Michele Hewitson: The winners and losers in this year’s Drunken Muldoon Awards
Award contenders: Shane Jones, Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters this year. Photos / Getty Images
Hello and welcome to the first annual Drunken Muldoon Awards, in which we honour the great, the good, the damned and the fallen of New Zealand politics for 2023.
We have many prestigious baubles to bestow. And just like former prime minister Robert Muldoon announcing a snap election after too many whiskies – the seminal moment in our political history for which the awards are named – many of the prizes recognise the sort of cock-ups, miscalculations and misstatements that make modern politics the stinking, out-of-control dumpster fire it is. So, without further ado …
The Henry Kissinger Memorial Shuttle Diplomacy Prize for Negotiating World Peace Between David Seymour and Winston Peters:
Christopher Luxon
They said it couldn’t be done. And by they, we mean Seymour and Peters. Seymour called Peters “a clown”. Peters called Seymour “a cuckold”. As far back as 2020, they more or less challenged each other to fisticuffs. Enter the Great Negotiator, who put together this coalition of the unwilling by adopting some of the pair’s more out-there policies into the government’s agenda while making his own National Party’s promised tax cuts nigh-on impossible until sometime next year. Christopher Luxon, deal maker, peace maker. Send him to the Middle East immediately.
Investigative Journalist of the Year:
Winston Peters
Like every hack worth their salt, Peters reports it how he sees it, without fear or favour. And this year he claimed to have uncovered the mother of all scandals: that the media had been bribed and corrupted by the Labour government with the now-defunct Public Interest Journalism Fund. However, like every hack not worth their salt, Scoop Peters didn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. What he didn’t say was that the NZ On Air-administered fund was to help cash-strapped media during the Covid downturn, that not all media outlets got money (the Listener certainly didn’t), and that the funding couldn’t be used for political coverage. Don’t hold your breath for a correction.
The Epsom Kennel Association Silver-Plated Dog Whistle:
David Seymour
The Yasser Arafat Award for Right-on Fashion: THE GREENS
The decision by some Green MPs to wear keffiyeh in Parliament appeared to be the party signalling its support for Palestinians, a move once again signalling that the Greens have always been a party that makes a virtue of shameless virtue signalling.
The Titewhai Harawira Memorial Spoon for Shit Stirring: