After that interminable election campaign, which seemed to go on for an eternity, there is silence. It is as though the country is now living inside a particularly dreary adaptation of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. “When all through the House, Not a creature was stirring, not even a … Winston.”
We should be grateful. After all the robot-tickling, goat-milking, dressing up as pirates and getting about in pink buses that went on during the campaign, the nonsense is finally over. Thank goodness.
And now … nothing. Should we be grateful? Sort of. But then we’d also kind of like to know what’s going on behind closed doors. Instead, we have to wait until the special votes are counted.
These are estimated to be about 20.2% of votes cast. And then we have to wait until whatever deals National, Act and, likely, NZ First are bashing out are revealed.
This feels partly fair enough, and partly fairly sucky. We did our bit. We voted. So don’t we have a right to know what’s been said – what deals are being done?
Nothing to say here
Winston Peters said that until the specials are counted he will have nothing to say. That’s a promise he has kept. This hasn’t stopped the media trying to get him to say … anything. This led to an incident at Wellington Airport as farcical as those infamous TV scenes of former Newshub political editor Paddy Gower chasing then-Labour MP Chris Carter around Parliament.
As Winston made his way from his plane, he was pursued through the terminal, down escalators and out to the cab rank by media, who buzzed around him with lots of questions that desperately needed answering:
“How are you?”
“Are you happy to be back?”
“Is there anything you’d like to say, Mr Peters?”
There wasn’t. Mr Peters was a man in a cloud of sandflies he couldn’t even be bothered to swat away.
A cameraman was wearing a T-shirt that read: “Yeah. Nah.” Yeah, nah was what the media got, along with an emphatic slam of a car door. “Can we get a wave?” someone yelled. Yeah, nah.
You’d think Winston would be showing off that Cheshire cat smile of his. Instead, he returned to Parliament looking like the Roman emperor Vespasian, who was said to have had an expression that made him look as though he was straining to relieve himself.
Honestly, though, those were such dumb questions, and we know Winston entertains only “sensible” questions. What they should have asked was obvious:
“Mr Peters, did you get Wordle out today?”
“Mr Peters, is it true Shane Jones swallowed a thesaurus?”
“Mr Peters, in a fight to the death between a beaver and rabbit, who would win?”
Later, Jones offered his wisdom – and some afternoon tea – to the sandflies. “No,” he said, “there’s no rhetoric to share, but there is the equivalent of loaves and fishes.”
The prime minister-elect, Christopher Luxon, also managed to get up the collective noses of the media by calling what the media were doing – trying to do their jobs by attempting to find something to report – “parlour games”. He then tried to placate them by saying that the media are very important and that he wants to have a good relationship with them. This is known as pedalling backwards, madly. It is nearly impossible to pedal backwards without wobbling.
Luxon and Winston might be good at staying mum but someone is talking, because veteran political reporter Richard Harman reported on his website, Politik, that Luxon was understood to have offered Winston the job of Speaker and that Winston’s alleged response was: “Do I look like I’d be interested in the Speaker’s job?”
Luxon, again, wobbled his way into a denial of this. “No, we haven’t … I appreciate there’s lots of reckons … He’s wrong.”
This wholly daft idea was first floated by former National prime minister John Key, and if Winston has been offered the job of Speaker, that would be a serious misstep. The job usually goes to a loyal, long-term servant of the ruling party. Winston is not that. So what such an offer would surely signal to him is that the Nats think he’s past it and – should they need him and New Zealand First in any form of coalition – they definitely don’t want Winston anywhere near the levers of power. The Speaker is little more than the conductor of the orchestra, a political eunuch.
It is not a respectful idea, and the one thing Winston demands is respect.
So the Speaker’s chair is not what he wants. But what does he desire for what might be his final years in Parliament? Who knows, but the Nats ought to seriously consider employing the services of a mind reader. Although who would want that job? You’d certainly want danger money. Delving into the depths of Winston’s mind would be like going caving without a torch, or a safety rope.
Fledgling with grace
Having seen Labour’s waka list in troubled seas, some of its senior MPs have begun to depart. Nanaia Mahuta, who was turfed out by voters, is done. Andrew Little, who returned on the list, is done anyway.
Mahuta, who has been an MP since 1996, lost her seat to 21-year-old Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke from Te Pāti Māori, the second-youngest candidate ever to be elected to Parliament after 20-year-old British aristocrat the Hon James Stuart-Wortley in 1853. Mahuta entered Parliament as a 26-year-old.
Mahuta had been given the purely honorary title of Mother of the House. National’s Gerry Brownlee is Father of the House. This is, obviously, a pairing in name only, but it is still a mind-bogglingly incongruous one.
Mahuta lost her Hauraki-Waikato seat to a fledgling, but a fledgling with grace. At the conclusion of an election campaign short on good manners – and, in Maipi-Clarke’s case, one of harassment – Maipi-Clarke graciously thanked her “aunty” Nanaia for her mahi.
Little has been an MP for 12 years. He will be best remembered for one of the most selfless acts in our politics: standing aside from the Labour leadership months before the election in 2017 to make way for Jacinda Ardern.
Little allowed himself a final farewell potshot – at Winston. In what amounted to an exit interview, he told Stuff: “The guy cannot be trusted. He’s a populist at heart, so it’s whatever suits him on the day, that’s what you’re dealing with.”
What would Winston have to say about that? Nothing. He’s a hermit in his hermitage, and has taken a vow of silence. Be grateful for it while it lasts.
