Politically Correct: The minister who may have grunted

Friday, 6 March 2026

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OPINION: Sometimes you drive the news cycle, sometimes it drives you.

As politicians flew back into Wellington this week the world was still reeling from a series of strikes the US and Israel made on Iran, and the immediate counterattacks from Iran across the Middle East.

New Zealand had issued a statement on Sunday that carefully avoided either endorsing or condemning the strikes, instead “acknowledging” them. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon managed to stick to that line through a fairly painful set of Monday morning interviews, but it did not hold against the full press gallery at his post-cabinet press conference.

Attempting to explain why he was not ready to call the actions illegal yet (he didn’t know what Israel and US did), Luxon took what would have been careful briefing notes one step too far saying:

“We've had a long standing commitment under successive Governments that any actions that stops Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is a good thing, any actions … to stop them from sponsoring terrorism is a good thing, any actions that stops them from killing their own people is a good thing,”

We picked up on that “any actions” line as it appeared to be a bit of a blank check for the US and asked some logical follow ups about the limits to that, which proved very difficult for Luxon to answer coherently.

One has to wonder how the press conference might have gone if Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters had not been overseas this week. Peters offered a much tighter line on his way out of the country on Sunday, saying that Iran’s history of sponsoring terrorism was “not an excuse, but an explanation” for the US attacks. Just having another Minister onstage with him might have given Luxon a chance to step back, take a breath, and realise that his “any actions” line had gone too far. Instead he did not get a chance to walk back the line until he saw journalists again on Tuesday.

Unlike some other foreign policy matters, American interventions in the Middle East are not great unifiers. National and Labour have seriously different views here, as was evidenced by the fact Chris Hipkins was only one of three living Labour leaders to slam the Government’s response this week, alongside Helen Clark and Phil Goff. The Parliamentary debate on the matter, so clearly informed by continued intra-party hostility over Palestine, was not pretty - as Hipkins was speaking about protestors in Iran, NZ First minister Casey Costello asked him “how many did you want to die?”

Away from the House the political debate was a bit more practical and focused on things we can actually control: Like how to treat people from countries involved whose visas expire soon.

Grunting Goldsmith out of hot water

Paul Goldsmith had quite enough on his plate this week dealing with questions about why his officials rejected the move on orders and the first reading of a bill to change the census. He probably wasn’t counting on Cabinet colleague Mark Mitchell throwing him in it.

Mitchell had been angry about a 1 News story that didn’t mention some nice-sounding crime figures, and let the public know all about it on Facebook. Politicians complain about coverage all the time, generally to the journalists involved, but it can all get a bit trickier with the state-owned broadcasters. After reports of a senior manager apologising to Mitchell got around he mentioned to reporters pressing him on the matter that it was actually his colleague Goldsmith who had talked to someone high up at TVNZ. Given Goldsmith is the minister responsible for TVNZ, this naturally got a lot of people a lot more interested than they had been previously, including the Labour Party.

Indeed, despite Goldsmith offering a perfectly serviceable explanation on Wednesday (the board chair had mentioned it, Goldsmith had moved on immediately), Labour wasted 13 precious supplementary questions at Thursday’s Question Time on the matter. This gave Goldsmith a stage to give a slightly more colourful rendition of what happened when the TVNZ chair mentioned the story - “I may possibly have grunted” - and to explain his view on ministers complaining about journalists: “A politician complaining about the media is like a farmer complaining about the weather: you may be right, but it makes no difference.”

Opposition forgets to vote against bill

The debate on Iran, another special debate on infrastructure, and a generally overstuffed legislative calendar meant the House had to sit through extended hours this week, leading to the usual grumpiness about the building as Wednesday’s night session was extended into Thursday from 9am to 1pm. The Opposition at least allowed for some time to be saved on Tuesday when they forgot to vote against the Government’s English Language Bill, allowing it to pass on a voice vote with no party vote recorded. Labour now appear to be in support of this bill, despite calling it a waste of time, but the Greens are properly against it. This kind of stuff happens, but it is quite embarrassing.

Comings and goings

The Post’s political team - based full-time in Parliament - is growing. Anneke Smith, who has spent the last five years in the RNZ political team, is joining alongside another RNZ reporter from their Wellington newsroom - Nick James. You’ll see me linking to stories from them in the weeks to come!

Hamish Rutherford, formerly a journalist for both us and the NZ Herald, and then a press secretary to Christopher Luxon, will lead NZME’s new editorial advisory board. He will continue to work for government relations firm BRG.

MBIE’s deputy secretary for Immigration Alison McDonald, OBE, made her last appearance at select committee this week as she is soon retiring. McDonald has held a number of senior positions in the public service after moving over from the UK in 2013.

Question Time psycho-drama of the week

Labour’s Barbara Edmonds and National’s Nicola Willis are in a rough patch in their relationship. Edmonds has been particularly aggressive of late, needling Willis over not standing in a Wellington seat last month, and it does seem to have been getting under Willis’ skin somewhat. This week the focus was on food prices, with Edmonds essentially arguing that Willis had promised to actually lower them before coming to Government, rather than just make them grow slower than they otherwise would have.

Willis made the mistake of suggesting that Chris Hipkins had actually misquoted her in the House and failed to correct the record, a serious allegation. Hipkins used the power MPs always have to interrupt proceedings and make corrections to previous statements to say that he had been mistaken about that one clip - then pointing to five other times in which she suggested her policies would lower grocery prices, at least according to Hipkins.

National MPs see the debate as puerile, offering Labour MPs economics textbooks so they can understand the problems actual deflation might bring. Labour MPs still smarting from the attacks unleashed on them while in Government see it as fair game. Expect a lot more of this.

Soft-retirement of the week

Andrew Bayly is not going to stand for the ultra-safe National seat of Port Waikato - but will “explore the option of applying to be on the party list”. Bayly still has many friends in the National Party and around Parliament, but it is hard to see him getting one of the potentially very few winnable list places for National, especially after he commissioned an independent review into his own exit from the ministry.

The week ahead

It’s another sitting week and other than Iran we are expecting a lot of discussion over a potential social media ban for teenagers, following the release of a big Select Committee inquiry into online harm. We’re also keeping a watching eye out for the two reshuffles due - one in National when Judith Collins leaves (probably not until May) and another in Labour when Peeni Henare does.