Labour’s Greg O’Connor knows this Newlands bar like the back of his hand.

“Here comes trouble,” is how the barmaid greets Labour MP Greg O’Connor upon entering the Newlands Arms, a pub the 67-year-old has been haunting since the 1970s. As a loyal punter and the MP of this electorate (Ōhāriu, which will cease to exist at the 2026 general election) since 2017, O’Connor is very sure this place is the capital’s “last true public bar”. In his “Cobweb Corner”, a section of the bar carved out for the local geezers, you can hear O’Connor spin yarns about his days as an undercover cop, or when he was on the road in Russia reading Alexander Pushkin.

An Irish Catholic from the West Coast, O’Connor obviously prefers a beer, so he’s sinking a Mac’s Gold. His Cobweb Corner is so well-known in the neighbourhood that he credits its mana with his success in the 2023 election. During the campaign, some National Party volunteers on the trail took up seats in the corner and declined to move along when asked. Very soon, gossip of the group’s lack of bar manners travelled around. “It’s about respect, because anywhere you go has an etiquette,” O’Connor says. “Especially when you go to a pub and don’t try to find out where the local’s table is. Every pub’s got one.”

O’Connor first moved to Wellington in the 1970s, where he flatted in the next suburb over from this one: Paparangi (“everyone thought it was the end of the Earth”). Back then the pub was bigger, the lads would play housie, and O’Connor was at the beginning of a four-decade-long career in policing, half spent as an officer, the other half as the head of the police association. There’s a lot that the force can teach you about privilege and society: “being a cop, sometimes I thought I was a bit of a right-winger, and sometimes I thought I was a bit, you know, lefty,” O’Connor says. “But I always said, ‘show me the cops, and I’ll show you the country’ – if the cops are corrupt, the country is corrupt.”

On a pony wall, you can find one of O’Connor’s unsung talents hung and framed: poetry. There lies an ode to Cobweb Corner, but most of the poems O’Connor writes are on the bits of paper scattered about his house – the one about Wellington southerlies is his “pride and joy” – so don’t expect a collection to come any time soon. Or a memoir, because “I’ve never really been someone who has stopped long enough to reflect on what I’ve done,” O’Connor says. “People say, you’ve got to write a book one day. And I say, well, I’m still researching it.”

THE SPINOFF PUB Q+A

How much should a pint cost?

I think they generally hover around that $10 to $12 mark, but they’re a bit cheaper here – probably one of the cheapest pints in Wellington.

Do you have a karaoke go-to?

No, no, no, no. I can’t dance or do karaoke. I haven’t always been that way, but I’ve learnt my lesson in life, because you do what you’re good at, and I’m not good at that.

‘Ten Guitars’ was always my go-to; one of the few songs I know all the words to. But why would someone like me even think about singing when you’ve got some of the voices [in Labour], like Cushla [Tangaere-Manuel]? I’m more likely to do a verse to fend people away.

Which three MPs would be on your pub quiz team?

I’ve got the history and geography rounds. Maybe [NZ First’s] Casey Costello? I’ve worked with her in the past with the police; I don’t know what she’s like on pop culture stuff but she’d certainly bring a sharp tongue. I think [Act’s] Todd Stephenson’s smart, he’s one of those brainy little guys I used to work with. He can do the arty stuff, and I’ll stick with Kieran [McAnulty] as my sporting guy.

Which MP from across the aisle would you most like to share a drink with?

As the Irish say, they’ve got to be good craic. Oh, you almost need a bloody list of people, which is what I look at when I’m sitting in the chair [as assistant speaker]. Gerry [Brownlee] and I sometimes struggle with that instant name recognition.

I’m going down the rows [of the House] in my mind: I’ve had a drink with [NZ First’s] Mark Patterson – he’s good craic – and I’ve known Andy Foster for years. I’ve had a drink with [Act minister] Nicole McKee, [National’s] Rima Nakhle, Suze Redmayne, I had a bit to do with Brooke van Velden before she came to parliament. Actually, I’ve had a bit of craic with a lot of them. Let’s say [Act minister] Karen Chhour, because I haven’t really had a chance to have a good chat with her.

Is there an alcohol-related law you would like to change?

I’m worried this is going to make me sound like a bloody drunk, but mind you, I’ve got to 67 years with everyone knowing I like a drink. But I think we need to start discouraging cheap drinking at home, and make drinking social again. It’s really expensive to drink in pubs, it’s still $22 for a round of two beers, whereas we could have been sitting in a flat drinking a dozen beers or four bottles of cheap wine for 22 bucks.

You can undo the pricing to push people, without sly grogging. I’ve worked as a cop in places where they’ve had licensing trusts: they have their advantages, but the downside is that it generally means there’s no cheap grog around, and the result of that becomes sly grog. Smart regulation means being careful not to perverse incentives – if you start making grog too dear to drink, we get a bit like Sweden, where every house has a vodka still in it.

Sweden has the most heavily regulated drinking environment in the world, but the preloading is huge. I remember talking to an Aussie barman in Sweden – back when I used to go there with the police association – and this guy said, “mate, by the end of the night, you’ll see them drunk as skunks. You think we get drunk in New Zealand and Australia, but they’re even drunker up here. The difference is they won’t be fighting – they’ll be shagging.”

What’s a policy area we’ve been nursing without finishing the glass?

Only the sensible, well-considered intervention of the state will prevent the massive gaps between the rich and the poor, with well-researched reforms that ensure everyone has the same opportunities. A lot of that came out of my undercover cop days: I had a fairly privileged background, and I remember meeting these people that were way smarter than me in every respect, but for the opportunity. They were running drug cartels on the back of an envelope, and you would think, man, you’re a clever bugger.

We talk about the straight and narrow, but these guys had no idea what straight and narrow was – it was just the dog-eat-dog world they grew up in. And you realise that there’s nothing wrong with being privileged, it’s not knowing you’re privileged that is the crime. I hear people say, “they should work harder”. You want to see who works the hardest in parliament? The bloody cleaners.

What qualities make a good drinking partner?

Not someone who’s saying, “come on, mate, keep up”; someone who is informed and funny, and knows more than me.

Have you ever had a Schnapps election moment where you regretted your political instinct?

Nothing’s leaping out but you’d always say you’d do things differently on reflection.

Up next on One MP, One Pint: Children’s minister Karen Chhour. Read more OMPOP interviews here.