Or are they?

It’s the end of the start of the year, it’s just six months to the election, and it’s time to revisit the party leaders’ big picture scene-setting state of the nation speeches. Not all leaders gave one, but we won’t let that stop us from coughing them up, masticating them, digesting them, shamelessly making them up. 

Chris Hipkins, leader of the Labour Party

I get it. New Zealanders are doing it tough. Hardworking, ordinary Kiwis want their government to focus on the basics, the essentials, the right here, right now.

I know that some New Zealanders feel that we are doing too much, too fast. I’ve heard that message. We will now be doing less, slower. The government I lead will focus meticulously on shrinking. Relentlessly diminutive.

The prime minister sips from a can of Coke Zero with a “DRINK ME” label attached

What a curious feeling! I must be shutting up like a telescope.

The prime minister has shrunk to the size of a block of butter. He is barely audible.

This is an Inbox Zero government. 

This is my generation’s control-Z moment. 

Let’s undo this.  

Chris Luxon, leader of the National Party

I get it. New Zealanders are doing it tough. Hardworking, ordinary Kiwis want their government to focus on the basics, the essentials, the right here, right now. 

“Let’s do this”? An empty slogan. What I would say to you is this: Let’s get this done. Let’s deliverise delivery on the deliverables and disembowel the consultants.

We will fix the roads and save education. How? By grinding up public sector contractors into a paste with which to make playdough and plug potholes. 

Hi, how are you today? 

Marama Davidson and James Shaw, co-leaders of the Green Party

We come to you today in disappointment. Inequality is entrenched and we are disappointed. Our rivers remain polluted and we are disappointed. The planet is burning, we stand on the precipice of catastrophe, and the government just totally shafted us on a load of policies that we proposed and loved and we are not afraid to stand on the rooftops and shout: crumbs, we’re actually pretty disappointed about that also.

While the others scrap for the centreground, the Greens stand united. A place for everyone: cis white males and backstabbers, crybabies and participants in the deranged, hyper-violent Squid Games. The Green kaupapa continues to change Aotearoa. Even the All Blacks have two head coaches. But there is more we can do and that is why we announce today that in the cause of collectivity and repairing internal rifts, every person on the Green list will be ranked first. 

David Seymour, leader of the Act Party

What are people? What are people? They’re economic units. I’m a hundred feet tall – these people are pygmies. But together they form a market. What is a person? It has values, aims. But it operates in a market. A marriage market, job market, money market, market for ideas, etcetera. 

Winston Peters, leader of the New Zealand First Party

Woke? No I didn’t. Handbrake? Watch your mouth. With all due respect that is demonstrably, axiomatically false, a concoction by a conceited, conniving, cucked cabal of cancel culture. What is with all these Māori names? Kiwis? Speak English please. We are hardworking Apteryx australis, that’s what we are.

The gravest threat to New Zealand values today is tomato juice. Tomato juice assault. Tomato juice, a salt pinch and pepper and a splash of Stolly and Worcestershire sauce on ice in a highball. Yes please. Thank you very much. Nashy: come and get it.

Who among us hasn’t accidentally sent a shady message to the wrong group chat? And who hasn’t then had those messages read by colleagues sitting directly behind the person they’re about, live on Parliament TV?

RNZ has reported that Green Party MP Elizabeth Kerekere had been “chastised” by party leadership after allegedly calling colleague Chlöe Swarbrick a “crybaby” in a group chat message sent to other MPs in error. The text was sent to a group chat of Green staff and MPs while Swarbrick spoke in the House on her Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill, which failed at the first reading.

A full internal investigation has been launched, and the party is “taking this matter very seriously”. Kerekere has since denied all allegations, and said that she is unable to comment on it.

In the standard videos of house business published online by Parliament TV, Green MPs Golriz Ghahraman and Julie Anne Genter can be seen receiving and reacting to the offending messages while Swarbrick speaks.

The Spinoff has launched its own full external investigation into this video, in the form of a frame-by-frame analysis.

0.01: “From a place of absolute dogma and partisanship,” begins Chloe Swarbrick as she speaks on the Sale and Support of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill. “If you care about this stuff then take it to Select Committee and have the opportunity to fulsomely unpack it.”

0.07: As we cut to a wide shot, Julie Anne Genter checks a message on her phone, and leans over to Golriz Ghahraman to show her something on said phone. Two rows in front of her, ACT MP Brooke Van Velden also checks her phone, though presumably she is not part of the same group chat.

0.11: Ghahraman leans forward for a better view of the message. Her expression sits somewhere between surprised, shocked and “what the fuck”.

0.16: The pair exchange looks of disbelief, as one might do when receiving a message not meant for them, about someone standing two metres in front of them, from a mutual colleague.

0.19: Ghahraman takes Genter’s phone from her. Fellow Green MP Teanau Tuiono, possibly the only person in the room not looking at a screen at this point, is living in the moment, blissfully unaware of the digital communications chaos that is unfolding.

0.21: “We’re not talking about removal of judicial appeals, we’re talking about something that is baked in as a power imbalance for commercial entities in this country,” says Swarbrick, re: alcohol.

0.26: Ghahraman clasps her hand to her mouth, shocked more, in this specific moment, by the content of the group chat message than by the country’s approach to the minimisation of alcohol harm.

0.29: Ghahraman looks at Genter.

0.30: Genter looks at her phone, then back at Ghahraman.

0.34: Ghahraman leans back in her chair.

0.38: Ghahraman looks at Genter. Although the top half of her face isn’t visible, the bottom half strongly conveys a sense of “Well, shit.”

0.40: “Here’s the chance to fix it”, says Swarbrick. “Then we have the issue of natural justice raised, which, again, we’re talking about additional rights that exist in this space of alcohol.”

0.44: Tuiono nods vigorously, presumably still blissfully unaware of what is going on.

0.48: Ghahraman once again puts her hand to her mouth. “Well, shit” is upgraded to “fuuuck”.

0.55: Both women sit in quiet contemplation, as Swarbrick rips into Van Velden for rehashing an ACT press release about hypocrisy.

1.02: Ghahraman looks down at what is presumably her phone, where presumably the same message exists, because that is the upside and in this case tremendous downside of group chats.

1.05-1.12: More looking at phones, more looks exchanged.

1.16: Genter, locked in silent contemplation, appears to grimace.

1.22: “I hope we get 49 votes from members of the Labour Party because we can do it! Let’s do this!” ends Swarbrick.

1.25: Genter puts down her phone and starts clapping, probably while thinking “there but for the grace of god go I” and making a mental note to always check that she’s sending the right message to the right person, as all of us should be after reading this cautionary tale.

Better group chatting, everyone.

Follow our politics podcast Gone By Lunchtime on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast app.