Gabi Lardies is here to reflect on the week as Mad Chapman is on leave.

After the grabbing saga this week, there was the word salad saga. No matter how many times Mike Hosking tried to get a straight answer out of Chris Luxon on whether or not he would have sacked Andrew Bayly had he not resigned, out of Luxon’s mouth came a dizzying merry-go-round of talking points in lieu of a straight answer. The carnival ride lasted almost three minutes. Primary school students are expected to give a speech that makes sense and covers a topic in less time. The incident drove Hosking to ask the prime minister if he was “just too woke?”

Many meals have been made of the interview and Luxon’s communication style. Some have decided he needs more media training to get his points across clearly and concisely. But when I watch the interview, the problems seem to come from a reluctance to take a stand rather than an inability to communicate. It’s being noticed enough to give rise to talk of a pattern – he was a church mouse about condemning Destiny Church last week. Racist comments made by Winston Peters and Shane Jones in the house were simply “not remarks I’d make myself”. It took a year to pull an opinion out of him about the Treaty principles bill, and we don’t know where he stands on asset sales. He seems to wait until public opinion can be gauged before sharing his own. If he has convictions, they are starting to resemble a wind sock to those looking on. 

Meanwhile, the leader of the opposition, Chris Hipkins, has been very busy not barking at every passing car. After throwing away key left-wing planks in 2023 – possibilities for a capital gains tax, a wealth tax, a social insurance scheme, Three Water reforms, the clean car rebate – he was so quiet last year that one began to wonder if he is a cat, a worm or a jellyfish. Despite the government bringing in tax breaks for landlords, rolling back workers’ and renters’ rights, disbanding the Māori Health Authority and toughening benefit rules – some would say perfect fodder for a Labour in opposition – he’s been fairly quiet. The maxim “oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them” exists for a reason. One Chris is waiting for the other Chris to dig his own grave, and some political commentators are signalling that maybe waiting and seeing is working. On the other hand, if I turned up to my ripper rugby game to find out my team had won by default because the other team wasn’t there, I’m not sure I’d consider it a win. 

With the next election in sight, Hipkins’ voice has grown a little louder this year. He is criticising the government but an alternative offering that isn’t simply that the other Chris is shit is still missing in action as it was in the meek centrist election campaign in 2023. That ended with Labour in the shitter and the Green Party – with their unashamed left-wing politics – had their best year yet. Last year, Hipkins did give a vision for the future, but it was set in 2040, in a future utopia where a decade of fictional Labour governance had somehow fixed everything. Opposition politics is very often literal – reacting in opposition to what the government does. Labour’s press release schedule is a testament to that, but it would be refreshing to see things for people to get behind and not simply rally against.

Labour seems stuck on its own merry-go-round, with the centrifugal force pushing everything towards the outside and leaving a void in the centre. A place some might argue should be home to values and principles. I’ll leave the last words to our prime minister: “The reality is you’ve gotta have some standards Mike”.

This week on Behind the Story

If you sleuth hard enough, there are new answers to old questions

While many journalists are trawling Reddit, X and TikTok for stories, Joel MacManus is browsing Papers Past, an online archive of digitised historical media. This week he may have solved the murder case of an emu that died at the Wellington Zoo in 1907 and last year he made a near definitive ruling on whether or not Te Rauparaha really did drink at the Thistle Inn. The resulting investigations make for gripping reading. Gabi Lardies takes over the mic on this week’s episode of Behind the Story and is joined by Joel MacManus to discuss why he is so intrigued by these questions and how he sets about solving them.

The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week

• One position, 1,200 applications, Gabi Lardies takes a look at New Zealand’s job market right now
• Gabi Lardies strikes again with a great bit of local reporting on Auckland University’s $320m rec centre
• Madeleine Chapman argues with herself about Tinā, the movie of the moment
• Enquiring minds and Madeleine Chapman want to know when the last time you ‘held’ your colleague was
• Liam Rātana outlines everything a beginner needs to know about “the Olympics of kapa haka”, Te Matatini

Comments of the week

• On In the plastic bag he has four dead fish’: Readers share their dating stories: “My first and last attempt at online dating overseas happened when the guy casually dropped into the conversation that, 2 years prior, he had euthanised his wife at home. He claimed she had had early stage brain cancer but wanted to go out on her own terms. Other than the wee bit of femicide, there were other red flags, like him wearing sneans, lol”
• On Windbag: The unsolved case of the Wellington emu murder: “The rumour at Houghton Valley School in the 2000s was that the elephant was buried there”

Pick up where this leaves off

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