Chris v Chris: Who won the week? Hipkins or Luxon?

January 28. Illustration / Rod Emmerson

Parliament returned in earnest this week, with the first proper Chris v Chris question time taking place on Wednesday (Tuesday was absorbed by a fairly soporific debate on the prime minister’s statement).

Things got off to a roaring start at Monday’s post-Cabinet with Prime Minister Chris Hipkins getting tough on reports of crime (if not crime itself).

“Any suggestion that things are out of control is just wrong, and amplifying those kinds of rumours isn’t helpful and it doesn’t help the police to do their jobs,” Hipkins said, speaking to reports of increased lawlessness in Hawke’s Bay following Cyclone Gabrielle.

As the week went on, however, reports of crime in Hawke’s Bay kept trickling in, and while it’s too early to tell if things are “out of control”, residents are clearly and justifiably alarmed at accounts of some very serious incidents, including a gun being pulled on a road worker.

On Friday, police released a statement revealing that three people, including a Mongrel Mob member, were arrested last night after an attempt to smash their way through a Napier property’s gates.

Two men were arrested at the scene and $17,000 in cash was found. Police then raided an address and seized illegal firearms, cannabis and cash.

A bit more empathy for frightened Hawke’s Bay residents wouldn’t have gone amiss - instead, Hipkins, on the defensive, seems to have opted for the dismissive strategy deployed during the Charlotte Bellis scandal with similarly mixed results.

Things went from bad to worse for Hipkins in Question Time, when he made a fairly significant mistake answering a question from David Seymour about the level of the Government’s tax take.

Hipkins proudly proclaimed the tax take was down as a share of the economy on when Labour came into office.

In fact, it’s significantly up on when Labour came into office. Hipkins was $10 billion off target - a sum so large not even Act’s fairly significant tax cut policy would bring the tax take to that level.

He’ll be forced to make an embarrassing correction to the House next month.

Christopher Luxon had a so-so week.

He’s wisely kept his head down, learning from his predecessors that opposition heads above the parapet during a crisis tend to get lopped off.

This was undone by backbench MP Maureen Pugh on Tuesday when she decided to dabble in climate denialism before swiftly correcting herself.

Luxon appeared unsure of how to handle the misstep, Should he join Deputy Leader Nicola Willis in throwing the book at her, or take a more conciliatory line respecting National’s famous “broad church”?

It was all a bit confusing, made worse by the fact that Luxon had been quite strong the past few weeks in declaring that there was no place for denying climate change in modern politics. No place, apparently, apart from the National back bench.

Still, the whole thing was cleared up by Question Time, which Luxon did a decent job in.

It wasn’t a showy performance - the same old relitigation of the Government’s more embarrassing moments with little attempt to seriously prosecute an issue.

The best part was an attempt to have Chris Hipkins as Prime Minister disagree with statements made by Chris Hipkins the Minister for State Services in 2018 over the level of consultant spending.

A decent point to be made there, but Chris Hipkins the former Minister of Covid-19 Response came to the rescue of Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, extolling the virtues of quickly scaling up consultant spend in a crisis.

Still, it wasn’t enough to win Hipkins the week.

After a string of victories for Hipkins, Christopher Luxon claims his first victory of the year.