The Act leader gets a telling-off from the principal and prime minister Christopher Luxon loses his cool in a heated question time.
Echo Chamber is The Spinoff’s dispatch from the press gallery, recapping sessions in the House. Columns are written by politics reporter Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Wellington editor Joel MacManus.
As New Zealand’s most senior elected officials gathered in the hallowed halls of the debating chamber, speaker Gerry Brownlee reminded them of an important parliamentary rule: don’t drive vehicles into the building.
His warning was directed at Act leader David Seymour, who on Monday had attempted to drive a Land Rover up parliament’s steps as part of a charitable fundraiser. Brownlee read out a half-hearted mea culpa his office had received from Seymour: “Please accept my apologies for any offence this may have caused.”
Labour leader Chris Hipkins wasn’t ready to move on. He pushed the speaker about Seymour’s claim to media that the organisers had received permission for the stunt. Brownlee confirmed they “most definitely” had not. Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer suggested Seymour’s actions had breached tikanga relating to the two pou flanking the steps of parliament.
Labour recently called for Seymour to be sacked as a minister over the stunt, in combination with two other scandals: his writing a letter to police in support of Philip Polkinghorne during the investigation of the death of the Auckland eye surgeon’s wife in 2022, and his inaction that same year after being warned that his party’s president, now convicted sex offender Tim Jago, was a sexual predator. Seymour was without his usual question time smirk but didn’t look worried either. He sat there silently and expressionless.
Hipkins aimed his questions at the man opposite him, prime minister Christopher Luxon, but his focus was still very much on Seymour. Does the prime minister take responsibility for his ministers? (Yes.) Is he confident Seymour didn’t breach the cabinet manual? (Yes.) Were his actions lawful? (That’s a question for the speaker.) “Show some leadership,” Labour’s Megan Woods yelled.
He finally struck pay dirt by questioning whether the prime minister had ever asked Seymour if he had received political donations from Polkinghorne. Luxon revealed he had not asked. The opposition benches roared, and things kicked into gear. Luxon danced a fine line, arguing that any donations would be irrelevant to the cabinet manual because Seymour was not a minister at the time he wrote the letter, merely an MP. National’s Judith Collins sat next to David Seymour and argued on his behalf like a personal lawyer. She first said that there was a difference between party and candidate donations. Hipkins counterpunched by pointing out that other ministers had exempted themselves from decisions based on party donations. Luxon winced and shook his head as if to say, “Aww, come on man.” Parliament’s two nerdiest boys, Hipkins and Chris Bishop, had a long back-and-forth about the speaker’s rulings while Brownlee occasionally mixed up their names.
Finally, the man everyone else was yelling about stood up… and immediately knocked his glass of water onto the floor in front of him. “Ooooooooh!” went the opposition. “It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to just stand up and say there has been no such donation, but I won’t do that,” Seymour said. He urged every MP to think about the implications of declaring every possible donation whenever they made a decision. “If you really want to go there, we can,” he warned.
“Let’s go there! Let’s do it!” yelled Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.
Strategically, Hipkins’ focus was not to get Seymour fired or to hurt Act’s party vote – it was to expose Luxon as a weak leader with no control over his coalition partners. Luxon grumbled to himself and shook his head. Hipkins thinks he has found an opening, and the reaction in parliament on Tuesday suggested he may be onto something.
Luxon has a tell when he gets frustrated – he repeats lines he has used before. It’s a defence mechanism. He goes back to the greatest hits and avoids the question at hand. When asked about job losses in the construction sector, Luxon called Hipkins “the arsonist returning to the scene of the fire” (the fifth time he has used that line in parliament this term). Luxon’s face got redder and his speech got louder and he yelled about “kumbaya and mush”, “economic mismanagement” and “the muppets on the other side”.
The noise from the opposition reached a crescendo too. Labour and Green MPs got excited, recognising the prime minister’s show of strength as the exact opposite – an admission that he’d lost his cool and couldn’t give a substantive answer. To conclude, Hipkins asked one final question: “What’s Nicola Willis more likely to replace this year – the Interislander ferries or him as prime minister?”
One fun moment
Chlöe Swarbrick, during a question about the government’s new school lunches ending up in landfills “as a result of them being inedible”, produced three of the prepackaged school meals.
As she placed them on her desk, Winston Peters made a point of order:
“Mr Speaker, since when in standing orders is a member allowed to bring their lunch to parliament, let alone having taken it from a schoolchild?”
