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Jacinda Ardern, Wayne Brown and Michael Cullen have all entered the game of pricks (Image: Archi Banal)
Jacinda Ardern, Wayne Brown and Michael Cullen have all entered the game of pricks (Image: Archi Banal)

PoliticsDecember 15, 2022

A brief history of New Zealand politicians calling people pricks

Jacinda Ardern, Wayne Brown and Michael Cullen have all entered the game of pricks (Image: Archi Banal)
Jacinda Ardern, Wayne Brown and Michael Cullen have all entered the game of pricks (Image: Archi Banal)

Jacinda Ardern’s unparliamentary insult of David Seymour is just the latest chapter in a prickly national tradition.

“A spiteful or contemptible man often having some authority” is the definition offered by Merriam-Webster for the word prick. That’s the fifth definition, but it contains within it some of the fourth, which reads simply: “penis”.

It is unlikely that Jacinda Ardern would call David Seymour a penis, but nor did she choose “dick”, which is something more of a garden variety phallic insult. Prick, she called him, in the New Zealand house of representatives this week. In the hope of better understanding some of the etymological nuances, or if we’re honest more just in the cause of talking about politicians calling people pricks, we present a very short and almost certainly incomplete history of the word in Aotearoa political discourse.

Editorial note: we have excluded both foreign uses (such as the Victoria Liberal Party calling Dan Andrews a prick in a paid advertisement last month) and other cusses used in the New Zealand parliament (various uses of “dick”; all the times Winston Peters called David Seymour a cuck).

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Toby Manhire
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Muldoon on Muldoon

About a year on from losing to Jim McLay in a National leadership contest that followed the 1984 election defeat, Robert Muldoon was asked whether he would be a thorn in his successor’s side. He replied: “More like a little prick.”

Thomas on Bolger

In the 1996 election, New Zealand’s first under the MMP system, Jim Bolger in effect torpedoed his own candidate Mark Thomas’s run in Wellington Central with just a couple of days to go, giving a nod to Act’s Richard Prebble. Luckily for all of us, Tony Sutorius was there filming it all for what would become Campaign, which remains today among the very best of our political cinema. Thomas’s reaction to the news that Bolger was pretty much killing his candidacy? “Fucking prick.”

Cullen to McKinnon

At some point in the late 1990s, Michael Cullen called then minister Don McKinnon a “born to rule prick”. The details are hazy and not lodged on Hansard, but McKinnon later confronted the Labour MP in the lobby, hands in pockets to indicate a lack of any intention to punch him.

Harawira to Harawira

Hone Harawira, then of the Māori Party, in March 2006 called himself “a bit of a pious and pompous prick”. He was referring specifically to his position on smoking, as a reformed smoker. 

Smith to Cosgrove

In a May 2007 debate on the Taxation (Annual Rates, Business Taxation, KiwiSaver, and Remedial Matters) Bill, then opposition MP Lockwood Smith laughed at then associate minister Clayton Cosgrove, explaining: “I laugh because I feel sorry for the poor prick”. To be fair, Cosgrove was being a dick.  

Cullen to Key

It’s the “rich prick” line that most remember, but then deputy prime minister Michael Cullen also called National leader John Key a “scumbag” during a parliamentary debate in December 2007. And he was unrepentant, too, having taken exception to Key’s description of MP Darren Hughes as “the son Helen Clark never had”. Cullen took that to be a jibe at the fact the prime minister did not have children. Key said he was just repeating words he thought Hughes had used in a newspaper. Turned out it was the reporter who used those words. Prick.

Lees-Galloway to Bishop

A harmless, almost heartwarming deployment of the label “prick”. The transcript, from September 2018, in full:

Golriz Ghahraman: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise, and I will congratulate the member who’s had his bill pulled from the ballot. I’m sure it’s very exciting, but I do have to note that–

Chris Bishop: It is. It’s happened three times now – it’s great.

