Unity at last: everyone thinks Michael Laws is sexist and gross

In the dying days of a fractious, insult-fuelled election campaign, an outpouring of harmony over a single issue.

It’s been a fractious election campaign. National has devoted much of its Instagram page to insulting Chlöe Swarbrick. NZ First’s Winston Peters has dished out his usual array of barbs to opponents, the election itself and even beloved reporters from The Spinoff. Reality Check Radio is putting out AI-generated ads scaremongering about the possibility people might accidentally elect gay people, Māori people, communists or all three at once. David Seymour has called the two major parties “two bald men fighting over a comb”, which is unfair because only one of their leaders is actually bald. No wonder Chris Hipkins went completely insane and said “bullshit”. 

It’s a relief, then, that in the dying days of the campaign we’ve finally found an issue that everyone from across the political spectrum can unify around: Michael Laws is sexist and gross.

The eruption of harmony was prompted by comments the NZ First candidate made on his show for The Platform last week. He started off with a few warm-up insults for the Opportunity Party’s fourth-ranked candidate Kayla Kingdon-Bebb, calling her “rather severe-looking” and saying she was like “every officious primary school teacher, female that I’d ever come across in my life”. Most people would stop there, recognising they’ve already produced a sizable reservoir of verbal diarrhea. But Laws isn’t most people. "Must be hell dating people like that, just quietly,” he continued. “Can you imagine what it's like post-sex? Did I say that out loud? Yes, I did."

Yes he did. Reporting on the rant took a week to come out but once it did, the response was swift. After pausing briefly to sick up in her mouth, Opportunity’s leader Qiulae Wong issued a decisive and personal condemnation. "To be honest, it makes my skin crawl, and I don't think someone like that should be standing as a candidate. They don't belong in politics,” she said. 

National’s Nicola Willis was similarly creeped out, calling Laws’ comments disgusting and nasty. "It's from another era. He should go back to Noah and the Ark,” she said. Her leader ruled Laws out as a minister in a National-led government, saying the tirade was “stupid, absolutely stupid".

Labour’s finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds targeted a different part of history to Willis, though her intent was the same. "Go back to the 60s or the 50s or wherever you think New Zealand should be. But right now, women have a place in politics. We have a place in leadership,” she said. Hipkins urged Peters to set higher standards, while at the same time saying these are the actual standards it sets. "This is what New Zealand First actually believes.”

Bipartisanship at long last. The symphony of harmony kept crescendoing. Swarbrick said Laws’ comments were “just gross”. Act leader David Seymour said they were both "gross and stupid". 

The off-putting rant wouldn’t have been as much of a surprise to fans of Laws’ literary efforts. His political memoir The Demon Profession contains a detailed and remarkably horny passage about a woman Laws spotted while talking to Mike Moore and Winston Peters at the Wellington bar The Big Easy. “The brunette was now being fondled beneath her summer dress by a male version of herself – a heaving mass of late-night licentiousness," begins his lengthy description.

That tome was published in 1998. But Laws’ leader clearly hadn’t read it, as he seemed caught off-guard by his candidate’s off-putting mix of casual sexism and barely restrained lecherousness. “I’ve made it very clear it’s not acceptable and he will be told so,” said Peters, after being questioned about Laws’ comments at a disability expo in South Auckland today. 

There was just one exception to the unanimity. After receiving the promised dressing down from his leader, Laws issued a classic non-apology apology. "I had no intent to cause offence but of simply being wry and puckish, so if I have offended, I unreservedly apologise,” he said. 

Wry and puckish, sexist and gross. Tomato tomato. Still, it’s good to know that in this age of rampant polarisation, electoral shenanigans and increasingly personal, childish campaigning, at least one issue can bring our political leaders together. They all, to a man and woman, believe Laws should stop being sexist. Pay equity could only dream of that kind of unanimity.