National Leader Christopher Luxon reacts to the announcement the Reserve Bank has lifted the OCR to 5.5 percent. Video / Nick Dobbie
Inflation hits Hipkins
Hipkins told us this week that his one regret was widely broadcasting his fondness for sausage rolls at the start of his premiership a mere four months ago. As a result, he has faced them where ever he goes, from Tauranga to London. He has alsoput on 5kg – 1.25kg a month.
His Coke Zero habit has also followed him everywhere – the United States officials even had one on the table for him at his meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in PNG on Monday. However, that is less inflationary on his waistline.
The taste test: a review of the Budget Sausage Cheese Roll
After witnessing the fusion cuisine enjoyed by Hipkins and Robertson on Budget day (a cheese roll-sausage roll fusion), Beehive Diaries sought out the creator of it to ask for a taste test.
Beth (a staffer in the Beehive who makes Robertson’s Budget Day cheese rolls each year) duly delivered six of them on Monday, freshly buttered and toasted: a traditional cheese roll wrapped around a sausage.
Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins add twists to Budget day traditions. Photo / Facebook
The verdict was … ummm … edible (enough to eat two). However, they also proved that sometimes two rights do make a wrong. Cheese roll: good. Sausage roll: good. Cheese-sausage roll: not so good.
We thank Beth for her services to the nation (and for the normal cheese rolls she included) but note Hipkins is not necessarily the right person to have as a culinary muse.
Roadie, steady, go
‘Tis the season for the politicians on pre-election roadtrips*.
Yes, they pretty much do them every week, but to be an official road trip, it has to have an official title. That way you might get more television cameras at them.
So National leader Christopher Luxon was on his maiden official roadie – the Get NZ Back on Track road trip. By and large, he’s targeting seats National hopes to reclaim from Labour: Northcote, and next week Whanganui and New Plymouth will see him.
He also stopped at Queenstown and Alexandra.
Act leader David Seymour was back on his seemingly never-ending roadtrip, the Real Change roadtrip.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Finance Minister Grant Robertson were on their separate post-Budget roadtrips, while Labour’s Māori caucus were also on a post-Budget hikoi – one which gave us a display of Willie Jackson’s TikTok dance attempts (not good).
* They actually fly in but flight trips doesn’t sound very “ordinary New Zealander”. In terms of modes of transport, Defence Minister Andrew Little won the award – he got to ride in an Army Bushmaster.
Just as the Reserve Bank issued a split-vote (5-2) on its decision to lift the Official Cash Rate by 0.25 points, the NZ Herald Gallery office has a split vote for Chris of the Week.
A sprint up the finishing straight has delivered the win to National’s leader Christopher Luxon by a vote of three to one.
The judges noted that National’s three-point rise in Thursday’s post-Budget 1 News Kantar Public poll put paid to murmurings (which were deluded anyway) that National might roll him before the election, and also put him in the frame as an alternative Prime Minister.
Hipkins’ week was not a bad one (until the poll) - we note particularly the emissions-buster $140 million contribution for NZ Steel to build an electric arc furnace to halve its reliance on coal.
