Acting prime minister David Seymour just wants people to stop ‘talking down New Zealand’.

After losing his nut last month over Spinegate, speaker Gerry Brownlee is back to being the cool speaker, who lets his kids (elected members of parliament) drink, swear and insult each other. The previous day, NZ First leader Winston Peters said Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer wasn’t a “real” Māori because she had some Irish ancestry. Brownlee instructed Peters to withdraw the comment, but Peters refused, and Brownlee stated that he would review the record. 

When everyone reassembled in the chamber on Wednesday, Brownlee decided Peters’ comments were “disorderly” but that no further action was required. He made a reference to “the former member for the seat of Ilam” (himself), which gave everyone a jolly good laugh.

It seemed strange that everyone was so happy to move on after such a tense moment less than 24 hours earlier, but with Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi absent from the house, no one put up much of a fuss. 

NZ First’s Shane Jones was feeling especially virile as he espoused new geothermal exploration and criticised the “opposition spokesman for energy”. Megan Woods made a point of order to note that she is no man. “I know definitions like this are important to that party. I’d just like to point out I’m a spokesperson or a spokeswoman.”

Brownlee grumbled: “I’m almost tempted to require everyone in the House to post their pronouns so that everyone gets it right.” The Green Party benches erupted in cheers. “Let’s go Gerry!” Chlöe Swarbrick cheered, “Let’s go New Zealand First!” Someone called out “All those in favour”, and a swathe of opposition MPs replied “Aye”. 

Chris Hipkins wanted to challenge acting prime minister David Seymour on the state of the economy, but found him much more nimble than his usual dance partner, Christopher Luxon. Where Luxon hasn’t come up with an explanation more detailed than “Labour bad”, Seymour dazzled the room with advanced concepts like “economic cycles”. 

Then, Hipkins put Seymour in a corner: is Brad Olsen wrong to say the decline of the construction sector is “the new normal”? Olsen is a cherub-faced genius-boy economist, CEO of Infometrics, darling of the media, beloved by politicians on both sides of the aisle, who spends his Saturday nights giving water to drunk people on Courtenay Place with the Take 10 crew. Who would dare to sully his good name? David Seymour would. “Brad Olsen is not always right, and in this case, he is absolutely wrong” – not just factually, but morally, for the great crime of “talking down New Zealand”. 

Green MP Teanau Tuiono asked the minister for space (Winston Peters, answering on Judith Collins’ behalf) about why the government had allowed intelligence company Blacksky, which has links to the Israeli military, to launch satellites from New Zealand in 2021 and 2023. “The satellite is in the sky. What would the Greens have us do? Bring it back?” Peters said. “The next question is: where were his colleagues in 2021? Where were you in 2021?” (For the record, the Greens criticised the launch in 2021.)

The debate turned to Swarbrick’s ol’ favourite, the connection between rising homelessness and the government’s changes to emergency housing. As usual, this turned into a stalemate – the government claims success for reducing the numbers of people in emergency housing motels (which is true), the opposition blames the government’s overly strict criteria for putting more people on the street (which evidence overwhelmingly suggests is also true).

As housing minister Chris Bishop answered her questions, the peanut galleries yelled back and forth. Seymour: “Put a smile on.” Swarbrick: “It’s gone up 90% under you, mate.” Jones: “Green waste. You had your chance.” Swarbrick: “You spent $3 billion on landlords, mate.” Jones: “Go to Rotorua. You wrecked Hamilton. Green lunacy.”

Brownlee told everyone to settle down. “When a minister is answering a question, he’s not necessarily helped by people from his own government barracking throughout that answer,” he said. Jones looked around and behind him in faux innocence. 

Winston Peters asked Bishop: “Is there any particular reason why so many homeless people are going to Auckland Central?” Swarbrick interjected: “It’s where all the services are, you’re welcome any time.” Bishop answered diplomatically that “Auckland Central is a wonderful place, but it does have its challenges.” “Yeah, the MP!” Jones  yelled, descending into giggles.

Kieran McAnulty pushed associate housing minister Tama Potaka on the same issue, asking if he agreed with Luxon that the government had “fixed” emergency housing. Potaka confirmed that yes, they had. McAnulty found some quotes from front-line providers saying homelessness was “the worst it’s been in living memory”, including Auckland city missioner Helen Robinson, who was “very, very clear” that the current emergency housing policies had a “direct impact on these numbers going up”. 

Potaka was in complete denial mode, accusing McAnulty of “selective use of quotes” and “rely[ing] on hearsay” because he would like to “elide around the data and truth”. This, he suggested, “reveals his palpable anxiety around the success that this government has delivered”. He claimed the government’s homelessness insights report said “officially that attributing any increase in the number of people living without shelter to gateway changes for emergency housing is inappropriate”. 

This is not entirely true – the report says it is “not possible” to determine the extent to which the changes are attributable to policy changes; however, official advice to ministers made it clear that the changes would lead to more rough sleeping.