Analysis: Politics this week was like a jigsaw puzzle with two pieces - National ramped up its law and order campaign, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern responded to it and the casualty was the police minister. Here's what the big picture looked like.
Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
National was taking control of the law and order agenda and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had to do something about it.
She did it on Monday, stripping Poto Williams of the police portfolio and giving it to Chris Hipkins.
Ardern said her "minor" reshuffle had been triggered by two departures - Kris Faafoi's resignation and Speaker Trevor Mallard's intention to leave Parliament to take up a diplomatic post.
It was an opportunity for her to deal with her most pressing and most immediate problem.
Williams was, as the Herald put it, "gently shoved sideways".
Ardern made her announcement at the post-cabinet press conference, and in the written statement issued with it there were five bullet points. The fifth was "Chris Hipkins takes over Police and passes Covid-19 Response to Ayesha Verrall".
She let Williams down softly, keeping her in the cabinet and giving her conservation and disability issues.
Prime Ministers never admit that opposition pressure has caused them to do anything, but Ardern did acknowledge that the "current narrative" around the police portfolio had become distracting, as she put it.
The narrative was being driven by National, with its "soft on crime" accusations, its focus on gang violence in Auckland, its complaints that the police weren't getting the political backup they needed, its calls for Williams to be replaced and the announcement of its own anti-gang policies.
So Ardern put her fix-it minister Hipkins in charge.
"He's like a ministerial fire blanket, he's the sort of person you throw at problems before they rage out of control," the Herald's Thomas Coughlan said.
Hipkins doesn't have a silver bullet to fire at the gang problem, he's going to have to work at it.
As Coghlan pointed out, the police are operationally independent from the Beehive, which means that "corralling them into action can be a challenge".
Hipkins is, however, a skilled parliamentarian and National's police spokesman Mark Mitchell isn't going to have a soft target at question time when Parliament resumes next week.
Speaking to media after his appointment, Hipkins promised to back the police but warned he wasn't interested in tough-on-crime rhetoric, RNZ reported.
He was coy about what changes he was planning but acknowledged "we do need to do more… there is more we can do around gangs, I think there's more we can do around youth crime".
Mitchell's reaction was that unless Hipkins delivered the goods he was going to be nothing more than "window dressing for the public".
"They tend to use Chris Hipkins to try and fix portfolios that aren't going very well," he said on Morning Report.
"If he's passionate about it and he really believes in getting behind the police, and I hope he does, then we might see some changes but fundamentally the risk is that it's window dressing for the public."
Mitchell said the police knew who the gang members were and they "absolutely" knew what was going on. "But they can't take action unless they've got the powers to do it."
National's previously-announced answer is warrantless powers so police can search for and seize weapons.
Poto Williams was stripped off the police portfolio this week. Photo: RNZ / Dom Thomas
Two days before Ardern gave the police portfolio to Hipkins, National's leader Christopher Luxon announced more anti-gang policies.
He told a party regional conference in Auckland that gangs were recruiting more quickly than the police and 2000 new members had been added during the five years Labour had been in office.
If National won the next election, it would give police powers to stop gang members gathering and wearing gang insignia in public, and block their access to guns.
"Patches are about intimidation, and are given only to people who have committed a violent crime to show loyalty to a gang," he said.
Ardern dismissed the idea of banning gang patches in public.
"This idea of gang patch bans - it's been tried in other countries," she said on Morning Report.
"It's often a reactionary response you can see from politicians and when they've gone back and looked at whether it's made a difference, review after review in different parts (of the world), for instance in Australia, have proved it hasn't."
She invited National to bring forward other ideas on what would help solve gang violence. "We will be engaging in the ones that the police tell us will make the biggest difference."
Luxon, bursting with new ideas, came out with his latest during a Morning Report interview on Wednesday.
Gangs should be prevented from promoting their lifestyle on social media, he said.
Police were telling his party that gang members were doing an effective job of selling gang lifestyle on social media to attract new recruits.
He acknowledged it was a difficult area to navigate but said extremist material had been controlled so the same approach could be tried with content promoting gangs.
When told that website watchdog Internet New Zealand had said the proposal would be impossible to police, Luxon said he didn't see why it couldn't be tried.
"Gang life is actually promoted with all the bling and all those presentations. That's what we can have a crack at."
It would be interesting to see legislation to enforce the control Luxon talks about, if the idea ever gets that far. Drafting it would be devilishly difficult.
