Labour leader Chris Hipkins has offered a defence of sorts for Green MP Benjamin Doyle, saying the way their private social media posts had been “politicised” was “very unfortunate”.
“I think some of the aspersions cast on Benjamin’s character are really horrific and really ugly and portray an ugly side of New Zealand politics that I don’t want to add fuel to,” Hipkins said.
Hipkins said he was “not going to form a judgment” regarding the content of Doyle’s posts.
“Some of the language used is not language I have heard before,” he said.
Hipkins set his sights on Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters who had directed attention to Doyle in social media posts of his own.
“I don’t think it is responsible for the Deputy Prime Minister to be devoting his time to this,” Hipkins said, adding that he thought it would be “fair” to conclude Peters had been fanning the flames of the controversy, which appeared to emerge from blogs and social media over the weekend.
The Greens said Doyle had received a large number of death threats after the controversy erupted. Peters said there was “no excuse” for death threats and that he and his party were not responsible for them, noting they had begun prior to Peters himself posting.
The imbroglio came after old social media posts from a private account maintained by Doyle under the name “Biblebeltbussy” surfaced. The profile is private and notes in its biography that it is “on hiatus”.
According to screenshots posted to social media in recent days, the account posted a photo of Doyle and a child with the caption: “bussy galore”.
Bussy is a portmanteau of “boy” and “pussy” and is used to refer to a man’s anus. Bussy galore appears to be a play on Pussy Galore, a character in the James Bond film, Goldfinger.
According to Green co-leader Chloe Swarbrick suggested the remarks were not necessarily profane. She said members of the rainbow community were “accustomed to using and co-opting terms that may not be well understood by external groups, oftentimes with irreverence and absurdity”.
There is a lack of consensus about how offensive, or not, the term is - and how appropriate the word is when used to caption an image of a child.
Auckland Pride chair Bhenjamin Goodsir told Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive with Ryan Bridge the term came from the “language of memes”.
Goodsir said Doyle had a “joke nickname of Biblebeltbussy” on Instagram.
“It’s not what everyone might expect but that kind of was a reflection of them and their engagement with the community,” Goodsir said of the caption.
“As I understand, this was just one photo and a whole reel of photos that Benjamin posted - and their role was to connect with communities. So what we’re seeing here is the intersection of their work, their identity as a queer person, and their role as someone who’s part of a family,” Goodsir said.
The word appeared not to be widely known in Parliament - and the country at large.
During the press conference with the Greens, a member of the media who were members of the rainbow community took issue with Swarbrick’s characterisation of the word and the extent to which its use could be characterised as widespread within the community.
Bridge, interviewing Goodsir, said, “I’m a part of this community, but I didn’t really know what ‘bussy’ meant if I’m being honest with you.”
Bridge said he had heard from members of the LGBT community who asked “why do these guys have to go around provoking stuff?”
Google search traffic suggests most of the country’s internet users were similarly unfamiliar with the term. Preliminary search traffic data from Google shows that on Monday and over the weekend, searches for the term spiked to an unprecedented level, far exceeding the other recent spike, which occurred last year, when a song featuring the term was played uncensored on RNZ.
Most internet users searching the term recently were interested in the definition of the term, according to Google’s analytics.
The most popular related search term, was “what does bussy mean”.
Hipkins said that many MPs might regret things they had done prior to entering public life.
“I don’t want to talk about another party’s candidate ... we do try to work with candidates before they become public figures to identify areas of risk around their lives prior to politics. We all have those things. Everyone is allowed to grow up,” Hipkins said.
Prior to beginning their political career, Doyle was a high school teacher.
Hipkins would not say whether he felt that the language Doyle used was appropriate or inappropriate language for a teacher to be using when captioning an image of a child.
“That’s a hypothetical question ... it is very hypothetical, it would depend on what the person was saying. You can imagine a grandparent posting a photo with a grandchild talking about themselves being an ‘old bugger’, I don’t think anyone would take that literally,” Hipkins said.
Labour MP Shanan Halbert, also the party’s rainbow caucus chairman, described Peters’ public comments on the matter as a “targeted attack on a rainbow Member of Parliament”.
“It impacts [Doyle’s] whānau, and I think the real issue here is the death threats that he has received as a result.
“I certainly think any responsible Government members shouldn’t be flaming that fire.”
Labour MP Ayesha Verrall, also a member of Labour’s rainbow caucus, strongly condemned the reaction Doyle had received, including from Peters.
”It’s absolutely distressing and despicable to see these threats being levelled against an MP and I’m very disappointed in Winston Peters’ involvement in that.”
Hipkins said it was “not necessarily” the case that the Greens of 2025 were vastly different to the Greens of the past.
“All political parties will change their emphasis from time to time. The world changes,” Hipkins said.
There appears to be a general rapprochement between Labour and the Greens. On Monday, Hipkins softened some of his criticism of Green MP Tamatha Paul and her remarks about policing in Wellington, which caused a stir last week.
Hipkins said he would set out areas “where [Labour] has common interest with other parties, including where we share values, and areas which are no-go zones”.
“Under MMP, one of the things voters do expect is that, particularly major parties will be clear on where their no-go zones are. Where the Greens are promoting ideas that just aren’t compatible with what we believe then we will be upfront about that,” Hipkins said.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.