in the Māori Party database. Job done.
They were fighting for something that was not going to get past select committee stage, but let’s not ruin their party with details. 2024 was proof we should never underestimate Te Pāti Māori’s social media reach.
Good guys/girls award: Mike King, Dave Letele and Theresa Gattung
Both blokes are tough survivors who do what needs to be done to stay afloat, even if they have to be outspoken to get there and be heard. They carry a huge weight of expectation on their shoulders, and while the government has funded King to the tune of $24 million over four years, “Buttabean” Dave Letele enters most weeks not knowing how he will get to the end when hundreds of families are reaching out to him for help.
He’s a machine and so are his workers. Can someone in government make it a little easier and make his funding a little more permanent?
Gattung, the former head of Telecom, is these days a mentor to young women and businesses and has personally gifted or donated close to $1 million to help young women become better at business. She keeps all this on the downlow, so I’m rewarding her by saying she’s a champion Kiwi.
Money where his mouth is: Sam Stubbs
The head of KiwiSaver provider Simplicity, Stubbs has plenty to say about business in New Zealand, but he’s spot on and he does what he says he will do. He’s using KiwiSaver deposits to build long-term rental accommodation for Kiwis with the returns going to his fund’s investors.
I have toured some of the properties and to say he can build them better, bigger and cheaper than Kainga Ora is an understatement. They look smart. He has challenged other big KiwiSaver providers to invest in the country as he is. A proud and loyal Kiwi and a man not afraid to call out those who should and could do more.
Other losers: Adrian Orr, NZ media, retailers & public servants
In Orr’s case, he said one thing and was forced to do another. He said the OCR won’t be cut until 2025 and then he started hacking into it in mid-2024. Why? Because he and his henchmen misread the economy and considered it stronger than it was. In reality, it was bleeding and Orr, despite all his advisors, misread it. Some Kiwis would have bought or sold on the back of those statements.
The media, well, that’s self-explanatory. More jobs gone; last one turn out the lights - if indeed the last power bill has been paid.
Now to retailers. So many shut down as the cost-of-living crisis limited everyone’s ability to spend -- including public servants, who, thanks to the change of government, lost their jobs en masse.
The David Brent Award for Being Cringeworthy
The King of Tik-Tok: Christopher Luxon. If you know, you know. If you haven’t seen it yet, count yourself lucky. This is our Prime Minister, folks.
The Kiwi who went global
Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke launched a haka in Parliament against the Treaty Principles Bill during its first reading, and 225 million people around the world viewed it online in the first 48 hours. Who can beat that? Not even Joe Rogan’s podcast with President Trump, that cracked 40 million YouTube viewings in three days.
Jury’s out Award
New All Blacks’ coach Scott ‘Razor’ Robertson and the team. Give him, and them, time, I guess.
