Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics: Luxon electorate office blaze due to “spontaneous combustion” of lobbyist documents

Greg Dixon’s weekly satirical column Another Kind of Politics runs a sharp eye over local and international politics.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he has no idea how a pile of documents from Fonterra and Z Energy suddenly caught fire and nearly burnt down his Auckland electorate office.

Emergency services were called to Millhouse Drive in Northpark, Auckland, at around 10am after reports of a fire. A police detective inspector said emergency services responded to 111 calls about a small fire at the rear of the electoral office. The fire was later traced to an old 44-gallon drum used for burning rubbish.

“The fire was extinguished quickly by Fire and Emergency New Zealand,” the officer said. “A cordon has been established and we are treating the circumstances as suspicious. Investigations will be ongoing. From the paper fragments found in the drum, we believe the fire was caused by lobbying documents from Fonterra and Z being ignited.”

Luxon said he had no idea what was going on. “I have no record of such documents, how they got to my electorate office, who bought the 44-gallon drum, how it got here, what the documents said, what briefing notes they contained that later turned up in policy, or who put them in the drum,” he said.

“However, it is my belief that this drum and documents appearing at my electorate office was an act of god, and the burning of the documents was caused by spontaneous combustion.”

The mystery documents’ destruction follows revelations that climate lobby documents from Fonterra and Z Energy were sent to a private email account of a former chief policy adviser to Luxon. Critics have contended these documents were later used to rewrite climate policy.

One commentator said that the near conflagration at Luxon’s office was likely to lead to further speculation of cover-ups. “The first rule of conspiracy theories is where there is smoke there is always a mystery fire.”

Act leader David Seymour says speculation that the huge influx of donations to his party in the last month was tied to gold bullion stolen during the Second War World is “scurrilous hogwash”.