Call him Winnie, call him Ishmael, but never call Winston Peters a man who’s lacking in one-liners.
Echo Chamber is The Spinoff’s dispatch from the press gallery, recapping sessions in the House. Columns are written by politics reporter Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Wellington editor Joel MacManus.
The centre of absurdity in Aotearoa is, more often than not, the House of Representatives. Yes, this is the place of policy and politics and whatnot. Yes, this is where you can often find the most learned and powerful minds in the country stuffing pies into their faces. But just like any workplace, these buildings are prone to needing an HR department to straighten out some of the inter-colleague bickering and downright bad behaviour.
Suffice to say, things have been tense lately. Tuesday’s question time had the Green Party looking slightly deflated – one of their number, MP Benjamin Doyle, is away for the rest of the week in the fallout from bussygate, which followed last week’s bad press for the party.
Whatever air they had lost appeared to be sucked up by those on the government benches, chests puffed up after a refreshing weekend of not being the villain. Even if they’ve managed to escape a barrage of bad headlines, prime minister Christopher Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins failed to provide much of a show as they kicked off oral questions.
Hipkins couldn’t get an answer to his question about insurance premiums because it pertained to a government agency with its own board – not the government – and Luxon was lectured by speaker Gerry Brownlee for repeatedly criticising the previous government. Despite this, Act leader David Seymour still got up and had a crack at Labour too, only to let Brownlee deliver his favourite line: “no”.
It turns out, Winston Peters is indeed aware of his MP Andy Foster’s existence. Maybe in an attempt to make up for himself, Foster offered a few cushy questions on Peter’s newly unveiled ferry plan and, Peters being Peters, he ribbed his foes across the benches by way of referencing classic literature from the 1850s, which also happens to be about the same time he started his diet.
“Well,” Peters declared, “the greatest maritime fiction since Moby Dick was delivered by Chris Hipkins when he said this: mega ferries ‘wasn’t the wisest decision’.” The line landed not so much with a splash, but with the dull thud of a dead whale.
“How was that?” Hipkins asked, desperately trying to jog his memories of high school English. “How was that? It landed big time, that’s how it was,” Peters replied. He obviously meant the whale.
Brownlee was unimpressed: “You started out like you were reading a novel.” Thus ensued an unnecessary explanation from Peters that, if you read between the lines, yes he did answer Foster’s question on how his ferry plan compared to the previous government’s, just with some flair.
Peters managed to make Brownlee laugh: “Let’s see how you go. You’re a very experienced man.” So experienced, yet days of yore still feel like yesterday – he told the House the previous government’s plans for multi-storey terminals were “so flash, even Louis XIV would have been embarrassed”.
But, maybe Louis XIV wouldn’t have blushed at a yes-to-growth, pro-profit mindset. Luxon certainly doesn’t, and seemed pained that the Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick couldn’t quite get the message that “if you care about low and middle-income working New Zealanders, you run and manage the economy as a fiscal conservative”.
The barracking continued and the government benches giggled along together, shaking their heads at the degrowth agenda displayed by the Greens on the other side of the chambers, and seemingly, in a whole other universe to the one they are living in.
Finance minister Nicola Willis, who earlier told the House the previous government’s approach to the rising cost of living was to “spray the money hose around, cross their fingers, and hope”, leapt from her seat.
Does the prime minister agree, Willis asked, that the profit motive is a key principle of a capitalist market economy, and would he advocate other forms of economic philosophy such as … Marxism?” She delivered the infamous “m” with a level of venom normally reserved something like, say, “bussy”.
“Get a grip!” Swarbrick shot back. “That’s all you know, eh?” Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi called.
Questions came back around to Peters’ rail-enabled ferries, with Labour’s Tangi Utikere wondering if ratepayers might be footing the bill for infrastructure upgrades, if four years is enough time to be stuck with some pretty average ferries, and if Peters’ plan truly is better than the one Willis was meant to deliver.
Well, Peters pointed out, look at Tasmania – they’ve got new ferries they can’t even use because the existing infrastructure is too small. “What’s wrong with that?” Peters asked. “It’s not moron time over here.” What was it that Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab had thought to himself in the hunt for the whale? Oh, yeah: “All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”
