Another day in the House, where questions mostly revolved around ‘how could xyz possibly get worse?’
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.
There’s a restless air that flows through parliament on the Tuesday of a sitting week. After a relaxing weekend spent a) feeling inspired by the country’s ongoing successes (if you are in government) or b) feeling troubled by the country’s ongoing failures (if in opposition), MPs are itching to get back to the benches and engage in verbal combat. Few thrills compare – except perhaps visiting Mount Everest base camp.
Tuesday also sees MPs running around the hallways while they make their way to caucus meeting and question time, where MPs and even the prime minister can be caught saying things like the councillors in the nation’s capital are “pretty lame-o”. Around the halls of parliament yesterday morning voices quoting “lame-o” could be heard floating out of doorways and offices.
But Christopher Luxon need only look around the House to see the lame-o ailment is not limited to local democracy. Such as in the lame-oversteppers from the opposition who can’t seem to recall everything that ever went wrong with their past governments, the lame-obsessives of the school lunch programme, and the lame-ornamentals in the back benches with their endless heckling and Marxist degrowth ways. To use another Luxon-approved pejorative, this place is filled with frickin’ lame-os
Public Lame-O Number One, Labour leader Chris Hipkins, was the first to interrogate the prime minister during Tuesday’s question time. Though speaker Gerry Brownlee had opened the session by refusing Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan’s request for an urgent debate on school lunches (“not every injury sustained at school can be the subject of an urgent debate”), Hipkins was armed with the fresh ammo of a liquidated school lunch provider.
In the latest in a series of “how could it possibly get worse?” developments, Hipkins asked Luxon why it would have to take until term two to take some action over the programme’s reported scandals – but rather than strike a nerve, his description of the service as “chaos” had associate education minister David Seymour laughing in his seat.
Well, some things have been unacceptable, but we’re working on it, replied Luxon. But why is Seymour still yet to meet with education minister Erica Stanford? Hipkins pressed. Again, Seymour is doing his best to make sure the lunches will see improvements by term two, Luxon reasoned. And while Stanford was supposedly being ignored by Seymour, the minister of education ignored everyone else around her, tip-tapping away at her iPhone.
When Luxon provided enough half-answers, Hipkins moved onto another topic that has been dominating question time discussions: emergency housing. It’s an issue on which minister for social housing Tama Potaka believes the government has been making great strides, having met its own goal of lowering the number of families living in social housing years in advance. But, the opposition wanted to know, if they’re not in emergency housing, where are they now? Labour’s Kieran McAnulty heckled an answer for the prime minister: “They’re sleeping in buses! They’re on the street!”
It was a race between housing minister Bishop and Seymour to see who could get their supplementary in first. The Act Party leader does this thing where he keeps his right arm on the bench, staring down whoever is speaking until he can leap to his feet and raise a point of order, and yet he has about a 50/50 success rate with this technique – he’s either beaten by someone faster, or by the speaker asking him to sit down. Yesterday, they were beaten by Hipkins, who couldn’t get the prime minister to budge on his praise for the strides made (or lack thereof, depending on which side of the room you ask) in emergency housing.
“Doesn’t know, doesn’t care,” Hipkins called. “Go make them a Marmite sandwich.”
When questioning on emergency housing came to Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick, she had much less patience than her counterpart in red, and opted for a back and forth with Luxon when he wouldn’t admit that some of those who cannot access social housing have instead been left on the street. “Just calm,” Brownlee implored, while Swarbrick threw her hands in the air in frustration. “Have a cold shower,” a voice from the government benches called. That’s probably what those homeless teenagers are doing right now.
Swarbrick v Luxon is the human embodiment of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. And if anyone else dares get in her way, Swarbrick has words for them, too. “Marxist! Marxists!” Jones had barked at her. “Scaredy cat,” she sneered back. At least it was an explosion that didn’t leave second degree burns.