It’s officially official: David Seymour is Jesus. He must be. The Act leader is now formally working with NZ First captain Winston Peters, something Seymour said back in July he couldn’t do because “I am not Jesus”. Ipso facto, he is now Jesus, though we all know Seymour’s not the messiah, just a very naughty boy.
If Seymour was Jesus, what would that make Peters? Pontius Pilate, perhaps? Watch your back, Jesus. Nah. She’ll be right. Jesus and Pilate have apparently forgotten about all their past mud-slinging, so I suppose we will have to, too.
And so has our new Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, who in the dark ages before the election said of Peters: “I don’t know him and I don’t want to work with him, unless I have to.” It seems he now has to. And look at them now, sitting around that strangely ugly table for their first Cabinet meeting together, all nice as pie, all comrades in coalition.
Now the deals have been done and the jobs handed out, the country finally knows just what it’s in for: the most right-wing government the country has seen in many, many years. On the way back, among other things, are smoking for all, interest deductability for landlords and a three-strikes law for crims. Mind you, if any of that gives you a headache, pseudoephedrine is soon to be back on pharmacy shelves, too.
In doing his deals, Luxon seems to have created a number of problems for his own party. National’s key election policy, a tax cut plan that already had more holes in it than a pair of old socks, looks even more unaffordable now the Nats have been forced by NZ First to scrap the foreign buyers tax, which was going to help pay for it.
The Great Negotiator has also bought himself a fight he likely doesn’t want over the Treaty of Waitangi, conceding support to the select committee stage for Act’s Treaty Principles Bill.
Look who’s laughing
Luxon’s most bonkers concession has been in choosing which of the two raving egos he’s gone into coalition with would be his deputy prime minister: both, which rather suggests that it’s not him who is running this dog and pony show, even though the curtain has only just gone up.
But for heaven’s sake, don’t call them co-deputies or say that they will be sharing the role. “We’re not co-deputies; get it right for a start,” Peters growled. What a shame. What a waste of lame gags. There goes the opportunity to ask: will they be hot-desking? Would the arrangement be like buying a timeshare in a holiday home in the tropics? Who would get to use the holiday home first? Too bad. Peters will never be a co-anything.
Peters will get first go. Of course he will. Peters does not go second. Also, should Luxon’s “strong and stable government” become a “coalition of chaos”, the second in line might not actually get to be deputy PM at all.
What could possibly go wrong? Well, it already has. At the announcement of the coalition government in the Beehive banquet hall, when it was Peters’ turn to be cordial and cheerful about the completion of the deals, he instead got stuck into the media. We’ve got at least three years of this. So has Luxon. That nervous laughter you could hear coming from him out of shot was the sound of a brand-new prime minister who has belatedly realised he’s invited a bull into his china shop and it is eyeing up the Wedgwood.
We’ve all heard that sort of nervous laughter before. It’s an echo from the Christmas lunch you invited your curmudgeonly and opinionated Uncle Bob to. He’s loudly airing his cranky opinions and you’re left wondering what the hell you were thinking.
Peters’ chief beef with the media seems to be that he didn’t get enough attention during the election campaign. Now he’s getting almost all of the attention. Ahem, again, pre-election, the Listener ran a photo essay which was supposed to feature all of the leaders and co-leaders. Peters initially agreed to take part and then, poof, he proved impossible to pin down. Perhaps he had gone fishing.
Some good news. Seymour told Radio NZ that he and Winston have bonded over a shared love of kuri (dogs). How … touching. Does this mean they both have mutts? Peters is certainly a bulldog, because they have the grumpiest faces in the dog world. Seymour is more of a Jack Russell because they are easily over-excited and like digging holes.
Perhaps they also bonded over pet bonds, something that Act managed to slip into its coalition deal, and involves landlords negotiating larger bonds for tenants wanting to accommodate their pets, a policy hitherto to be known as The Weird Stain on the Carpet Clause. How much more, you wonder, would you have to pay if you fancy having a llama as a flatmate?
Nasty stains
Peters is already leaving marks on the carpet that Luxon will have trouble getting out. For reasons known only to him, he has decided to channel Donald Trump and accuse the media of corruption. To wit, the Public Interest Journalism Fund set up in February 2021 to save the media from collapsing during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when the advertising that the media survives on dropped sharply.
Instead of a safety net, Peters sees a devious and clearly dodgy scheme making the media shills for Labour. “You cannot defend $55 million of bribery. Get it very clear,” he thundered. With the greatest of respect – to borrow a favourite Petersism – that is bollocks.
The bribery accusation came in response to media questions about another attack on things Māori: the coalition government’s promise to curtail use of te reo across the public service. And just how did we end up with all those funny foreign words being used by the public service? Because National and Act passed a law back in 2016 (the Māori Language Act) to encourage the public service to use all those funny foreign words. Funny, eh?
How much will it cost to rebrand our public services? Peters doesn’t like that kind of “silly” question, but he is allowed to ask them. Regarding Waka Kotahi he wondered: “Tell me this: How many boats have you ever seen going down a road?” Er, quite a few, actually – on boat trailers being towed by cars. At a guess, they are mostly boats owned by keen fisher people. Our new deputy PM is reputed to be a keen fisher person. Actually, make that fisherman. Unlike cigarettes, wokeism is to be outlawed.
Looks like that stain on the carpet is getting bigger. Somebody pass Luxon the pseudoephedrine.