New Zealand’s 54th Parliament sat for the last time on Wednesday 23 September, ending a three-year term with an adjournment debate in which Prime Minister Christopher Luxon claimed credit for stable government and Labour leader Chris Hipkins told the House the coalition was out of touch and out of time. The House does not formally dissolve until Thursday 1 October, but backbench MPs have now left Wellington and the campaign for the 7 November general election is under way in all but name.
Luxon opened the debate by thanking his coalition partners, ACT and New Zealand First, and pushing back at the predictions of chaos that greeted the three-party arrangement in 2023. “Despite every prediction, we have delivered strong and stable government at the moment New Zealanders needed it most,” he said, RNZ reported. “We have shown that three parties can disagree honestly and still work together for New Zealand, and we have found common ground and we have governed in the National interest.”
He then set out the choice he wants voters to see in November. “Make no mistake, this is a policy election,” he said, before running through National’s platform. National MPs chanted “no new taxes” back at him roughly half a dozen times, according to Stuff’s live coverage from the press gallery, while the ACT and New Zealand First benches stayed quiet. Labour, Luxon said, was a radical party addicted to spending, taxing and borrowing.
Hipkins went straight at the stability claim. “Three years ago, I said that if Christopher Luxon went into government with David Seymour and Winston Peters, they would run circles around them,” he said. “Well, it’s just as well they work in a round building, Mr Speaker, because they’ve run the carpet threadbare.”
The Labour leader built his speech around three conversations, with an emergency department nurse who said her department was permanently in crisis, a Wellington business owner whose turnover collapsed after the public service job cuts, and new parents in a supermarket who said they could not make ends meet. Government MPs heckled through almost the entire speech, and Luxon interjected that Hipkins had not been in Tauranga when he told the nurse’s story. “This is a government that’s had the wrong priorities, that’s been out of touch with New Zealanders, and now they are out of time as well,” Hipkins said. “We cannot afford three more years of this government.”
Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick arrived with printed headlines she said catalogued the Government’s failures, from climate policy to pay equity and benefit sanctions, and mocked the time spent on culture-war legislation. “This parliament has spent hours and hours making English an official language, and the three men in charge of this country have decided to waste all of our time defining what a woman is,” she said. She told the House she would not apologise for the Greens’ reputation. “I know that means that we get a reputation for being uptight dorks, I know that it means that we get a reputation for being angry, but Mr Speaker, I make no apologies for caring about this country, because that is the point.”
ACT leader David Seymour claimed $14 billion in savings from his party’s ministers and policies across the term and turned that into a pitch to voters. “We worked out that’s $57,000 for each person who voted for us,” he said. “Now, when you consider it’s free to give your party vote to ACT, it’s got to be a good deal.” He also needled the Prime Minister over National’s late conversion to the no-new-taxes line. “We know Chris [Luxon] has changed churches before, and we’re glad to see him at our one preaching no new taxes,” he said. Stuff reported Seymour promised a “jihad on red tape” if ACT returns to Cabinet.
Winston Peters, heckled throughout by the Greens and Te Pāti Māori who sit beside him, listed the 56 members’ bills New Zealand First MPs lodged this term and said they would be written into the next coalition agreement. He told the hecklers “we know what a Treaty is. We know what a woman is,” and answered a shout of goodbye with a promise. “Oh, bye bye Winston? Stand back sunshine. I’ve got news for you. I’m coming back real big time. We’re coming back with an army.”
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi called the coalition “the most anti-Māori, anti-Tiriti, anti-taiao, anti-worker government in a generation” and said the opposition would issue its own move-on orders on election day. He had prepared a ten-minute speech and was told he had five. “I will go to the back page, Mr Speaker,” he said.
Earlier in the afternoon, at the term’s final Question Time, Hipkins asked which of the Government’s policies had helped young people most, listing the end of the Apprenticeship Boost scheme, higher student fees and the withdrawal of financial support for 19-year-olds. Luxon answered by pointing to vacancies in uniform. He told the House that the Defence Force needs about two and a half thousand more people, that it would welcome applications from any 18 or 19-year-old over the next few years, and that there were police jobs going too, according to Stuff. Stuff noted that Stats NZ put unemployment among 15 to 19-year-olds at 25.3 percent in the June quarter.
The final week cleared the two bills that replace the Resource Management Act, along with the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Bill and a bill guaranteeing three-day postnatal hospital stays. But RNZ’s Phil Smith counted more than 60 bills that lapse unfinished as the term ends. Twenty-five are still in select committee, including three bills introduced only last week to remove or narrow references to the Treaty of Waitangi in legislation, and the bill to cap council rates rises. Another 41 sit on the Order Paper waiting for debate, among them five that ran out of time during last week’s urgency sitting, the ban on retail payment surcharges, the four-year term bill, the social media age restriction bill and the bill to fold MetService into NIWA. The Modern Slavery Bill, a members’ bill with backers in both National and Labour, also failed to make it across the line despite calls to pass it before the election.
Speaker Gerry Brownlee closed the debate with the numbers that mattered most to the building. Stuff reported he told MPs the Copperfields cafe in the Beehive had sold 166,000 cups of coffee and 12,000 pies over the three years, before thanking the security and House staff who keep Parliament running.
Parliament is not scheduled to sit again until after the election, with writ day on 4 October and nominations closing on 8 October. Whether the coalition’s record or the opposition’s cost-of-living case carries more weight with voters is now the only question that counts. Did the final debate change your mind about anything, or confirm it? Tell us in the comments.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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