Online exclusive
Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics is a weekly column that appears on listener.co.nz on Friday mornings. If you enjoy a “serious laugh” - and complaining about politics and politicians - you’ll enjoy reading Greg’s latest grievances.
Could Andrew Bayly be the Dale Carnegie of New Zealand?
Put it this way, if the former merchant banker, now Commerce Minister, doesn’t write a political memoir titled How To Win Friends And Tell People To F--k Off it will be one of local publishing’s great missed opportunities.
There are many ways to make a name for yourself in New Zealand’s tiny political cesspool. You could, say, be the architect of something important, like Michael Joseph Savage. You could be remembered, as more than one current parliamentarian will be, for evolving into an indestructible political cockroach who somehow always survives being nuked by voters. Or you could be Bayly.
He will be remembered as the National Party minister who admitted in the House to bowling up to a Marlborough winery and repeatedly calling a worker a loser while using his fingers to form a loser sign on his forehead, before, according to the worker, telling his victim to “take some wine and f--k off”. All this while apparently being as sober as a vicar.
“Loser-gate”, as those with no imagination are already calling it, may just be the most pathetic political scandal in New Zealand history. But at least it has added, whether Bayly said it or not, the peerless catchphrase “Take some wine and f--k off” to the national lexicon. This will be very handy come barbecue season.
One can’t help wondering if the whole sorry affair might have been more forgivable, or at least more understandable, if Bayly had actually been as pissed as a chook.
In any case, whatever else he does in what remains of his otherwise forgettable parliamentary career — and for many voters he was a nobody before this — he has written the intro to his political obituary with his “comments made in a light-hearted manner” gone wrong.
Being a failed insult comic was only the first of Bayly’s mistakes. His second was not to talk to the Prime Minister, the down-to-earth multimillionaire Christopher Luxon, about his failed comedy routine until after the worker, frustrated by his complaint not going anywhere, sent emails to the PM’s office and to opposition parties.
Bayly then made a further blunder by offering an apology that nitpicked about what he had said, making him seem not just a loser, but a sore loser to boot.
Finally, he muddied his side of the story by later telling the House that, while he hadn’t drunk alcohol before his interactions with the worker, he had had a “small wine tasting” later.
How much do you reckon they charge at that vineyard’s cellar door for enough booze to self-immolate?
But while Bayly lit this stinking political dumpster fire himself, it was Luxon, a leader 51% of us already think is out of touch, according to a 1News Verian poll, who turned it into a shit soufflé.
For the PM — whose third-rate political radar seems finally to have broken down entirely — it was apparently enough punishment for Bayly to apologise to him and the worker, to promise not to do again, and for Bayly to wander the halls of Parliament draped in sackcloth and ashes.
What dumb politics. All it did was give the opposition and the media an opportunity to go on and on and on about it all week.
If Luxon had sacked, demoted or even vigorously spanked Bayly with a dirty jandal last Friday, much of the political poison might have been drawn and the government could have spent this week concentrating on its agenda, like shafting the Wellington City Council and ignoring the fact its austerity policies have helped deliver a record number of beneficiaries.
Instead, Luxon made a decision that added up to one arrogant and entitled politician giving another arrogant and entitled politician a pass after he’d behaved like a tin-eared arsehole. In terms of optics, it was a wholly inadequate response to a minister using his privilege and his position to repeatedly and misguidedly mock and humiliate a member of the public for a “laugh”. Oh well, too late now.
So, in the absence of suitable punishment from Luxon, the hanging judge at Another Kind of Politics sentences Bayly to have ordinary New Zealanders yell “loser” and “take some wine and f--k off” at him everywhere he goes, every day, for the rest of what remains of his hopefully miserable political life.
Yet more losers
If Andrew Bayly was this week’s biggest loser for calling someone else a loser, the Wellington City Council and the ex-Green, and now ex-MP, Darleen Tana, were runners-up.
While the decision by Local Government Minister Simeon Brown — surely the love child of Dobby the House Elf and a policy wonk — to force a Crown “observer” on the council was publicly welcomed by Mayor Tory Whanau, it felt vindictive.
Given the poor performance, infighting, water woes or huge rates hikes currently engulfing other councils — South Wairarapa and Invercargill are two that come to mind — Brown’s move against Wellington stinks of cant and cynical opportunism.
This, plain and simple, is a political hit job on a largely left-wing council by the most right-wing government in 30 years — and done with next year’s local body elections in mind. The timing of the announcement also reeked of the government trying to move the news agenda away from Bayly. Hard luck there.
Tana, meanwhile, leaves Parliament after just 12 months but having made history: she has the dubious honour of being the first MP pushed out under the so-called waka-jumping legislation.
The decision by the Greens to use a law it once fervently opposed may have a whiff of hypocrisy about it, but the decision was justified and appears well supported by the party’s flax roots and public opinion. It also seems unlikely the U-turn will make a difference to support for the Greens at the 2026 election.
As for Tana, she whinged to 1News that the affair had been very hard on her and her whānau — forgetting the situation was entirely of her and her husband’s making and that if she had just resigned, it could have been over months ago.
The only remaining unknown about the Tana affair, now it’s over, is whether the Speaker’s letter giving her the sack suggested she take some wine before she f--ked off.
Head Scratcher of the Week
Is the “deepfake AI Christopher Luxon”, reportedly used to rip off $224,000 from a Taranaki pensioner in a cryptocurrency scam, the same Christopher Luxon who told an audience in Gore in January last year to “trust us” because, if elected, National would future-proof Dunedin and Southland hospitals? I think we should be told.
Political Quiz of the Week
What is Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith doing in this picture?
A/ Feline groovy.
B/ Taunting a repeat offender who’s on his ninth life.
C/ Working as a dominatrix at a niche BDSM dungeon.
D/ Proving he can piss cats off as well.
