There could only be one winner of the coveted I’m Entitled to This Award Award in this year’s Listener review, but others were closer.
The year had barely started when Groen MP Golriz Ghahraman locked in the People’s Anti-capitalist Award for the appropriation of the means of production: high fashion division.
On January 10, Ghahraman resigned from her Justice and Foreign Affairs portfolios after she was accused of stealing clothes from an Auckland fashion boutique. She resigned for a week
later and was subsequently convicted on four charges of shoplifting.
It was the start of a year of chaos for the Greens. In late January, co-leader James Shaw announced his retirement, and in late February, Efeso Collins died less than a week after giving his first speech.
In mid-March, the party chose Chlöe Swarbrick to replace Shaw, after which he was suspended Darlene Tana after allegations of migrant exploitation linked to her husband’s e-bike business. Tana is the official winner of the 2024 My Work Is Not Yet Done award and proudly follows in the footsteps of former Green MP Elizabeth Kerekere in refusing to leave Parliament at her party’s insistence.
Tana insisted she still had important work to do. This seemed to consist of inflicting maximum legal and political damage on the party that elected her. She was eventually removed from parliament in October.
Co-leader in June Marama Davidson revealed she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and resigned from parliament. She has yet to return. The party’s polls peaked in February and March and have slowly fallen since then.
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Illustration / Anthony Ellison
Politicians from across the political spectrum showed strong form in March, including the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon who we duly recognize with the I’m Entitled to This Award Award, for his bold decision to claim a $52,000 per year housing allowance to live in his own apartment, which he had mortgage-free. He decided to pay back the money.
Luxon is struggling to connect with the wider electorate: being extremely wealthy and quite selfish in an era of economic austerity may have something to do with this.
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He is also the recipient of the listener’s coveted Scalable Granular Agile Cloud Stream Pivot! Fellowship, in recognition of his well-known practice of communicating in baffling corporate jargon, punctuated by his catchphrase: “I don’t know how to be clearer.”
Illustration / Anthony Ellison
Moving down the National Party ranks, we have a three-way tie for the Breaking Out of the Traps on the Inside Straight Trophy, awarded to Erica Stanford, Chris Bishop And Simeon BrownNational’s most effective ministers.
They exploded into government like greyhounds running at the hare, teeth bared and eyes narrowed on the goal of effective policy implementation. (In this metaphor, the Prime Minister is a cheerful Labrador, who trots behind him, wags his tail and assumes everyone is cheering him on.)
All three ministers have adopted a very unorthodox approach to government: using their time in opposition to develop knowledge in their portfolio areas and then designing policies that they are now rapidly implementing.
Some political observers doubt this will be as effective as the standard technique of doing nothing in opposition, convening working groups to figure out what you want to do once you become minister, and then being voted out before you can deliver on the recommendations. .
Others are cautiously optimistic that this new approach to doing things can achieve more than not doing things. Only time will tell.
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Illustration / Anthony Ellison
Chris Bishop is also the winner of this year’s We’re All Trying to Find the Guy Who Did This Award for canceling all of Labour’s infrastructure projects and then complaining about the costs of uncertainty in the country’s infrastructure pipeline. (He defended his decisions by arguing that Labour’s projects were “stupid projects”.)
One of the other impressive performers on the government benches is the Minister of Building and Construction Chris Penkto whom we award the Move Fast and Make Things Prize for his awareness that regulations that prevent people from building houses can affect housing supply.
Todd McClay is the official New Zealand Trade Minister of the Year for his diligent work in diversifying our export markets before our two biggest partners – China and the US – go to war. If they destroyed each other in a nuclear conflagration, the impact on our current account deficit would be devastating.
This column also grudgingly acknowledges that Nicholas Willis was right in her claim that the tax cuts she introduced in her May budget would not be inflationary.
We recognize this by presenting her with the rarely awarded Gold Certificate for making accurate economic forecasts while holding the finance portfolio, most recently awarded to Liberal Party MP Joseph Ward for his meticulous budget forecasts during the First World War.
Willis is also the recipient of this year’s Sisyphus Prize for her diligent work to return the government’s books to surplus.
