Claire Trevett’s Beehive Diaries
Labour turned up in vast numbers at Fieldays after pinging farmers with fees for their utes, and would Education Minister Chris Hipkins’ diet meet the health rules for the food in schools programme?
Tuesday Labour’s secret database of facts
A press release lands boasting a “record number” of Labour MPs and Ministers would be attending Fieldays this year.
Ever-vigilant to claims not backed up by evidence, Beehive Diaries asked the Prime Minister’s office for the data to prove it: the numbers of Labour MPs to attend Fieldays in each year since the event began in 1969. It transpired the database storing the statistics was Agriculture Minister Damian O’Connor’s memory. It could not be downloaded because O’Connor’s memory was with him in Europe for free trade talks, rather than at Fieldays.
Suffice to say, a lot of Labour MPs and ministers went to Fieldays.
Wednesday Play the ball, not the ute
The announcement of the feebate scheme kicked off some ute-shaming of MPs.
National had gone into bat for the “hardworking farmers and tradies” who would have to pay more for their utes.
It started when First union head Rob Reid tweeted a photo of National MP Chris Penk’s ute in a carpark. “Didn’t know Penk was a hardworking tradesman”, Reid tweeted. Ever-vigilant Twitter kicked into action. It didn’t take long for someone to post a photo of the PM in Labour MP Kieran McAnulty’s old dunger of a ute.
Someone else tweeted Labour MP Marja Lubeck’s campervan.
The dobbing in escalated from there. There was David Clark’s old minivan (famously parked at a mountain bike park during lockdown) and Stuart Nash’s massive black ute and even bigger red fire engine.
The fire engine, which Nash has used for his Napier campaigns since 2014, was sold last year.
Even the PM’s fiancee was not spared — photos of Clark with his Holden Colorado during filming for Fish of the Day emerged. Penk’s best riposte was to tweet a photo of “the vehicle I used to drive”. It was a submarine from Penk’s naval days.
Thursday Would Education Minister Chris Hipkins pass the healthy lunch test?
The list of the 80 meals rejected as too unhealthy to meet the criteria for the Government’s food in schools programme sparked some debate about whether the emphasis on health had come at the expense of kids wanting to eat the meals. Education Minister Chris Hipkins noted that every parent — including himself — knew the difficulties in trying to steer kids away from the appeal of unhealthy food.
The PM will know that difficulty too, and not from Neve. Ardern has put years of work into trying to break Hipkins of his love of sausage rolls and Coke Zero. He has recently taken to drinking kombucha instead or water in public — but the Coke Zero stash remains in his office.
Pretty sure they wouldn’t pass the lunch in school rules.