David Seymour takes advantage of the calm before the storm

Friday, 17 July 2026

Paul Henry ended up with wall-to-wall coverage this week.

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OPINION: Parliament was a pretty quiet place this week.

Cabinet didn’t meet. The prime minister was on holiday in Hawaii. Nicola Willis was off too. Chris Bishop is working, but in Australia. No one had any big policy to announce last Sunday and what policy announcements did emerge this week weren’t exactly showstoppers: a new way to speed up building consents from National, automatic union enrolment from the Greens.

Acting Prime Minister David Seymour had the most interesting policy push - a ban on smartphones for under-16s, instead of a social media ban - but this was not formal ACT party policy, more just an idea he played around with in a speech.

Christopher Luxon jetted off to Hawaii following his huge weekend with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But the in-tray of issues to sort out has not stopped piling up through this week of quiet.

Christopher Luxon will return to New Zealand with his party still mired in the 20s in the polls, despite a very well-received KiwiSaver policy and the successful India FTA. My colleague Anneke Smith took a look at whether a recovery is possible with Luxon at the helm in a piece this week.

But it is the international in-tray that is probably the most worrying for the Government. The ceasefire between the US and Iran does not appear to be holding. Oil prices are down for now but could easily rebound. The ambassador for our largest trading partner fired off an extraordinary attack on our Government this week, over an issue we used to “agree to disagree” on.

Domestic news is not all that rosy either. Northland Mill has confirmed its closure, meaning 60 people may soon find themselves alongside the 218,000 others now on a Jobseeker benefit. Bird flu has arrived. And consumer spending in June was lacklustre.

None of this has to be fatal to the Government as a whole, which would still be re-elected in most polls. Labour is ahead but seems to have stalled or gone backwards since starting to announce policy. Kiwis are upset with the way the country is going, but not sure they want to go back to 2023 either.

But what about going further back - not just to 2023, but to the early 2010s, when a broadcaster by the name of Paul Henry was everywhere, and the centre-right dominated Kiwi politics?

Opportunity Party leader Qiulae Wong had another good week.

There was a bit of a revival act vibe to ACT’s unveiling of its new candidate early this week. Henry is no stranger to New Zealand screens and has in fact tried to run for Parliament before, losing to Labour’s Georgina Beyer in 1999. But in a political world almost empty of charisma, it was quite a change to watch a press conference where you couldn’t guess what every answer would be.

Henry would not have enjoyed the wall-to-wall coverage he did had other politicians been in town. But that’s exactly the reason ACT would have decided to roll him out this week. A lot of this game is simple timing.

Opportunity’s rise not a statistical quirk

Opportunity’s sudden appearance near 5% in the RNZ/Reid Research and TVNZ/Verian polls got some wondering if the party was being “prompted” when it hadn’t been before. “Prompting” is when a pollster doesn't just ask someone an open-ended question, such as “who are you going to vote for?”, but gives them a menu of parties to choose from. Prompting does make some sense, given real voters are “prompted” with a menu of the parties on the ballot paper.

Your correspondent was curious, but questions to both pollsters and their clients confirmed no major changes to their polling question had taken place that might explain the Opportunity surge. Reid Research have been including Opportunity as an option since March of 2017 while Verian - who don’t prompt on the phone but do online - include all parties registered with the Electoral Commission.

Number of the week

$323 million: The amount the Government spent on Roads of National Significance which now have no firm start date and no real funding allocated, as The Post revealed this week.

Kudos of the week

David Seymour. Seymour performed well in his “post-Cab” (there was no Cabinet) presser on Monday, ably answering questions outside his usual wheelhouse. He then rolled out an interesting candidate on Tuesday and floated an intriguing policy on Wednesday.

Quote of the week

“Out of the blue, someone stands up and makes a point of order, and they quote Section 193 Bar C. How the hell do you know that stuff?” - Paul Henry wonders how he will learn Parliamentary procedure. He might be interested in National MP Tom Rutherford’s method, where he feeds Standing Orders into AI and asks questions in real-time.

Comings and goings

Mikaela Bossley Clark, one of the savviest and most-respected press secretaries in the Beehive, is moving upstairs from Chris Bishop’s office to Nicola Willis’.

John Harbord has been appointed chairperson of the Electricity Authority.

John Rae has been reappointed as the chairperson of the Crown Regional Holdings Limited Board.

The week ahead

It’s a big few days for Winston Peters. He is making an announcement on the replacement ferries today and then will head to Auckland for the NZ First conference. Parliament returns next week.