Opinion

Labour’s Arena Williams gets top billing, but not everybody’s on side – Audrey Young

Opinion by

Audrey Young, Senior Political Correspondent at the New Zealand Herald based at Parliament, specialises in writing about politics and power.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins, finance spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds and commerce and consumer affairs spokeswoman Arena Williams make a policy announcement. Video / Cameron Pitney

Welcome to Inside Politics.

Those who follow politics closely may have noticed a fresh face featuring frequently in Labour’s campaign: Arena Williams, MP for Manurewa. She has been alongside leader Chris Hipkins on numerous occasions in the past three weeks making major policy announcements.

She is not there just because she is more photogenic than Hipkins, although it will be doing him no harm to show he has some competent faces of the future to complement old hands such as Willie Jackson, Megan Woods and Carmel Sepuloni.

She is an educated, articulate young Māori MP, a former lawyer and a mother-of-two.

Yesterday she was with Hipkins to announce policy to boost banking competition. Today she is in Nelson to help announce policy on getting a better deal for air passengers.

Earlier in the week, it was a bundle of fair-go consumer laws. Three weeks ago, it was how Labour would address the supermarket duopoly, and before that, a ban on price-gouging.

Making the most of her portfolio

Arena Williams made a controversial entrance to national politics by challenging Louisa Wall for Labour's Manurewa nomination in 2020. Photo / Cameron Pitney

Arena Williams is the party’s spokeswoman on commerce and consumer affairs and has clearly done her homework on policy development. She has also been drawing on her previous work as a corporate/commercial lawyer at Chapman Tripp.

Consumer affairs is one of the best portfolios any MP can have and Williams has made the most of it. Her clashes with National minister Cameron Brewer in Parliament are always feisty.

However, she is not especially popular in the party hierarchy and that is reflected in her caucus ranking, at No 24 out of 34, and party list ranking, at No 40 out of 71.

But with a safe seat, she will be back and, judging by campaign performance, in line for a promotion to the frontbench whether or not Labour forms the next Government.

She made a controversial entrance to national politics by challenging Louisa Wall for the Labour nomination for Manurewa in 2020.

Brewer, by the way, is one of National’s best-performing MPs from the class of 2023 and should also be in line for promotion whether or not the party makes it back to Government.

Yesterday he released the party’s small business policy.

National’s swift hardline response

Seasoned debater Chris Hipkins may have been the clear winner in the TVNZ debate on Tuesday. But his statements on education will come back to bite the Labour leader throughout the campaign and National immediately took to social media to highlight them.

Hipkins said Labour would drop the requirement for primary and intermediate schools to allocate an hour a day for teaching reading, writing and mathematics. The party would leave it up to teachers to decide. It is astonishing what a tin ear Labour can sometimes have for what parents want, but not for teachers.

Meanwhile, National today released one of its so-called “red meat” policies that could help drag back some of its right-wing supporters who have drifted to New Zealand First and Act.

It would allow random drug-testing of Jobseeker beneficiaries and cut the rates of some long-term beneficiaries. Pressed on whether MPs should be randomly drug-tested as well, Christopher Luxon said he had anticipated the question and would be relaxed about it.

Glamour in the ranks

NZ First candidate Taine Randell at the party's Auckland campaign launch on July 19. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

Former All Blacks captain Taine Randell looks set to bring a bit of glamour to the next Parliament, having been given a placing of No 9 on the New Zealand First list. The 1News-Verian poll on Tuesday put the party at 10%, which would give it 12 MPs (four more than it won in 2023). The only current MP to miss out would be whip Jamie Arbuckle. Former Financial Markets Authority chairman Craig Stobo is a dead cert at 8, as is broadcaster Michael Laws at 6.

The surprises in the list rankings were the low placing of former Defence Minister Ron Mark, at 16, and the high rankings of ex-National MPs Alfred Ngaro and Harete Hipango-Brownlie, at 5 and 7 respectively.

Leader Winston Peters has answered the questions about Ron Mark by saying that the party had to have an eye to rejuvenation and that Mark had served six terms as an MP.

Peters insisted that Mark would be back in Parliament and would be the next Defence Minister. But on current polling, he is more likely to be back in Europe helping to co-ordinate assistance for Ukraine’s war effort.

Ngaro’s placement is clearly aimed at boosting the Christian vote. He is a conservative Christian with Cook Islands heritage and was a minister outside Cabinet for a year under Sir Bill English.

Hipango-Brownlie is also a conservative Whanganui-based candidate. She has attended anti-vaccination, anti-lockdown rallies, but says she is not anti-vaccination.

“I’ve been branded anti-vax but I’m not. I’m pro-democracy,” she told the Whanganui Chronicle.

On the campaign trail

Luxon is campaigning today with Kāpiti MP Tim Costley; Hipkins is campaigning with Nelson MP Rachel Boyack; Green co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chloe Swarbrick are campaigning in Auckland with energy spokesman Scott Willis; David Seymour and Peters are campaigning in Auckland today, but not together. Peters has a public meeting in Invercargill on Saturday and in Dunedin on Sunday. Seymour will be releasing Act’s alternative budget on Sunday, and National will release its fiscal plan on Monday.

By the way

Laws bravery: Platform broadcaster and New Zealand First Waitaki candidate Laws had an interview with Peters yesterday, which is not unusual. But he had the courage to raise the issue of Peters’ mortality, asking if Randell might be a future leader – in a decade or so, he added. Peters politely answered that that would be up to the caucus and Laws has survived with his No 6 list ranking.
Screening spin: It’s one thing to copy policy from another party. But it’s quite another thing to lift existing Government policy and present it as campaign policy, as National did on Wednesday by extending the breast-screening programme to 74-year-olds by 2029. A pilot was run in 2024 and the rollout nationally began in October 2025, as Health Minister and National campaign chairman Simeon Brown well knows. There has been no question by any party that the rollout is under threat.

Quote unquote

“I’m quite open for Parliament to be drug-tested. Fine.” Prime Minister Luxon in announcing a policy for random drug-testing of beneficiaries.

Micro quiz

Who is the Green Party candidate in Waiariki, the seat held by Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi? (Answer at the bottom of this article.)

Brickbat

Labour leader Chris Hipkins and candidate Rakesh Naidoo in Auckland last week. Photo / Jamie Ensor

Goes to Labour candidate Rakesh Naidoo for not alerting Hipkins that he was on the board of a charter school – schools that have always been opposed by Labour (and still are).

Bouquet

Host Ryan Bridge and former PM Sir John Key take part in a panel discussion at last night's Future of New Zealand debate. Photo / Dean Purcell

Goes to the Herald’s Ryan Bridge and guests for last night’s debate on the future of New Zealand. Funny, stimulating and inspiring. The most positive event of the campaign so far.