Ayesha Verrall is the Opposition MP of the Year 2024: fish, barrel and smoking gun category for her prosecution of Health Minister Casey Costello, whose policies towards tobacco companies raise questions about the role of ministers promoting the sale of addictive carcinogens while they hold a healthcare portfolio.
Illustration / Anthony Ellison
Chris Hipkins came second with distinction in the Silent but Deadly Tournament. It floats lazily on the surface of politics like a harmless tree trunk and then leaps out of the water when the government lets its guard down, its razor-sharp teeth tearing and tearing the soft flesh. According to current opinion polls, Labor is impressively close to National.
But the clear winner in this category is the Opportunities Party, which has no leader or media presence and yet averages 2% in recent polls. It is an inspiration for all parliamentary parties: in politics, less can be more.
Labour’s Māori caucus leader, Willie Jacksonhas distinguished himself on being neither silent nor deadly, but a mysterious third thing for his dedication to campaigning on behalf of his political rival, Te Pāti Māori, and maximizing media coverage of his mortal enemy, Act .
Of course, there can be more, as expertly demonstrated by Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke for her haka, heard worldwide, which earned her the I’m Not Locked in Here with You, You’re Locked in Here with Me Taonga.
Illustration / Anthony Ellison
There’s an old Philip K Dick novel featuring a talk show host – Buster Friendly – who somehow appears on TV more than 24 hours a day, every day, and the 2024 Buster Friendly Award for Media Ubiquity can only go to David Seymour.
The Act party leader has had the most productive and prolific year of any minor party leader in government, from charter schools, expanded funding for cancer treatments and legalizing pseudoephedrine to provoking an incipient civil war.
Many of Seymour’s policies are designed to be polarising, but he is the only senior MP who looks at the rather dire state of the nation and proposes systemic change rather than technocratic tinkering. This makes him disproportionately powerful. In six months he will become deputy prime minister.
Illustrations / Anthony Ellison
Our final parliamentary award is the Distinguished Winston Peters Prize for Advanced Winston Petersism in the Field of Winston Petersing: senior category. It goes to Winston Peters for the 49th year in a row.
He continues to do unprecedented work in this area, ranging from berating members of the UN Security Council for their conversations during his speech and his feud with former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, to dismissing a Te Pāti statement Māori MP during Question Time as a “retarded comment”. The deputy prime minister remains unchallenged.
The Listener also recognizes local government politicians, especially the Mayor of Auckland Wayne Brownrecipient of the Get Off My Lawn Cup. Brown won the hearts of the nation for his eloquent expressions of hatred towards Wellington and its politicians, calling Auckland “my city, not theirs”, dismissing the capital as “a dump” and following up this statement by writing an op-ed . ed for the AfterWellington’s local newspaper, detailing why he hates the capital.
Speaking of which, Mayor of Wellington Tory Whanau is hereby awarded the Dude! Where’s my car prize for continued incoherence in a mayoral role, after telling a radio interviewer she was selling her car to pay the bills, then denying it in a subsequent interview, only to have her staff issue a press release issued confirming that she did so.
Whanau also confidently assured Q+A interviewer Jack Tame that a vote to prevent the sale of shares in Wellington Airport would pass, before changing her mind midway through the interview and declaring it would fail. The vote was successful.
Illustration / Anthony Ellison
The civil servant of the year was undoubtedly the chief economist of the Ministry of Finance Dominiek Stephansto whom we award the Now I am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds Cup for his detailed and persuasive speeches documenting the impending and seemingly inevitable bankruptcy of the central government.
Finally, in recognition of the many millennials who have not yet been named in local and national politics, all politicians will receive the 2024 People’s Participation Trophy, in recognition of everything they have done throughout the year. It’s been a grim twelve months – we’re still in a recession, our naval research ship HMNZS Manawanui sank, the Interislander ferry Aratere drifted onto a reef – and next year looks less promising with every new economic forecast.
Donald Trump’s impending recovery hangs over the future of the planet like a blond monster on a yoga ball. As a thank you for reading, we would like to honor you, the reader, with a Summer Without Politics award. You’ve earned it.
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