Parliament: The week inside

The week at Parliament is over and it’s worth having a look through the major themes and events.

In the week after a large party holds an annual conference you might expect that the themes raised in the House would relate to the major talking points from that event.

You would be right.

Youth on Welfare

The National Party conference topic most picked up by the media was of young people that were out of work - and hey presto - that was also the focus in the House.

On Tuesday and Wednesday it was topic of numerous Question Time questions, and of numerous speeches in Wednesday’s General Debate (and from both Government and Opposition MPs).

The main point of dispute was whether the Government was already carrying out most or all of the Opposition’s new proposals. 

For example, this exchange ended Tuesday’s Q&A between the major party leaders:

Christopher Luxon: “Who is right: the Minister for Social Development and Employment, who has claimed National's welfare policies won't work, or the Prime Minister, who has claimed National's welfare policies already exist?”

Jacinda Ardern: “Minister Sepuloni has pointed out that labelling and blaming young people for the economic circumstances we find ourselves in will do nothing to support young people. I agree with her. She has also pointed out we have job coaching; we have incentives; we also have training incentives; employment subsidies for employers; and, the best of all, record departures from benefits.”

Crime and Youth Crime

The young and jobless weren’t the week’s only topic. 

Crime was the focus of the week’s completed legislation, as Johnny Blades reported on Wednesday. 

Crime, especially youth crime has been a major opposition focus for months (although the questions have lessened significantly since Chris Hipkins became Minister for Police). But the theme has not disappeared – ACT asked ram raid questions in the House twice this week.  

It has also featured in major speeches – for example just two weeks ago the new National MP Sam Uffindel devoted parts of his maiden statement to the topic, lamenting “a growing culture of lawlessness, lack of accountability, a sense of impunity.”

It was fortunate for National that this wasn’t their chosen conference focus. Mr Uffindel’s history certainly moved it to the front burner regardless. 

I only mention this here though to note that while it dominated both the media and wider public conversation the specifics were not discussed inside Parliament’s debating chamber – at all. 

National MPs stayed well schtum, while Labour and Green MPs were clearly avoiding piling on. ACT did ask other youth crime questions (and Mr Uffindel tactically absented himself quietly from proceedings on at least one of those occasions). The only marginal reference I could find from the week came from  Te Paati Māori Co-Leader Debbie Ngarewa Packer who began her speech on the Three Strikes repeal like this:

“I rise on behalf of Te Paati Māori to speak to the third reading of the Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill—or, as the National Party call it, the "Three Strikes (Unless You Want to Go to Kings College) Legislation Repeal Bill. Hoi anō , three strikes might make sense in baseball, but our criminal justice system is not a game. However, when you treat politics like an American sport, it's easy to see how National and ACT could confuse the two. We too disagree with violence and bullying, and the three-strikes law bound the hands of the judiciary with the implicit purpose of locking up more Māori for potentially low level crimes—modelled on the US law with targeted black Americans.”

Ms Ngarewa-Packer was contributing remotely so may have missed picking up on the unspoken memo. 

The point is that while MPs might be on the attack quite frequently, most try to stay above cheap personal shots. Especially inside the House, and especially in speeches likely to be memorialised in Hansard. 

They may take some glee in highlighting each other’s missteps (even quite comedically), but it can be poor politics to pile on, especially where that might be seen as disregarding or taking advantage of the experience of unnamed victims. 

Anyway, while the corridors of Parliament were buzzing, the entire topic was missing from discussion inside the House.

But that still leaves MPs plenty to talk about.

Payments 

Another major theme of attack this week was administration of the Government’s cost-of-living payments – who got them, who missed out, payments made overseas  etc. 

The topic made for arresting headlines but inside the House the exchanges were less compelling. Questions were put particularly to David Parker (Minister of Revenue - i.e. IRD), and to Grant Robertson (Finance). 

David Parker has a knack for blunting questions upon the shield of earnestly careful and detailed responses, while Grant Robertson took the opportunity to repeatedly counter-attack, for example with opposition plans for tax-cuts that favoured the much less poor. 

Fireworks from a pinch-hitter off the bench

The Three Waters reform programme has been a staple of opposition attacks for a long time, but this week the clashes featured a fresh player and a lot of new energy.

Recently promoted Minister (outside cabinet), Keiran McAnulty took the lead while his boss Nanaia Mahuta was overseas. 

Newly promoted ministers often begin quietly, carefully. No-one told McAnulty who came out firing against questions from both ACT and National MPs. 

He came with the same energy on Tuesday–

Simon Watts: “Will he now accept, in light of the Office of the Auditor-General's submission and four years of planning, that he's got it wrong on the three waters, and that communities against the reforms were right to call them out as un-transparent and unaccountable?”

Kieran McAnulty: “If the member spent time, as I have, travelling around and visiting councils—22 councils so far in the last three weeks; every single one of them has said that the status quo is unsustainable, even those that have publicly expressed concerns about three waters. So no, I cannot stand here and listen to the member criticise a process that looks to reform a problem when that member and his party have offered no alternative solution in four years of whingeing.”

…and again on Wednesday–

Simon Watts: “How does he reconcile that answer with the Water Services Entities Bill, which states territorial authorities have—and I quote—‘no right, title, or interest in the assets, security, debts, or liabilities of a water services entity:’; and how is it possible to own something while not having any rights over it?”

Kieran McAnulty: “On behalf of the Minister, because the only threat to public ownership is privatisation. So I put to the National Party: when this Government approached that party and suggested that we put our respective views aside and on one issue and one issue alone we agree to entrench public ownership of these water entities, they refused.”

I suspect it might be unwise to put money down on the former TAB bookie still being outside cabinet by this time next year.