Anatomy of a stall: Labour claims mischief over ‘missing’ Fieldays tent
Thursday, 11 June 2026
It was the first thing the politicians were talking about at Fieldays: did you know that Labour had pulled out, leaving a vacant site where a party tent was meant to be?
Everyone wanted a piece of the gossip: MPs from National, ACT and NZ First each independently offering up this scoop one by one.
Indeed, there is an empty site. It’s right next to NZ First’s at the end of a row of stalls that also includes National and ACT.
One MP claimed to The Post that the empty plot has been used for a variety of activities over the past two days, including as an impromptu outdoor baby-changing area. There’s talk of a barbecue being hosted there on Friday.
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On social media, government MPs have been bashing Labour en masse for allegedly pulling out of the annual agricultural festival.
In one video filmed inside the empty spot, National’s Chris Bishop said: “Emblematic isn’t it? Labour offers nothing to farmers, nothing to rural New Zealand.”
ACT’s David Seymour wrote: “First we couldn’t find their policies, now we can’t find them at all.”
To get to the bottom of this mystery The Post asked Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who led a delegation of MPs to Fieldays on Thursday, what was going on. He said it’s pure mischief-making from the Government.
“We chose not to have a stall this year at all, because we decided that we've got a big team here [and] we decided that we actually get more engagement with people while getting out and about and walking around,” said Hipkins.
“Rather than being over in the corner by ourselves, which seems to be where David Seymour's hanging out, we're actually out and about amongst the people.”
(Seymour hasn’t actually been at Fieldays yet, and is scheduled to attend on Saturday.)
The Post took Hipkins’ response back to the stalls of National, ACT and NZ First to see if we could find out the truth behind gazebo-gate.
National’s Suze Redmayne, MP for Rangitīkei, is adamant the red team’s tent is missing.
“I heard they cancelled a booking about three weeks ago,” she said. “[The site’s] now as vacant and barren as their election manifesto.”
One staffer was overheard saying it was “classic Labour … promising and under-delivering”.
Next door at the ACT site, MP Laura McClure said: “We thought they were going to be there, for sure.”
“Of course they’re now going to say, ‘oh nah’, because it’s backfired a little bit.”
The Post then bumped into Jordan Williams from the Taxpayers’ Union, who had also heard the story and was “pretty confident” it was accurate.
NZ First’s Jenny Marcroft was even more adamant. “That came directly from the organisers of Fieldays,” she said. “That was our site and they moved us over because they told us Labour was a no show.”
“Our information came from the organisers … You need to go to the source.”
And so we did. The Post contacted Fieldays’ general manager Brett Beagley, determined to get to the bottom of this fast-developing story.
The answer was less than desired. Fieldays is “apolitical”, he said. He won’t be making any comment.
The trail had run cold.