In Parliament, anything and everything can be political. In recent memory, this has included things as apparently innocuous as playground equipment, clothing, colours, and even eating takeaways.
On Tuesday, in debates and speeches around the apology for abuse in state care, there was some discussion over 'getting political'. Partly that was about politicians not politicising policies on areas that are deemed too close to the bone. But also whether or not some people might be upset if, on such a sensitive issue, remarks were made that might be seen as combative.
"I'm sure that some will say that we're 'getting a little bit political'," Chlöe Swarbrick said. "Everything, though, is political. Because politics isn't just about political parties, it is about power and resources and who gets to make decisions that saturate and shape our daily lives."
Green Party leader Chlöe Swarbrick in Parliament. File photo Photo: Phil Smith
That may seem like a bold statement, but if Parliament itself is any guide, everything really is political, or at least can be bent to politics. In recent memory, things as apparently innocuous as playground equipment, shoes and ties, primary colours or getting to eat takeaways or cold drinks have been sucked into the debate.
Take Wednesday in Parliament as an example. The first item of business was a round of obituaries for the recently deceased but last surviving member of the Māori Battalion - Sir Robert "Bom" Gillies. Some of the speeches focused on plaudits, heroism and the brave reputation of the Māori Battalion as a whole; but others also noted or focused on the political meaning in his life.
The Minister for Veterans mentioned the discrimination that Māori soldiers faced when they returned home. Labour's Cushla Tangaere-Manuel pointed out that Gillies was a soldier who had become ardently anti-war.
"He spoke out against the perils of war… There's no point to fighting, fighting, battles, war; it still carries on. There's no peace. It's a waste of human life."
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer from Te Pāti Māori echoed that line and related it back to Apirana Ngata's idea that the battalion fought to pay the price for Māori citizenship.
"Matua Bom-Tā Bom-paid the cost of citizenship. He actually shared recently, 'had I known as much as I know now, I would have stayed home. …We lost those fellas for nothing. We're no better off. We are still fighting for a place in our country'."
Minister of Defence Judith Collins in the House this week. Photo: VNP/Phil Smith
After speeches for Bom Gillies, the next thing Parliament did was hear and quiz a Ministerial Statement from Judith Collins (as Minister of Defence). She was informing the House, as the law requires she must, that she is invoking a statutory power to employ uniformed troops to replace striking civilian Defence Force workers. These troops will cover tasks such as security and firefighting.
You might think that as those roles are essential, that action is understandable and the other parties would accept that. You would be wrong. The first response and questions came from Labour's David Parker.
"Invoking section 9(2) of the Defence Act is unusual and should only occur in exceptional circumstances. In the opinion of the New Zealand Labour Party, the circumstances we are facing here today are of the government's making. They chose to underfund parts of the Defence budget… . It will not surprise many New Zealanders that faced with [a wage] offer of zero increase, they chose to instead issue a strike notice. Rather than addressing the root cause of this strike… the Minister has instead escalated this dispute by invoking section 9(2) of the Defence Act."
The General Debate - a feature of Parliament's Wednesdays - brought a number of examples including from National's MP for Banks Peninsula, Dr Vanessa Weenink. She raised an electorate issue as an example of wider concerns, and took a slap at Kiwirail which, considering it is a state-owned enterprise, was slightly surprising from a member of a governing party.
"KiwiRail proposed a ridiculous idea of closing a cycleway in the Heathcote Valley in order to be able to undertake works to make safe a crossing of a road across a railway, but the cycleway that they wanted to close didn't even cross this same railway."
The law and philosophy around this kind of safety had become nuts, she intimated, and besides, it seemed that KiwiRail was making things difficult for the council to pass on the costs - costs which had blown out beyond $6 million. "And it shouldn't come as a surprise to us from an entity that couldn't figure out how to turn off an automatic pilot and crashed the ferries [sic] in the Cook Strait."
Nothing is too small, and everything is political.
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