We’ve all misplaced something at work. But if your office is a ministerial one, you might expect a bit more urgency in finding out where it went.

You’d think the people preaching the loudest about getting their books in order would at least have a decent filing cabinet. Look, we all know that things in the workplace can go walkabout. You lose a pen here and there, misplace a note or two. Could you realistically expect a Beehive staffer to keep every bit of paper passed along to them by every major company that comes knocking?

Spare a thought for prime minister Christopher Luxon, who probably would have wanted to spend the lead-up to Budget 2026 talking about Budget 2026. Instead he faced pesky questions about other documents, after it was revealed over the weekend that hard copies of briefing notes had been presented to the prime minister’s office (PMO) in 2024 by Fonterra and Z Energy regarding a court case brought against them by climate activist Mike Smith. 

Somehow, those documents had vanished. And yet, their advice appears to live on. Earlier this month the government announced a law that would protect businesses from being sued over their greenhouse gas emissions and climate damage.

That Sunday night scoop followed Luxon to Monday afternoon’s post-cabinet press conference. Had he even bothered asking Fonterra or Z Energy to resend the missing papers, asked TVNZ political reporter Benedict Collins? “No,” replied Luxon.

Out with the old, and in with the new. On Tuesday morning, senior ministers hit the printing press. What is typically a photo-op double-act of finance minister Nicola Willis and associate finance minister Chris Bishop became a blended family portrait. With the associate finance ministers, David Seymour and Shane Jones, from the other sides of the coalition at her side, Willis stressed the “team effort” that built Budget 2026.

It was a “tough love budget”, promised Seymour. It was a “responsible” budget, Willis snoozed. She asked printing press staffers if she could take a copy back to the office, and was just as surprised as anyone else to find out the documents she was smiling with were fakes.

Because this is an election year, the ministers headed around the corner to Puku Pies, to enjoy lunch for a crowd of cameras. With pāua pies for Jones and Willis, brisket for Bishop and mince and cheese for Seymour (“I have to be predictable sometimes”), all at $15 a pop, the quartet shoved food in their mouths and provided awkward commentary like, “great pastry, firm structure” (source: Willis). The look on the faces of the customers sitting at the table next door underlined the strangeness of the scene. Maybe it would feel more tasteful if we weren’t also in a cost of living crisis.

At question time, the mysterious case of the missing papers came to the forefront again. When Labour leader Chris Hipkins questioned who at the PMO was responsible for the handling of these documents, Luxon finally let something slip. It was “someone who left a while ago”.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick chose a different tactic in her questioning. Was Luxon’s response essentially “just trust me, bro”? The barrage from the opposition had Luxon admit he was “a little confused by that question, I couldn’t hear it over the quacking from the other side”.

A “quack, quack, quack” rippled through the House at the expense of the Labour Party. The wounds of a leaked tape, which put Ayesha Verrall’s off-pitch singing and an off-colour comment from Barbara Edmonds on blast, were too fresh. They learned the hard way that although some people can get away with cracking jokes, others should stick to talking policy.

After question time, the speaker allowed an urgent debate called by Swarbrick into the handling of the missing documents. Swarbrick called for an independent urgent inquiry into the matter. “If he [Luxon] wants to tell us all that he has clean hands, then he has the most vested interest in backing this inquiry,” Swarbrick told the House. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then let’s put it all out in the open.”

“Who’s texting Fonterra?” Labour’s Duncan Webb cried across the House. When he spoke to media about the debate later, Webb pointed to the Public Records Act. It’s legally “improper” to dispose of a ministerial document then claim you had no idea where it went.

“It’s outrageous,” called Green MP Steve Abel. “It’s been called ‘corruption’,” suggested Labour’s Damien O’Connor.

“It’s been called all kinds of things, and there are only so many explanations for them,” Webb declared. “One of them is [in]competence, one of them is a lack of transparency, and the other ones don’t bear mentioning in this House.”

Swarbrick was back at it again during Wednesday’s question time, but Luxon was holding the line. The only person she could break was speaker Gerry Brownlee, who punctuated her questions with heavy sighs. Despite news reports naming the PMO staffer who handled the Fonterra and Z Energy documents as former chief policy officer Matt Burgess, Brownlee scolded Swarbrick for doing the same.

There was a contest of ideas across the House about what was allowed under standing orders, but not so much about the whereabouts of the missing papers. Eventually, Swarbrick posed that if the prime minister didn’t know whether these papers were passed onto the justice ministry, “does he think it might be his job to find out?”

As I said before, Luxon replied, there is “no record or recollection” of interactions with Fonterra and Z Energy from 2024. “Ideally, there should be.”

By the evening, parliament passed the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill which, well, does exactly what it says on the tin. The environment ministry will eventually form a new super group, the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport, with the housing and transport ministries. If you’re wondering “who asked for this?”, you probably won’t find your answer on the bill’s select committee submissions page; 583 of the 588 submissions made on the bill opposed it.

If the disappearing documents case suggests anything, it’s that paperwork only gets filed around this place when it suits. In this case, it didn’t. But you can guarantee the powers that be will have their shit together by the time some hundred or so journalists and economists enter parliament’s banquet hall later this morning to read Budget 2026.