Beehive Diaries: The Auckland whisperer: Michael Wood v Simeon Brown
Auckland Minister Michael Wood versus the Browns, Simeon and Wayne
We love a good robust match-up at Parliament, and the 2023 reshuffles of both National leader Christopher Luxon and then Prime Minister Chris Hipkins delivered the Auckland showdown.
Hipkins appointed Michael Wood as his Auckland whisperer: charged with getting Aucklanders back on side with Labour after the lockdown fallouts. It came weeks after Simeon Brown was appointed the Auckland whisperer for National – charged with making sure Aucklanders did not go back to Labour. Both already held transport so have already warmed up for this new front - setting the stage for a jolly and not always cerebral battle. It didn’t take long for the first shots to be fired.
Auckland’s mayor Wayne Brown had a sudden surge of constructive engagement and tweeted that Michael Wood was a good pick to be Auckland Minister.
Simeon Brown begged to differ. He greeted Wood to the appointment by tweeting Wood’s three whoopsies – the Waitematā Harbour cycle bridge U-turn, $70 million on Auckland light rail “which has gone nowhere” and the speed limit reductions which are proving less than popular.
In return, Wood told the NZ Herald he looked better with a shovel than Simeon Brown “and I actually know how to use one” – a reference to a social media post by Brown with a shovel by the side of the road in pristine clothes and shoes, helping with the flood effort.
David Seymour, Fast and Furious?
On the pre-flood social media front, Act leader David Seymour started the week with new memes for his “we hear ya” campaign (yes, echoes of NZ First’s old “had enough?” campaign of 2017). The highlight was The Fast and the Furious mockup – it featured Seymour’s head cropped on to the body of the muscular Vin Diesel, leaning on a black car with black smoke billowing out behind it.
Titled “Put New Zealand in the fast lane”, it was part of Act’s campaign against lower speed limits – we’ll ignore the fossil fuel-esque elements of it, beyond noting that a few days later the real Seymour posted a photo of himself, drenched, on his electric bike doing the rounds of his electorate to check on flood damage in the rain.
Andrew Kirton looks at politics from both sides now, or does he?
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins this week confirmed the suspected: that he was appointing lobbyist and former Labour general secretary Andrew Kirton as his chief of staff. Kirton, a former Herald on Sunday columnist, will at least bring some insights into the enemy: National Party leader Christopher Luxon was his boss after hiring Kirton to be the government relations chief at Air NZ.
Kirton even went to Luxon’s maiden speech and the after-match function, alongside other former Air NZ staff, including National deputy leader Nicola Willis’ husband Duncan Small.
If Luxon is hoping Kirton will be his Trojan Horse, he may be disappointed – Kirton is solid Labour, in a recent column for the Herald on Sunday, Kirton wrote Luxon’s approach to farm emissions was “murky”, his wife is Labour MP Camilla Belich, and many believe he wants to join her as an MP.
Nonetheless, part of his job is dealing with National on issues where the two have to coordinate or on sensitive issues – and the former relationship could come in handy there.