There were rhymes but little reason in parliament this week.

Welcome to the end of parliament’s penultimate sitting block, notable for the government’s heroic ability to splutter tax slogans until their faces turn National Party blue. In these last three sitting days, ministers were also able to demonstrate what the “no new taxes” mantra looks like when carried to the ultimate consequence: no one gets paid.

Social development minister Louise Upston was terse as she made her way to the House on Tuesday. Allegedly bungled lawmaking led to missed benefit payments for the second time in two weeks, but the minister insisted the problem was paperwork, not policy. On the other side of the tiles was a different kind of ministerial blunder. While Paul Goldsmith took questions, his cellphone began ringing from his pocket – it may have been the first time ‘Bad to the Bone’ was heard on the tiles.

It was a “politically charged” question time on Tuesday, in speaker Gerry Brownlee’s words. The floor opened with Labour leader Chris Hipkins pressing prime minister Christopher Luxon on the number of nurses employed over the last two years. If you adhere to Labour’s timeframe, that’s only 54 full-time roles between March 2024 and March 2026. If you start the count two weeks before the election and include part-time nurses, like Luxon has been, you get a much more impressive figure of 21,000.

Onto more pedantry. Labour MP Willow-Jean Prime tried to take Upston to task over the payments problem, but Upston was adamant that it was her ministry’s operations that were to blame rather than “rushed lawmaking”. “I do know how laws work in this House,” Upston told the MP. But if the minister really wanted to get technical about it, she’d also know these things go hand in hand – policy begets paperwork.

It was to be a long day for the minister. An urgent debate on the matter, requested by the Greens’ Ricardo Menéndez March, followed question time and kept Upston sitting in her seat and scowling. It was the New Zealanders living “pay cheque to pay cheque”, not those with access to “taxpayer subsidies”, who would be affected the most by the gaffe, Menéndez March reminded the minister.

“The least we should expect from a minister is a fulsome apology,” he said. Upston did offer that apology in the House, but conceded there wasn’t much more to say until the ministry provided her with a report into the matter. From Labour’s mid-bench, Duncan Webb called out across the chamber: “You don’t sound very sorry!”

Later that evening, Upston returned wearing a different ministerial hat for the third reading of the Disability Support Services Bill. It’s yet another controversial bill on which the minister (almost) admitted defeat, adopting a number of amendments since going through the select committee. The opposition opposed the bill, with Green Party MPs Kahurangi Carter and Menéndez March calling for the process to start all over again with the disabled community’s input at the forefront.

“There is no single disability community with one political view,” Carter told the House. “But one message from this process has been overwhelming: disabled people expect to be participants in decisions on their own lives.”

Sparks continued to fly during Wednesday’s question time. There was a nice little stand-off between Labour’s economic development spokesperson Ginny Andersen and finance minister Nicola Willis over student employment figures. Willis was more keen to remind Andersen of comments she had made that morning on Newstalk ZB, where the Labour MP  embarrassingly revealed she didn’t know the National Land Transport Fund funded road maintenance. She’s a “sucker for punishment”, Willis declared.

Andersen’s rival for the Hutt South seat, which he currently holds but is expected to lose, liked where this was going. Transport minister Chris Bishop got to his feet to seek leave for the MP to be granted an additional supplementary. It’s technically not something a government MP can actually offer the opposition, but Brownlee allowed it anyway.

With a sweet smile, Andersen rose to her feet. “Has he done any recent polling in Hutt South lately?” she asked Bishop.

That evening, the building’s bard exited stage left. Two-term Labour MP Greg O’Connor delivered his valedictory speech as a poem just before dinner time, with a packed public gallery singing ‘Danny Boy’ to send the Irish West Coaster on his way. He broke character only a few times, once to assure Brownlee his prose hadn’t been guided by AI. “That’s pretty clear,” Brownlee assured him.

O’Connor paid tribute to his staffers as “the heroes of answering the constituents’ call”, especially Leanne, whom O’Connor “found and recruited in Johnsonville mall”. He’d hoped he might make it as a minister, but some “concessions” got in the way – leading to a telling-off via phone by Jacinda Ardern. Which was done “in a hurry, and while I was standing in an Indian takeaway, deciding the spice level of my curry”.

“So, thanks to all who have given me this opportunity,” O’Connor continued. “I’m ready for my next chapter, ’cause next time I’m needing assistance I’ll say, ‘Don’t you know who I was?’”

On Thursday, the prime minister returned from the Pacific Islands Forum. No new taxes then morphed into no shared planes, with foreign affairs minister Winston Peters catching a ride out of Palau as Luxon arrived. Meanwhile, for the third day in a row, Upston was questioned on the benefit bungle. “What is the point of an apology,” Menéndez March asked, if the minister doesn’t intend to provide compensation? Well, Upston replied – “that’s why I’m waiting for that review”.

In the backbenches, you could imagine poor old National Party MP for Northland Grant McCallum was seeing some irony in the Greens’ line of questioning. His sitting block began with Green MP Tamatha Paul calling him out in the House with an incorrect claim that he had purchased a house in Wellington to make use of an accommodation allowance for out-of-town MPs – actually, that second home was bought in Paihia, no accommodation allowance involved. Weeks later, amid renewed interest in Paul’s claims, he requested an apology, but it has not arrived. 

With six more sitting days to go, there’s still time for MPs on both sides of the House to find the right words to say. Perhaps a “sorry” could work, but in the meantime, for the government at least, “no new taxes” will make do. If all else fails, wait for the review.