Silly season reaches Parliament
Opinion
Gerry Brownlee is feeling the Christmas spirit. The Opposition foreign affairs spokesperson has been busy baking. Parliament’s cafe has turned on the carols playlist. The silly season is under way.
For some, the final two weeks of Parliament are a bit of a party.
On Thursday, the British High Commission hosted its glitzy Homewood Christmas Ball. The annual event sees hordes of politicians and Beehive insiders bust out their tuxedos and most shimmery gowns, as the British roll out the red carpet.
Speaking of silly, the Green Party fury over Three Waters has dialled up to an unremarkable crescendo.
A little constitutional drama has been playing out in Parliament over recent weeks. It all started when the Greens’ Eugenie Sage put forward a motion to make it very tricky for any future Government to sell off water infrastructure, through creatively using ‘‘entrenchment’’ in a provision of the Three Waters bill.
For a whole lot of reasons, ‘‘entrenchment’’ is quite rare and controversial. After Labour made ‘‘ a mistake’’ and supported the proposal, the party backed down – and was then thoroughly mocked by the ACT and National parties.
While Sage’s proposal was constitutionally dicey, and eventually shunned by all sides, she could have started quite an interesting debate about how we value water. The issue is, she never really went out and explained any of that in public. Beyond reacting to the outrage, she did very little to put her case forward to the public.
Instead, a strange debate about Three Waters and constitutional overreach of the Labour majority Government ensued. Sage’s proposal caused a huge headache for Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta, Leader of the House Chris Hipkins, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. There have since been calls for Mahuta to be sacked.
And then, after Sage’s scheming had been put to rest, the Greens decided to rub some salt into Labour’s wounds. After supporting the Three Waters bill from its introduction, the Greens joined ACT, National and Te Pāti Māori to vote against it.
For many in Parliament, they’re not so much partying to the finish line but crawling towards it.
When Ardern let slip that some of her MPs wouldn’t be standing at the next election, reporters embarked on a mission to ask all of Labour if they were looking forward to a more relaxed 2024.
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson repeated the line, ‘‘I love my job’’. Blink twice, Grant, if you need an out.
Meanwhile, Commerce Minister David Clark let the cat out of the bag. He said he ‘‘looked forward’’ to speaking about his future with Labour, ‘‘at an appropriate time’’.
Not that he’s looking, but if Brownlee wanted to step into a new career, baking could be profitable.
His Christmas cake, which he was selling on Trade Me for The Black Ops Local Charity, sold for a whopping $1010. The price was
pushed up thanks to a $1000 bid from what appeared to be an account from the adult entertainment/strip club business Calendar Girls.