Opinion:
Being a member of Parliament can bring out the best and the worst in people. You have to be slightly bonkers and have a high degree of confidence just to want to be an MP – unfortunately, that can click into arrogance really easily when you get there if not kept in check. I should point out that this arrogance is not the domain of just one political party.
There are examples galore from all sides of the House (including the Green Party, even though they want us to believe they don't play personality politics and saunter around looking arrogant because some of them really believe they are better than the rest of us). Plenty has been written in the past about National MPs behaving badly and I am sure someone is screaming at their screen about how arrogant they think I am.
Willie Jackson's display this week calling David Seymour "a useless Māori" and then blatantly defending it was actually a breath of fresh air. He said what he meant, he didn't back down and he was playing directly to his audience, Māori voters on the Māori roll. I don't agree with his analysis but that's irrelevant – I don't agree with most things Willie Jackson says and have myself in 2019 been told by him that I am not Māori enough – but I do like people who shoot straight from the hip and Willie himself pointed out that Parliament is a boisterous place.
Willie will be Willie, predictable, pretty harmless and easy to ignore. I am sure the PM is not too worried about his latest outburst, after all, she needs the support of her Māori caucus and those votes.