Is the coalition cracking, or just cranky?

Friday, 3 July 2026

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OPINION: Helen Clark used to be able to pull her Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters into line.

When he suggested in early 2007 that the United States pulling out of Iraq would cause the country to slide into “total chaos,” which was not the official New Zealand position, Clark pointedly noted that it would be “gratuitous” for New Zealand to offer any opinion. Peters did not shoot back and within hours the pair were in lockstep agreement that Peters had been simply expressing a personal opinion.

When Peters was threatening to criticise the recently signed China Free Trade Agreement on the world stage, Clark’s office - probably Heather Simpson - intervened and received an assurance that he would simply say the deal had been signed and was the responsibility of Trade Minister Phil Goff.

It is not clear that Christopher Luxon has quite the same ability, despite sharing the Cabinet table with Peters. Peters’ mischievous over-compliance with the Official Information Act to embarrass Luxon over Iran was one thing. His attack over the India FTA this week is another.

Peters alleged this week far more than he has previously. He’s gone from using the publicly available facts about the agreement to campaign against it - normal if awkward politics - to openly warning the Indian Government about upcoming changes to migration settings which will impact them, suggesting that the Government he is a part of is misleading India.

He’s doing it not with public information but with things he knows by virtue of being a Cabinet minister. And he’s not just boxing at shadows either: my colleague Anneke Smith stacked up this week that the Government has indeed made decisions to tighten visa settings for Indian nationals, but is worried about these becoming public before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit later this month.

This blowup comes after Peters last week suggested the health and safety reform he was helping to pass would lead to more deaths. This week he wrangled a small face-saving compromise- a delay in the bill’s actual enactment until well after the election. Supposedly this will allow Peters to campaign against the law he just passed, get re-elected, then repeal it.

So is all this evidence the coalition is about to collapse? Probably not. Peters is certainly stepping up his attacks on his fellow ministers, but National is not following Peters up the escalation chain. Ministers will hit back when he hits them, but generally not as hard, and generally not with a desire to create further headlines. Even a clearly exasperated Erica Stanford would not say this week that Peters had breached Cabinet confidentiality, instead just heavily implying it. There are exceptions - as when Nicola Willis called Peters “confused” - but it seems the major party of Government does have a way of keeping any coalition drama from spiralling out of control. And with the House in urgency all week, you can put some of this down to plain crankiness.

What will be more interesting is whether this changes once Parliament rises ahead of the election. Will Peters and senior National MPs be tearing chunks off each other the entire campaign when both of them have a path to power only through each other? How would the renewed coalition following the election actually look, when neither side really has much leverage over the other? Time will tell.

Labour loves labour

Labour held its annual conference last weekend, which you’d be forgiven for missing. After National launched a radical rethink of KiwiSaver the weekend before, Labour stuck to its small target strategy and announced an apprenticeship boost unlikely to anger anyone or excite many more. What was more interesting was Hipkins’ wider push to refocus the election around jobs and our quite high unemployment rate, which has barely been a point of discussion at this election. I wrote a column all about that earlier this week.

Report-readers rejoice!

Those of us who like reading official reports were spoiled this week.

On the scathing end was the Ombudsman’s report into the Prime Minister’s Office’s failure to produce a lobbying document it had received in hard copy and to a staffer’s personal email. The Ombudsman went as far as to say he found the evidence from said staffer “surprising” even if he had no reason to disbelieve their account - which essentially amounts to “I forgot about it and the meeting where I received it.”

Still critical but not quite as scathing was a new report into Treasury, which found the agency had become “weak” at providing big economy-wide analysis and ideas. Finance Minister Nicola Willis largely accepted the report and backed interviewees who thought Treasury could have done more to stop the ferry blow-out. Indeed, she argued Treasury should provided her predecessor Grant Robertson with more options.

Finally a rapid review into Government digital projects suggested the Government should urgently review all major projects and pause lower value ones. And if you’re a fan of Government documents in general you might be interested to know about the big changes that came into effect this week as a result of the Regulatory Standards Act.

Number of the week

Zero. The number of night shelters in Auckland, something the prime minister admitted he was not aware of on Monday. The Government is under some pressure to explain where exactly it wants people rough sleeping who are “moved on” to go, as the Auckland City Mission makes clear that it shuts at 5pm. Labour promised to repeal some of National’s housing changes this week.

Kudos of the week

Cameron Brewer for getting stuck in as a newish commerce minister, banning unsafe blinds and changing standards for toy importers.

Quote of the week

“Enforcement officers may visit the Stuff website at any time to ascertain compliance.”- An unnamed Ministry of Health staffer when making a complaint about the fact that the Stuff quiz featured a photo of a Playboy cover where you could - partially - see an ad for a cigarette brand not sold in New Zealand. It appears that Ministry of Health staffers certainly do “visit the Stuff website” at times, not least to do the quiz, but we’re sure the website is thankful for the warning.

Press release headline of the week

Five judges for the price of none- Courts Minister Nicole McKee on two bills she was introducing.

Question Time drama of the week

Some rules in Question Time are more guidelines, things that can be pushed back on if the Speaker seems to be in a forgiving mood or just because one feels like it. Others are not.

The rule that questioners in Question Time must read their first or “primary” question exactly as it is written on the page is not a rule one can break - as poor National backbencher Carl Bates discovered this week, when he asked a softball “patsy” question of Erica Stanford in a slightly different format and had the whole question ruled out by the Speaker.

This may seem like an over-reaction, but getting questioners to stick to the primary question as it is written is important. Primary questions, unlike all the supplementaries that follow them, cannot be surprises. They are lodged by 10.30am on sitting days with the Clerk, who has to check that they are in order - that is that they do not do things like seek a legal opinion, or contain “arguments, inferences, imputations, epithets, ironical expressions, or expressions of opinion”. They then go to ministers who have time to prepare for whatever supplementaries might follow from said primary.

In a world where half the questions are some variety of “does the minister stand by all her statements” it might seem silly to make sure primaries are vetted so closely, but it is an important principle. If a member was to introduce some new bit of information or leg to their question in the House that a minister was not prepared for, they would then be able to pursue it in supplementaries despite the minister not being prepared, which would be unfair, as the minister would appear unprepared when they actually weren’t. Whereas when questioners introduce new information in supplementaries ministers always have a very reasonable defence of not being fully across whatever new information is being asked about.

Comings and goings

Today is Tracy Watkins’ last as the editor of The Post and as a journalist, after an incredible 40-year long career. Tracy’s scoops are too numerous to mention and the reporters she helped train up as political editor are now in scores of senior positions. Read her final column here.

It is also the last day of Speaker’s Assistant Roland Todd, who has worked with every speaker since Sir Douglas Kidd. Todd is a legend around Parliament for a reason and probably knows more about the last three decades of protest in this country than anyone else, as his job involved liaising with all the ones who made it to Parliament’s grounds.

Andrew Bayly, who is leaving at the election, has also stepped down as chairperson of the Justice Committee - a fairly unusual move this close to the end of the term. Bay of Plenty MP Tom Rutherford takes his place.

From Wigram to Westminster - former Labour campaign director and Megan Woods staffer Hayden Munro is running Andy Burnham’s leadership campaign in the UK.

It’s also the first week of work for the new US Ambassador Jared Novelly, who presented his credentials on Wednesday. And finally Andre van der Walt has been appointed as the next administrator of Tokelau.

The week ahead

Recess approaches! But the politics is unlikely to stop, with Modi’s visit coming at some point in July and plenty more policies for all the major parties to roll out.