Ani O'Brien: A Week Is A Long Time - 7 June 2025

A week is a long time in politics. Welcome to my new weekly wrap up of the week that was in New Zealand politics with a sprinkling of international news.

Musical Chairs in the House

We started this week with a new Deputy Prime Minister and a re-jiggle of seating arrangements in the House. David Seymour now sits next to the Prime Minister as his Deputy and the ACT Party have swapped seats with New Zealand First. This puts New Zealand First and Te Pāti Māori mere metres from each other setting us up for a fiery second half of this term.

Load-of-crap-gate

Chris Bishop remains unapologetic about his Aotearoa Music Awards comment that the political nature of Stan Walker’s performance was a “load of crap”. This has solidified the gratuitously outraged in their opinion that he is a terrible human being who should be booted from Parliament quick sharp. On the other hand, Kiwis who share his fatigue for Te Pāti Māori’s Toitū Te Tiriti activism are expressing support for him and applauding him for not backing down to the cancel machine.

Read my full article on Load-of-crap-gate.

Road cone tipline gimmick

The road cone tip line is open. This is clearly a gimmick, but it is as pointless as many of the cones themselves. Just as the orange triangles of distraction stand erect all over our roads for no good reason, now too this website and tipline exist to pretend work is being done. The Opposition should be declaring open season on this dumb initiative. The goal is wide open.

Quotable moment: Nicola Willis

One of the best performers on her feet in the House, Nicola Willis can usually be relied on to supply a quotable moment each week. On Tuesday she told the Opposition - in particular the leader of the Opposition Chris Hipkins - "Boys that cry wolf don't get listened to". Mr Crocodile Tears himself looked aghast from his seat where he reclined in perpetual indignation. If there is such a thing as political karma then he will surely have a bad time coming his way for the manner in which he has lead the outright lies about women’s pay in relation to pay equity changes.

How to talk about pay equity properly

Barbara Edmonds remained focused on the issue of pay equity delivering a series of “what do you say to…” anecdotal questions to Nicola Willis. When handled like this, the topic is a winner for Labour as they snatched the narrative from the get-go. Women are angry and although much of that is based on the cynical lies of Hipkins and co, some of it is fair game. It is smart for them to thrash the issue and squeeze every last bit of juice from it. Her Budget speech is worth a watch.

Legitimisation of mining

“We are the first nation to transition from gas to imported coal…” Shane Jones has been on a one-man campaign to legitimise the energy and resources sector and has been remarkably successful. He is making gains in the argument for mining largely because he is telling the truth about the reality of what our alternatives are and by pointing out the absurdity of Green positions. If the Left don’t wake up and get real on pragmatic climate and environment action, Jones and New Zealand First will run away with this narrative in time to campaign with it for the next election.

The big story that got little air time

A big story from the Budget that hasn’t had half as much attention as it should have is the injection of funding into Education and, in particular, education for children with learning difficulties. Erica Stanford is relying on patsy questions to talk about what is massive news being celebrated by the sector. The Opposition do not want to talk about it because it is something they wish they had done. The media don’t want to talk about it because it is something they wish Labour had done.

Creep of the week

This week a former boss of mine was outed as a terrible creep and lost his job as Deputy Chief Press Secretary to the Prime Minister. Michael Forbes was not my boss for long as I was promoted and he then left to go to a public service role. However, I worked with him for a good few months. It turns out that he was caught recording audio of sexual encounters with women in the sex trade without their permission as well as recording and taking photos of unsuspecting women in compromising positions.

Having learnt from the Andrew Bayly situation where the Prime Minister twisted himself in knots avoiding saying if he would have fired him or not, this time Luxon was unequivocal. A Press Release said: “Had the staff member not resigned, we expect their employment would have been terminated after a short investigation.”

This is a scandal Luxon did not need, but his response thus far has been textbook. He has emphasised his sympathy and support for the women Forbes victimised and left no room for doubt as to his utter disapproval of his actions.