Ghahraman: Well, congratulations, Mr Bishop. It’s been three times. Unfortunately, this particular time–

Iain Lees-Galloway: We always thought you were a jammy prick!

Ghahraman: Ha, ha! 

Gilmore to nobody in particular

Aaron Gilmore, who would later become famous for allegedly saying to a waiter “don’t you know who I am?” had already called himself a rich prick in parliament. Kind of. From his maiden speech, in December 2008: “I have done well enough in New Zealand to be resented by some and labelled a rich prick.” It is debatable, as he faces legal action from his parents and complaints from tenants, whether the first part of that is true today. 

Brown on Wilson

For fans of “hot mic” incidents that involve politicians calling other people pricks, 2022 has been a richly enjoyable year. In the Auckland mayoral campaign, Wayne Brown, aka The Fixer, aka the leader of the Wayniacs, thought he was off the record, or not being recorded, when he told a Newshub Nation reporter of his frustrations with NZ Herald journalist Simon Wilson. Wilson was proving a bit of a thorn – which is very prick-like – in Brown’s side, mostly by asking frustrating questions based on knowledge of facts.

Wayne Brown has big plans for Auckland (Photos: Supplied, Getty Images)

“That prick Simon Wilson dug it out,” said Brown – the “it” being the fact of Brown’s age, which Wilson had presumably deduced using either research or mathematics or a combination of the two. Brown continued: “He’s been at me for all year long and the first thing I’ll do when I get to be mayor, I’ll be gluing little pics of him on all the urinals so we can pee on him.” Brown has yet to follow through on the urinal decoration, but he did apparently move quickly to install a beer fridge in his office.

Ardern on Seymour

The prime minister, in December 2022, which is to say this week, was under questioning by the Act Party leader about mistakes, and whether she had apologised for them. As she took her seat, Ardern was heard to say, sotto voce: “Such an arrogant prick.” There was no reference to urinals or any wish to piss on his face.

Seymour took it very well, scoring a political point or two while accepting the apology and resisting any temptation to feign injury. While it might not be directly out of the kindness manifesto, the prick line is unlikely to have cost Labour votes. If anything, the pressure will be on the Greens to come up with something meaner to call him.

h/t @UrbTurn for the Muldoon line.


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Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

PoliticsDecember 13, 2022

Reviewing The Spinoff’s wild political predictions for 2022

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

Compared to previous years, our pundits’ political predictions for 2022 were actually pretty accurate… but still mostly wrong.

In 2020, The Spinoff’s then-Bulletin editor Alex Braae declared that “nobody comes out looking good” from annual political predictions. That year featured outlandish premonitions about Judith Collins defecting to Act and Chlöe Swarbrick lighting up a joint in the debating chamber. In short, they were all very bad and it’s astonishing we even continued the tradition of annual political predictions at all. Yet here we are, in the closing days of what has been a fascinating, turbulent and frequently bizarre year in politics.

As our team of esteemed political minds readies to present their predictions for next year (stay tuned to The Spinoff for that next week), it’s time to take a walk down memory lane. This time we last year we asked an array of pundits for their wildest political predictions for 2022. Let’s see how they did. 


“I don’t know if this is wild, but I hope 2022 is filled with decarceration.” (Gabrielle Baker)

Verdict: Not wrong, but not right either. In September there were 7,964 prisoners in New Zealand, compared with 8,034 in the same month of 2021, representing only a very small amount of decarceration.

“We’re all going to know and care way too much about the functions of the Reserve Bank by the end of it.” (Alex Braae)

Verdict: Right! Adrian Orr has gone from being known exclusively by bankers and political geeks to a name casually thrown into conversation at dinner parties. Not good!

“Facebook will buy The Spinoff.” (Linda Clark)

Verdict: Feasible, but wrong. Although there was progress on getting social media giants like Facebook to pay outlets like The Spinoff for their content. 

