One MP, One Pint: Camilla Belich on getting duped by a fake John Campbell

Labour’s justice spokesperson was once interviewed by a teddy bear posing as one of our best-known broadcasters.

Having passed three member’s bills over three years, you could say Labour MP Camilla Belich has luck on her side. But that would be overlooking all her hard mahi in some pretty hefty portfolios (currently justice and public services). Belich could soon hit a member’s bill home run, with her Modern Slavery Bill on its way to the select committee (submissions close in two days), but she one to count her chickens before they hatch.

Maybe parliament is where the former union lawyer was always meant to be. Her Labour Party politics are genetic; her great-grandfather went leafleting for Michael Joseph Savage, her grandfather was Labour mayor of Wellington Sir Jim Belich, and her parents were trade unionists. Belich herself has also always been the political type. She served on Wellington’s youth council as a teenager, and, while at law school, she was co-president of the NZ University Students Association, alongside her now husband. She entered parliament in 2020 as a list MP.

Her most recent feat has been getting the Modern Slavery Bill past its first reading by joining forces with National MP Greg Fleming. The two invoked for the first time standing order 288, which allows a member’s bill to bypass the ballot system and head straight to its first reading if it has the support of at least two-thirds of non-executive MPs. After working on the bill for two years and going through some 20-odd versions, is this the work that Belich is proudest of this term?

“I don’t take the passing of a bill for granted until it actually passes,” she says. “The thing that I think about is, how do you implement long-term change that survives government? Us doing it cross-party is hopefully a way of ensuring that it doesn’t get repealed. That is something I’m always thinking about, because a lot of bills that Labour passed that I felt were really meaningful, like fair pay agreements, were repealed. I’m always thinking, how do we take the public with us? And other political parties, to make sure change is enduring.

“You can never really sit back on your laurels,” she says.

Sitting opposite Belich, you can’t help but feel a little bit mogged, intellectually and otherwise. Her hobbies include weight-lifting (though she doesn’t want to give the impression she’s some Olympic-level athlete – “anyone who comes into the parliament gym will see that I’m not”); and “BookTok” (she “dabbles in romantasy”). She’s a fan of a good power suit, so it’s no surprise that one of her passions is fashion. We both agree it’s weird that women should feel shamed for giving a shit about pretty things; after all, fashion is “an amazing female-dominated industry that does a lot for economic growth, and people marginalise the work they do because it’s clothes and shoes”.

Belich even has an autograph from one of her fashion icons, Audrey Hepburn. “When I was a kid, my grandmother was at a function with her, and she signed the menu: “To Camilla, love Audrey”. Belich smiles. “I’ve got that framed at my house.”

THE SPINOFF PUB Q+A

How much should a pint cost?

Well, I’ve read some of your previous interviews, and had a bit of a Google, and I think the consensus is around $10. Which everyone still thinks is quite a lot. But I’m drinking the non-alcoholic [beer], and that is actually a similar price, which is really interesting – apparently that’s because it’s quite difficult to take the alcohol out and still keep that taste. I don’t want to judge them for charging because I have no idea how that process works.

Do you have a karaoke go-to?

I try to stay away from karaoke. Even my children tell me to stop when I try singing them songs. My girls have got me into Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter … I like some of those tracks on The Life of a Showgirl album, I like the collab. I really love Nadia Reid, I feel like I’m literally one of her biggest fans because I listen to all of her music and have a Nadia Reid hat.

Favourite place to get a drink in Aotearoa?

Do you know Swashbucklers [in Auckland]? It’s really unpretentious, there’s so many people from big companies like Air New Zealand and Fonterra that come down, but then there’s also just the regulars. And my kids love it too, because they do amazing seafood.

Which three MPs would be on your pub quiz team?

If there was anything about wool [in the quiz], then I would definitely pick [NZ First’s] Mark Patterson. I’ve been really impressed with my colleague Vanushi Walters and her knowledge about foreign affairs. She’s super smart, and we actually went to primary school together. We went to each other’s birthday parties, then she moved to Auckland, and we connected again when we were teenagers doing youth councils.

I know that a few people have picked him, but I stood against [Green MP] Lawrence Xu-Nan in Epsom. He’s an Egyptologist, so for the Egypt round it’d have to be Lawrence. My round would be 90s pop culture or something like that. Something that was in a weekly magazine 20 years ago.

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

I think I probably owe Chris Penk a beer. He’s given me a ride a few times to parliament. So long as it’s him and not his Twitter persona.

a tall man in a blue tie and a shorter blonde woman wearing a grey blazer look sideways with a bevy of microphones in front of them and distinctive black and white parliamment tiles behind them. — Belich and Greg Fleming answering questions about the modern-day slavery bill in January (Photo: Lyric Waiwiri-Smith)

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

We’ve had a lot of alcohol-related laws come through parliament recently. I’m probably a little bit more on the conservative side in terms of liberalisation, just because I feel it’s quite easily available at the moment. I feel like people, especially younger people, are drinking less and I think that’s a really good thing overall, for our health in New Zealand.

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

I do think an area that we could come together on is looking at our [sexual] consent laws and whether they’re up to date. It’s been advocated to us a lot from lots of different younger women particularly, so I think that’s something that we should look at.

What qualities make a good drinking partner?

I think as long as her name is Rachel Brooking, you’ll have a good night.

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

I was going to an event organised by Parents Against Climate Change, and I was like, oh wow, they’ve got John Campbell there! I was like, that is really impressive! I’ll go down and be interviewed by John. So I went and realised it was actually entered in my diary wrong – instead of it being John Campbell, it was John Camp-Bear. It was a literal soft toy with John Campbell’s glasses on it, and it was posing questions. So that was a bit of a surprise. I actually told John about it and he thought it was really funny.