Whadaya know: the NZ public support the punishment of Te Pāti Māori

According to Radio New Zealand: “More than half of voters consider the proposed penalty for three Te Pāti Māori MPs over the Treaty Principles haka to be either appropriate or too lenient, polling shows…”

Te Pāti Māori co-leaders have three weeks off to plan next stunt

Eight months of drama surrounding the haka that went viral, finger guns, and a divided Privileges Committee are over. Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer have been suspended from Parliament without pay for 21 days and youngest MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke for 7 days.

The NZ Herald ran the headline that the suspension was “ugly and sad”, but was it the suspension or the ongoing performative nonsense from Te Pāti Māori that was truly ugly? Waititi holding up a noose in Parliament was definitely a low point.

Even if the media are determined to frame Te Pāti Māori as perpetual victims, New Zealanders can see that the party deliberately says and does inflammatory things to grab attention. Ultimately, they are, as Winston Peters asserts, extremists.

There was a dispute in the the Privileges Committee report debate over whether Te Pāti Māori MP Takuta Ferris told ACT MP Dr Parmjeet Parmar she was “in the wrong country” or if he said she was “in a Māori country”. There was also a disagreement over whether National MP James Meager made finger guns at Chloe Swarbrick or merely pointed at her. Discourse was clearly extraordinarily high quality…

If you watch one speech from the debate, make it Adrian Rurawhe’s one. We hear a lot about mana in the House, but when Rurawhe spoke in this debate you could see it, feel it. He gave pretty much everyone in Parliament a serve, but his telling off to Te Pāti Māori may have been the only one that actually humbled them. He told them their tūpuna, Tariana Turia would never have approved of their behaviour.

His speech was in another league to many of those on his side of the House who bizarrely focused on how “the world is watching”. Frankly, I am dubious about that claim, but even if it were true…who cares? I will be posting a highlights reel of the speeches on my TikTok account.

The end of a big beautiful friendship

It was inevitable that the bromance between the richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world would eventually come to a spectacular end, but has come earlier than I predicted. These are strange times. It feels like online entertainment in the form of a spat between megalomaniacs, but the consequences are all too real.

Initially I thought this could be a stunt. Trump is famous for his hijinks with media. He has always known how to create drama for headlines, but once Elon Musk posted to X that Trump was in the Epstein files this theory seemed less plausible.

America voted for a disruptor and they certainly have one. Or two.

David Seymour takes part in Oxford debate

The Deputy Prime Minister participated in an Oxford Union debate on the topic of "stolen land and illegal immigration." Although his team lost the debate, Seymour highlighted the event as a stark contrast to recent actions by Te Pāti Māori in New Zealand's Parliament. Seymour argued that the concept of "illegal immigration" is a legal construct, not a moral failing.

A Kiwi studying at Oxford, Lucy Hu, spoke briefly and talked about the importance of indigenous sovereignty. She said:

“My point isn't that immigration laws are not necessary or that immigration laws are wrong inherently. It's just that the indigenous population of the country should be able to decide what those laws are and what the institutions are of the country.”

She also told The Post that Seymour “wasn't as outrageous as some of the other speakers”.1

Desley Simpson finally decides not to split the vote in Auckland

Desley Simpson had been making noises about running against incumbent Mayor of Auckland Wayne Brown. Her enthusiastic supporters in the Ōrākei Ward have taken to women’s Facebook groups to endorse her, I hear. I haven’t seen it myself as I am barred from the groups for some reason…

However, this week Simpson announced she would not be running and is supporting a second term for Wayne Brown. “You’ve got to look at what’s good for Auckland,” Simpson said.

Other news in brief:

• Brooke van Velden has infuriated her arch enemies in the unions by tutu-ing with the role of WorkSafe in New Zealand workplaces to reduce their ability to enforce and instead seeking a balance of practical guidance.

• National gets tough on problem tenants. “Living in a taxpayer-funded social house is a privilege,” Minister Tama Potaka said. Sixty-three tenants have been evicted from Kainga Ora houses.

1  https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360715257/david-seymour-debated-prestigious-oxford-union-and-lost-heres-what-happened

Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.