As for Faafoi, Ardern said he had wanted to go before the last election but she persuaded him to stay for a while.
Faafoi said he was leaving because he wanted to spend more time with his young children.
It hadn't been known that Mallard wanted to "transition" out of Parliament during this term, as Ardern put it.
He's been in strife for various and well publicised reasons but they haven't been hanging offences.
Deputy Speaker Adrian Rurawhe is a Labour MP and holds the Maori roll seat of Te Tai Hauauru. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Labour will nominate Deputy Speaker Adrian Rurawhe for the position when Mallard vacates it in mid-August. He will be appointed, almost certainly with National's support.
Rurawhe is a Labour MP and holds the Maori roll seat of Te Tai Hauauru. He's quietly spoken and won't be well known to the public.
He has handled question times competently without enraging opposition MPs the way Mallard often did.
In an interview with RNZ he showed that he knew what he was in for.
It could be "quite a lonely position" he said.
"At the end of the day you are the person who is presiding in the chamber and who has to make rulings on whether things are in order or not.
"That will quite often upset at least half the House. That's just a reality of the nature of it… you are not going to please everyone."
Rurawhe will be the second Maori Speaker of Parliament. The first was Sir Peter Tapsell between 1993 and 1996.
Mallard's term in office has been marked by controversy, and the Herald's Audrey Young said he was 80 per cent good and 20 per cent bad.
"Most of what he does as Speaker, and previously as a minister, has been uncontroversial and unseen," she said.
"He is competent, usually acts in the best interests of Parliament and New Zealand and can work collegially. He has undertaken reforms that have allowed opposition MPs to put the heat on ministers if they don't know their stuff."
Young said he would make a fine diplomat but most people wouldn't believe it.
"Such is the reputation of the Speaker that when he turns out to be a good diplomat few will recognise it let alone acknowledge it," she said. "People expect him to behave badly."
The diplomatic post Mallard is going to hasn't been announced.
Young is tipping Dublin.
For the record, she got it right in April when she said Ardern was considering replacing Williams and Hipkins was a likely option.
We'll see if she's right about Dublin.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the contraction reflected the volatile global environment, and he emphasised the relatively strong annual growth numbers. Photo: Pool / Getty Images / Hagen Hopkins
The bad news came on Thursday, when the latest statistics showed the economy unexpectedly contracted at the start of the year.
Gross domestic product (GDP) fell a seasonally adjusted 0.2 percent in the three months ended March.
That was well below expectations and compared with a 3.0 percent rise in the previous quarter, RNZ reported.
Stats NZ senior manager Ruvani Ratnayake said output was lower in the food, beverage and tobacco manufacturing sub-industry; and the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry.
ANZ senior economist Miles Workman said domestic economic momentum was starting to slip.
"Interest rates are lifting, house prices are falling, inflation is eroding household incomes, migration is negative and consumer confidence has tanked," he said.
Workman said weaker growth wasn't going to help the Reserve Bank in its fight against inflation.
"With labour market and inflation indicators where they currently are, the RBNZ will need to keep going," he said.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the contraction reflected the volatile global environment, and he emphasised the relatively strong annual growth numbers.
"Exports are still 1.9 percent up on a year ago, so the March quarter fall shows just how volatile the global situation is," he said.
The Herald reported that on an annual basis GDP rose by 5.1 percent throughout the year to March 2022.
It quoted Westpac chief economist Michael Gordon, who said Covid had continued to disrupt economic activity.
"As Omicron made its way through the country people stayed away from retail spaces out of caution, and the surge in infections meant that worker absenteeism proved to be a major headache for many businesses," he said.
"We expect a strong pickup in the June quarter, and our forecast for growth in 2022 overall remains broadly unchanged."
Gordon's reasons for the fall in GDP make sense, we can all remember how quiet it was when people were forced to isolate and many of those who weren't didn't go out for fear of catching Omicron.
But it's the last thing the government needed. A recession is technically defined as GDP falling in two consecutive quarters and ACT leader David Seymour picked up on that.
New Zealand was "halfway down the road to recession," Stuff reported him as saying.
"All leading economic indicators are falling through the floor, inflation and interest rates are skyrocketing."
Doom and gloom is always bad for governments. It shows up in the polls, and Labour's opponents know it.
*Peter Wilson is a life member of Parliament's press gallery, 22 years as NZPA's political editor and seven as parliamentary bureau chief for NZ Newswire