“In an act of intergenerational solidarity, all of our MPs agree to sell all their housing investment portfolios and place the proceeds into ethical and sustainable investment funds.” (Andrew Geddis)

Verdict: Extremely wrong. Politicians still really like to own houses.

“There will be an awkward video of Chris Luxon dancing. This seems to be a marker of successful right-wing politics in New Zealand. A two-second version will be unnecessarily played in assorted news stories from then on.” (Lara Greaves)

Verdict: Shockingly, somehow… wrong? This definitely seems like something that would have happened, but I can’t find any evidence of it. It’s entirely possible that Luxon, in an effort to avoid having a two-second clip played forever on the news, managed to have it wiped from the archives. Or maybe he has somehow remembered that the first rule of being in public office is to never dance in public. There’s always next year. 

“Brian Tamaki, Don Brash and Leo Molloy will regroup Vision NZ to make a big play for the 2023 election, running on a confusing platform of neoliberalism and Christian conservatism. When they lose they will blame the gays.” (Leonie Hayden)

Verdict: Wrong, but not that wrong. While Tamaki, Brash and Molloy have not formed some new Vision NZ supergroup, there is indeed a conservative “umbrella” party contesting next year’s general election – and it does include Vision NZ. Freedoms NZ also brings together the New National Party and the Sue Grey-led Outdoors Party. It’s not yet known whether they will lose or who they will blame.

“House prices will decrease, wages will increase and 20-somethings will finally be able to move out of their childhood bedrooms. Also Donald Trump will win the Nobel Peace Prize and Judith Collins and Simon Bridges will become best friends, hosting a podcast about things like gardening and the traditional craftsmanship of skilled cheese artisans.” (Liam Hehir)

Verdict: A mixed bag. House prices have decreased. Wages have increased. Not sure about the 20-somethings. Donald Trump has not won the Nobel Peace Prize. Judith Collins and Simon Bridges are probably not friends, but the latter does have a podcast which may or may not touch on gardening and cheese.

“I don’t know how wild it is, but I’ve finally started reading about web 3.0 and cryptocurrency, after ignoring it for years, and I think that’s going to be even more transformational and disruptive than social media. Maybe ‘22 will be the year that suite of technologies breaks through, possibly in catastrophic ways.” (Danyl Mclauchlan)

Verdict: Wrong – this definitely wasn’t a breakthrough year for crypto, or web 3.0, but arguably it was for AI. Seemed like there was a buzzy new AI thing every week, and at least one of them is bound to end in catastrophe.

“An extraordinary rollercoaster of a byelection.” (Toby Manhire)

Verdict: Right! But probably not in the way anyone was expecting. The Tauranga byelection was fairly orthodox, with low-ish voter turnout and the National candidate Sam Uffindell sweeping to victory. But it’s the aftermath of this byelection that proved to be a rollercoaster, with Uffindell temporarily stood down from National as bullying and harassment claims were investigated. 

The recent Hamilton West byelection was also a rollercoaster  – though this time the events precipitating it were wilder still, with Gaurav Sharma levelling allegations of bullying within the Labour Party caucus via a Herald opinion piece. He was later expelled from the party, and formed the likely-to-never-be-heard-of-again Momentum Party.

“I might be a dreamer – but 2022 might be better than 2021 or 2020.” (Craig Renney)

Verdict: Hmm. I’m going to give this one to Craig – after the steaming shit heaps that were 2020 and 2021, this year kind of felt all right. And yet somehow still truly awful.

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Calum Henderson
— Production editor

“We get a whole new system based on Matike Mai and Land Back.” (Brooke Stanley Pao)

Verdict: Wrong. New Zealand’s constitutional system is very much the same – and the government has confirmed it’s stalling any work on co-governance, at least for now.

“Nicola Willis will be the leader of the opposition – she’s the best media and political operative National has by a country mile.” (Shane Te Pou)

Verdict: Wrong, though there are still a few days of this year to go. And if Nicola Willis isn’t the leader of National by the end of 2022, you can bet that this prediction will crop up again on our list for 2023.


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