Echo Chamber: ‘Mr Peters wants to call me a dickhead'

The Spinoff

3 days ago

'Dickhead', 'bollocks', 'arrogant wokester loser' – who knows what will come out of Winston Peters next.
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.
It only took a minute for Gerry Brownlee to rise to his feet during Wednesday's question time and threaten to kick someone out of the House. The speaker usually has a short fuse anyway, and the House has been sitting under urgency as the government gets through a slew of bill readings (among them draft legislation that would allow employers to make pay deductions over partial strikes, and another that expands the eligibility for an immigration levy), but perhaps it's the acting prime minister who has made Brownlee feel the need to stay on high alert this week.
After all, David Seymour was the one who wanted to bring up the 'flagrant, reckless' whoever whoever when Labour leader Chris Hipkins asked him if he stood by the government actions and whatever whatever. Seymour was lauding the government's recent repeal of the ban on oil and gas exploration, and couldn't help but try to rib those wokesters across the way when Brownlee put his foot down.
And it only took another minute for Brownlee to scold Seymour again, after the Act Party leader questioned whether Hipkins' caucus supported him. 'I think the acting prime minister can do better than that,' Brownlee said. 'The member's a very articulate man, I'm sure he can do better than he has.' And Seymour – being Seymour – only needed another minute to make another blunder by calling the opposition 'turkeys', for which the speaker made him withdraw and apologise. Another day in paradise.
Afterwards, National MP Dana Kirkpatrick attempted to hand patsies to finance minister Nicola Willis to celebrate the beginning of the Depositor Compensation Scheme next week, but jeers from the opposition kept cutting over her. It was the Labour Party, trying to summon a former finance minister to claim his victory for actually coming up with the scheme in the first place.
So, Chris Hipkins offered Willis a supplementary – who was the finance minister when this was passed into law? Well, Willis scoffed, how funny that those calling me 'desperate' for taking credit for this now want to take credit for it themselves. 'Well, that is flip-flop Hipkins for ya.'
But after a small tug-of-war, Willis finally conceded that it was Grant Robertson (whose name received a roaring 'hooray!' from Labour) who was the finance minister at the time, and thus the scheme 'has the rare attribute that it was actually one thing he did that was helpful'. And then Winston Peters decided he wanted to butt in, too.
'Could I ask the minister,' Peters began, 'is she telling us that it's taken 19 long months for Mr Hipkins to find something commendable about Grant Robertson's time?' No, no, no, Brownlee ordered – now we're moving on. 'Urgency just turns the place upside down.'
Greens co-leader Marama Davidson was up next with questions on bottom trawling, which Peters took in lieu of oceans and fisheries minister Shane Jones, who was away from the House. He did his best to dodge her questions, so when Davidson had the gall to use 'Aotearoa' instead of 'New Zealand', Peters told her there was no such country by that name that had pledged $16m to a global fund for coral reefs as she alleged – but some rumblings to Peters' right seemed to put him off.
'Are you sure?' Te Pāti Māori MP Tākuta Ferris asked him. 'Yes, I am positive,' Peters replied. 'Unlike you, you dickhead.'
The remark was lost under the sound of Davidson's next supplementary, but after Ferris had a good laugh over it, he rose for a point of order. 'I've witnessed many times in this House disparaging comments being made between sides,' Ferris told the speaker, 'and I'm quite sure that being called a 'dickhead' would fall in line with that …' – he seemed to struggle to find the right word, and then it came to him: ' tikanga of the House, we might say, Mr Speaker.'
'So if Mr Peters wants to call me a dickhead across the alleyway here, I think that we should consider something for him,' Ferris offered. Well, I had no idea this even happened, Brownlee replied, but if Ferris found it offensive, the minister should withdraw and apologise – except it took another supplementary from Hipkins, and for Ferris to outright say 'I take personal offence to the comments made by Mr Peters over here calling me a dickhead', before the NZ First leader backed down, but only slightly.
'I apologise for calling him what I said he was,' Peters told the House.
To get the ball back in the government's court, Seymour decided to rise for a point of order, to dob Ferris into the school principal for wearing the wrong uniform. Referencing Ferris and his Toitū te Tiriti shirt, Seymour asked the speaker, would he reflect on earlier rulings in relation to political motifs on shirts and badges, 'in relation to anything you may have seen in the last few minutes?'
'Yes, I certainly will,' Brownlee replied. There's only one thing Ferris could have been thinking: it really be your own people.