Gerry Brownlee ‘buying a fight’ over Stuff photo row, says former parliamentarian

Tuesday, 9 June 2026

A former political editor believes Parliament’s Speaker Gerry Brownlee may have it wrong after admitting he was weighing up a temporary ban on Stuff’s press gallery team.

And a former senior parliamentarian agrees, saying Brownlee had decided to go “for the jugular” over something that appeared to be a grey area.

It was revealed on Thursday that Stuff’s political team was facing a possible suspension from Parliament over a photo taken of Social Development Minister Louise Upston that it published on the site.

The disagreement stems from a photo of Upston in a hallway at Parliament published on the Stuff website last week, while the minister was facing scrutiny over her taxpayer-funded accommodation allowance.

Brownlee believes the photo was taken in breach of the filming rules, but Stuff has backed its reporters - and political editors and reporters from a range of networks have also come to Stuff’s defence.

Former TVNZ political editor Mark Sainsbury said where journalists could film at Parliament had always been a “fractious” issue.

“[I recall] one MP saying, ‘we're never going to let you show wide shots in the [debating] chamber … because then my constituents can see I'm not there’,” he told The Post.

“The only problem is: be careful what you wish for - the more you push it, the more prescribed the rules can get.”

The Upston photo was taken from the atrium known as the “black and white tiles” and shot through the Grand Hall into a corridor just beyond it. The press gallery rules stipulate that journalists can film on the tiles, but must get permission from MPs to film in other areas.

Sainsbury believed that Brownlee could set a precedent if he chose to suspend Stuff over the photo, citing other areas of Parliament that are technically off-limits but often filmed.

For example, it is common for reporters to film MPs walking across the bridge connecting the Beehive to the Parliament buildings, but reporters are not allowed to be physically on the bridge themselves.

“If you can film people on the bridge from the [black and white] tiles and it doesn't breach the rules, what's the difference in this case, where someone is not physically on the tiles but within filming reach?” questioned Sainsbury.

“Does it mean if you were filming an interview on the tiles and someone in the background is doing something, you'd have to go and get it all pixelated if they're not in the area?”

A former senior National parliamentarian had similar thoughts. They spoke to The Post anonymously, not wanting to publicly criticise the current Speaker.

“The person was standing on the tiles … well they do it every day with the people who are then coming across the bridge - no-one's ever criticised that,” they said.

“It's gone on for years. I just think Gerry’s buying a fight that he's silly to buy.”

Brownlee had “gone for the jugular” over something that appeared to be “on the boundaries” of the rules, they said.

Sainsbury said during his time in the gallery there were “numerous battles” with the speaker, and it depended who was in that role.

“Some were vassals of the prime minister, others took a more independent sort of stance,” he said.

“[The] media's job is to get the story … the boundaries are always going to be pushed, but this one sounds like sort of an inconsistency.'

Brownlee argued that Stuff’s photo was “not in the spirit” of the rules.

'It should be interviews that are on the tiles, and I think that's been, as I understand it, the way that should have been interpreted,“ he told The Post last week.

He also believed that press gallery standards had “got a bit edgy” in recent times.

The Spinoff’s gallery reporter Lyric Waiwiri-Smith was also handed a three-day suspension over an entirely separate matter, after an MP complained that a photo taken in the debating chamber was published on the website last week. The Post understands Waiwiri-Smith did not actually take the photo herself.

It follows a five-day suspension handed down to TVNZ’s former political editor Maiki Sherman, after a complaint was lodged by National’s campaign chairperson Simeon Brown.

The former parliamentarian said, as an outside observer, they did not believe that standards had slipped in the press gallery and that whoever took the photo of Upston was just “doing [their] job”.

Brownlee is unlikely to make his decision around Stuff’s access to Parliament until at least next week.