Government parties focus on comfort food after bruising backdown

Friday, 27 February 2026

Christopher Luxon headed for the comfort food this week - law and order.

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OPINION: Last week was not a particularly fun time for the Government.

Chris Bishop completed a bruising backdown on Auckland housing, one that made his - and the prime minister’s - attacks on the “culture of no” seem a bit hollow. Paul Goldsmith confirmed coalition squabbling meant there would be no four-year term referendum at this election. The release of the National Infrastructure Plan led to some uncomfortable headlines about a potential toll on the Auckland Harbour Bridge and even some wobbliness on the Government’s Wellington tunnels.

Then to top it off our new The Post/Freshwater Strategy poll with Infrastructure New Zealand showed Labour seven points clear of National and quite close to forming a Government, depending on your assumptions about individual seats.

With all this going on it’s no surprise that the governing parties have been focusing on their comfort food - policy areas where they feel supremely confident.

For National - law and order

The Government are keen to highlight statistics that suggest violent crime has dropped considerably.

On Sunday the Government announced the long-awaited “move on” orders that will give police greater powers to “move on” anyone sleeping rough, begging, or looking like they are planning to sleep rough. Christopher Luxon was out and eager for a fight about this on his Monday morning media slots, and his party’s social media pages have been slating Labour for criticising the move. At the time of writing it’s unclear if the Government got any official advice suggesting this was a good idea - the Ministry of Justice has not released its paper on the matter and has not answered our questions about what that advice says either.

The law and order theme continued on Thursday with the Prime Minister in Auckland big upping some new stats from the Victims of Crime Survey, which suggests a 49,000 drop off in annual victims of violent crime in the last two years.

National’s focus on crime makes sense - it is one of the areas the party still polls well in, with our polling suggesting the party has a 10-point lead over Labour here. Unfortunately for National it is also not a major priority for voters - just 4% said it was their number one most important issue.

For NZ First - culture war

Winston Peters ended the sitting block introducing a bill he had pushed for in coalition talks - one that will make English a legislated official language. ( Officials believe there is no need for such a bill, as it is already a de facto one ). But an even better bit of culture war politicking came along soon after when the Office of the Clerk decided to suspend the official Parliament account from posting on X (formerly Twitter). Cue tweet on “how freedoms are lost”.

Peters is off to Latin America on Sunday so expect to see a bit less of him next week.

Hipkins gave a state of the nation speech that stated almost nothing.

For ACT - culture war of a slightly different variant

ACT leader David Seymour took on Air NZ following its dismal results on Thursday, claiming that the airline was the latest victim of the phrase: “Go woke, go broke”. But this wasn’t all culture war stuff, he also reiterated ACT’s long-held view that the Government has no business owning an airline in the first place.

Labour - not committing to anything

It wasn’t just the Government parties raiding the pantry for something comforting this week. Labour’s Chris Hipkins had a state of the nation speech with no new policies or commitments, meaning no new targets for National to attack. Even the release of the unofficial select committee report on pay equity- a classic Labour Party issue - only prompted Hipkins to restate his unspecific promise to repeal the Government's changes without getting into how he would pay for it.

Comings and goings

Judith Collins’ upcoming exit from the Ministry (we’ve heard April 1 is the date) means her staff are up for grabs. The Prime Minister’s office have nabbed veteran press secretary Sharon Lundy for their team, with existing team member Lesley Hamilton moving to a strategic communications role with less day-to-day press wrangling. Lundy brings a wealth of experience to the role, having served as a press secretary in the last National government for Nick Smith, alongside many other roles.

Nicola Willis is also losing veteran adviser Paula Oliver from her team this week.

Elsewhere the Green Party have hired Ryan Mearns as a senior press secretary - formerly of the Infrastructure Commission we’ve all been talking about for the last few weeks. The Greens have seen a lot of staff turnover recently and will be keen to stick to a team for election year.

Another big resignation this week was Teaching Council chief executive Lesley Hoskin who resigned following a damning report from the Public Service Commission. Debbie Francis- of the famous Francis review into behaviour in Parliament - will be replacing her.

Worst sentence of the week

“A dark cloud is shading Matt and Tory Simpson’s optimism that a new dawn for land use regulation is around the corner.” - Federated Farmers take mixing metaphors to a new level in a press release on RMA reform.

The week ahead

Parliament will be back from its one-week recess so expect all kinds of debates and shenanigans. Many eyes will be peering across the road to the High Court where we are at press time still waiting to hear if Te Pāti Māori is allowed to kick Mariameno Kapa-Kingi out or not.

We hope you enjoyed this first edition of the new Politically Correct. Any news tips, complaints, or suggestions can be sent to henry.cooke@thepost.co.nz

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