Finance Minister Grant Robertson gave a prompt “no” when he was asked if the Government would consider forking out money from the Major Events fund to secure a Taylor Swift concert for New Zealand.
The reason for Robertson’s lack of enthusiasm could well be recentreports that a Beyonce tour was being blamed for higher-than-expected inflation in Sweden and that Harry Styles and Ed Sheeran had the same effect in Australia - largely because of spending on the tickets and uber-high accommodation rates.
Asked about it by Beehive Diaries, Robertson – who prefers 1980s Dunedin indie pop-rock – replied only “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me.”
Which are, appropriately, lyrics from Swift’s song Anti-Hero.
Happy birthday to Act leader David Seymour, who turned 40 on Saturday. When welcomed to middle age, Seymour said he was looking forward to having a day off for once and would have a private celebration with friends and family: “and no politics”.
Yeah right.
David Seymour at 28 years old. Photo / Janna Dixon
Poetry in politics
It’s not often a masterpiece lands in the subject heading of a press release. But lo, last Friday after news that Meng Foon was resigning as Race Relations Commissioner, it did.
“Foon strewn on a June afternoon,” the Act Party press release said.
It was followed up with more poetry from Act’s Nicole McKee in an urgent debate on the issue. After some confusion over whether Foon had resigned or not, she said “news of Foon’s doom was communed too soon”.
Unfortunately, the party then got a bit over-excited about its success and overdid it in a press release about Swift giving the cold shoulder to New Zealand.
Seymour put up a tortuous post, written almost entirely by stringing together Swift’s song titles. It had done a similar thing, but better, with Beyonce in the past. However, that was when former press secretary Rachel Morton was in charge, who clearly knew the value of moderation. Alas, Morton has left to work for Air NZ.
Beehive Diaries are big Swift fans – but the Act release was too much even for us, which just goes to prove there is such a thing as too much Tay Tay.
Chris v Chris
Every week the NZ Herald Gallery office votes on whether Chris Luxon or Chris Hipkins had the better week. Of late, that has been more of an exercise in picking who had the least bad week. That is the case again this week.
January 28. Illustration / Rod Emmerson
Chris Hipkins found himself talking more about Wood than about bread and butter or his upcoming trip to China. Luxon got himself back into a Tesla tangle, and another mixed message. The latter was over whether National would scrap all of the factors used in a Te Whatu Ora equity calculator, or just the ethnicity factors. He said all of them, his health spokesman Shane Reti said only the ethnicity one. Yet again, clarifications had to be issued and it still remains unclear why the ethnicity factor is so problematic for them but the priority for rural and low-income people is not.
However, Chris of the Week goes to Luxon by four votes to one. Hipkins’ handling of the Wood situation was solid, but it was still a situation, he still lost another front-bench minister and he still wasted more days talking about problematic MPs than the cost of living.
