This week in parliament, Judith Collins said goodbye, Shane Jones had a showdown and MPs were reminded they’re all capable of immigration dog whistles.
Tuesday began a three-week sitting block, but was also the end of the road for one MP. With a curtsy and a Cheshire grin, minister Judith Collins bid tōfā to parliament this week after 24 years as a National Party MP. Her valedictory speech on Tuesday evening inspired plenty of applause, a few tears and, we can only hope, a long production line of girl boss-esque merchandise.
With her husband and son sitting in the public gallery, and former National Party stalwarts Don Brash, Jenny Shipley and Harete Hipango also in attendance, Collins took her final bow. She told the House that since she first arrived in 2002, she’d “never had the patience for the concept of doing my time or, worse still, knowing my place.”
Collins’ political career is one of high highs and low lows. And she has something to show for it all: an abundance of resilience. “Well, you don’t get to be resilient unless you have to be, and I sometimes quip that adversity is just an opportunity to show character… So much adversity, so much character,” she joked.
She had prime minister Christopher Luxon giggling after asserting she was never one to “suck up to hierarchy”. And that laughter rippled throughout the House when she reflected on being “better at living up to my father’s expectations than my mother’s”. In famous last words, shared by pretty much every retiring politician, Collins said she was now “over politics” – only time will tell whether she can truly give up the ghost.
Certainly she looked to be an ongoing sucker for parliamentary punishment when she returned the next day. But she wasn’t in the place you’d usually find her: she was sitting in the public gallery, watching Wednesday’s question time and her former colleagues from the view of the Gods.
Luxon was busy in Auckland making a budget announcement, so Act Party leader and deputy prime minister David Seymour held the reins. Seymour took questions from Labour leader Chris Hipkins, whose questions over whether the upcoming budget would see any cuts to the superannuation fund was overpowered by the lingering smell of something burning.
“Toasted!” jeered finance minister Nicola Willis. “You’re toasted!” She was, of course, referring to events of the morning prior, when Stuff’s political editor Jenna Lynch held a phone to his face and asked, “do you recognise this toaster?” Hipkins was forced to admit that a former Labour staffer was behind a social media account focused on trolling the government. The giveaway? A video on the account featuring a toaster located in the opposition wing of parliament, where Labour dwells.
Later, resources minister Shane Jones took patsy questions from his NZ First colleague David Wilson. The matua of heckling got a taste of his own medicine after being thrown off by the voice of Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, who reminded him he was “so insecure”. “Just because you lost in seabed mining [in Taranaki],” she called. “That little iwi took you on and won.”
Wilson cut over the top: “why should we develop critical minerals in New Zealand?”
“It could very well be that critical minerals are needed for hearing aids, and I rather fear that hearing aids are needed for the member from Western Māori sitting to my right,” Jones quipped.
“You’re obsessed with us!” Ngarewa-Packer laughed. “Because you lost! You lost to little ol’ Taranaki iwi.”
She needed to stop “talking like a wounded hen,” Jones told speaker Gerry Brownlee, “and listen to the matua”. The ever-helpful Winston Peters added his two cents, that Te Pāti Māori party will be “goners” come the November election. Jones responded by crying, “haere rā!”
“Yep, haere rā,” Brownlee agreed. “Off you go.” And with that, Jones hobbled out of the House.
By Thursday, everyone was playing silly buggers. Peters opened the session with a very necessary point of order: “Can I ask as to why there are so many flags flying outside of this parliament at this moment?” He was referencing the rainbow flags flying high on the forecourt to mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. Which may have genuinely puzzled poor old Peters – were there officials from a newly formed foreign nation who had yet to wine and dine him?
Meanwhile, independent MP Tākuta Ferris didn’t even show up to the House to ask the question he was supposed to. Act Party MP Todd Stephenson picked up Ferris’ slack, but Peters suggested the independent MP should get to ask his question anyway – despite there being no one to ask it.
You had to feel for poor Labour MP Phil Twyford. He is the party’s immigration spokesperson, but it still felt like a bit of a stitch-up to make him question immigration minister Erica Stanford about “using immigration to dog-whistle”.
Had the questions come from someone else in the party, they may have been effective. But it was Twyford and when he spoke, the booming voice of Jones reminded him of his leading role in a decade-old controversy. “Chinese names!” he cried. “What about the phone book? What about the Chinese names in the phone book?”
“Pot, kettle,” Jones declared. “Wasn’t it ‘Chinese-sounding names?;” suggested Nicola Willis. Twyford went as red as his party banner, as he tried to laugh off the embarrassment of his 2015 home-buyer survey, in which he tried to link Auckland’s housing crisis to the number of buyers with “Chinese-sounding” names, identified via the phone book.
Twyford may have been trying to hold Stanford to account, but with all the talk of phonebooks, it was the government that had Twyford’s number.
