Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
Where’s Paul Henry when you need him? Say what you like about the man but he can energise a crowd and inject a much needed dose of humour into the earnest business of spruiking for votes like no one else.
But the only Paul in residence at the National Party meeting on Thursday was Paul Goldsmith, and he is definitely not made in the same mould as Henry. Also the focus of the early-evening gathering of about 70 people at Western Springs Garden cafe was the serious business of law and order and arts and culture.
At first glance it looked more like a meeting of a sports team than a political gathering. Team National all wore royal blue pants and jackets emblazoned with the names of the candidates they supported. This outfit was sported by both politicians and volunteers (but not Paul Goldsmith). My friend wasn’t a fan but I liked it. At least it singled out the National peeps.
Hosts of the evening were the candidates for Mt Albert (Melissa Lee) and Auckland Central (Candace Kinser), since the cafe sits on the boundary of both electorates.
After frothing about the wonders of Auckland (currently in the doldrums), Kinser shared that this Paul is one of her favourite ministers. You can see why. He’s endearingly self-deprecating, a bit fusty and awkward, and probably really sweet. Also Goldsmith is not so battle-hardened and slick that he’s become a consummate bluffer. He looked genuinely bewildered at some questions and who could blame him? They spanned the state of veterans, the manosphere, what’s happening to heritage buildings at the former Carrington Tech, legislation moving on people loitering around retail outlets and my question on the law as it pertained to sex and gender.
The reason for all these scattershot questions is because Goldsmith is responsible for 10 ministries - Justice, Defence, Media and Communications, Arts, Culture and Heritage, Pacific Peoples, Public Service and Digitising Government, Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, Space, Veterans and GCSB and NZSIS. If anyone should applaud moves to reduce the number of ministries, surely it should be him.
The Clap-O-Meter barely got a workout at this meeting although the first clap was for Kinser who said that if she won Auckland Central she intended to sit down with council, government and interested parties to make sure they had a unified plan to get things done.
Goldsmith began his speech by urging those present to party vote National since the party vote determines the proportion of seats in parliament.
He condemned Labour’s spendthrift tendencies and echoed former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who once remarked that the problem with socialists was that eventually you run out of other people’s money. He said National was bringing discipline to the finances and focussing on growth.
Goldsmith pointed out that three years ago law and order and community safety was top of mind for most voters. Now it has dropped considerably since the coalition has successfully tackled the crime wave of ram raids and retail crimes that had plagued the city.
Our target was fewer victims of crime, not fewer people in prison. The 185,000 victims of violent crime have been reduced by 37,000. We are proud of that.
For this he was rewarded with his first clap.
Goldsmith is right that crime and law and order have fallen sharply as a voter priority since the 2023 election. Ipsos polling shows concern falling from 40 per cent in May 2023 to around 20 per cent by early 2026. But this may reflect the rise of competing concerns – particularly healthcare, the economy and cost of living – rather than crime disappearing as an issue.
He talked about ditching the culture of excuses for crimes via cultural reports, restricting sentencing discounts and bringing in three strikes legislation. “Some people have to be taken out of circulation.”
Also they have made it harder for gangs to ply their trade. The Gangs Act 2024 prohibits gang members from displaying gang insignia in public places. Also police can issue dispersal notices where three or more members of a gang are gathering in a public place and their gathering is unreasonably disrupting other members of the public. Courts can make non-consorting orders preventing specified gang offenders from associating or communicating with other specified gang offenders for up to three years. On top of this the Sentencing Amendment Act 2024 made it easier for judges to take gang membership into account as an aggravating factor at sentencing.
To be honest, all these changes had passed me by and it dawned on me how big a job the coalition must have faced when they first got into government.
Also yet to come in is the Summary Offences (Move-on Orders) Amendment Bill, which would give police a new power to issue ‘move-on orders’ to people involved in low-level disorderly behaviour. The bill has not had its second reading. This too earned a clap.
Arts and culture got less attention from Goldsmith since he admitted he didn’t have the money he would like to throw around at this sector. But they have eased the earthquake-strengthening regime, first by extending deadlines and then by proposing to remove low-risk buildings and low-seismic-risk areas from much of the regime. As someone who has watched the lovely closed Leys Institute Library decay due to being deemed unsafe in an earthquake, I applaud this move.
Much of question time focussed on buildings and land once belonging to Carrington Hospital and later Tech. The coalition wants housing intensification and faster development, but Carrington is also a heritage asset whose preservation imposes costs and constraints on that development.
As well there is an iwi transfer component. The Crown is progressively disposing of the 39.7 hectares it holds as part of its Treaty redress arrangements. The development opportunity is being transferred to the relevant iwi/rōpū, who are leading the masterplanning and development.
To be fair, none of the candidates knew much about the site but Lee earned a clap when she promised to find out and get back to people if they contacted her afterwards. She also confessed then that she didn’t live in the area, which I thought did not bode well for her chances. However we learned that in the previous election National won the party vote in Mt Albert, so you never know. Esp since Labour MP Helen White faces competition for the left vote from Qiulae Wong.
Goldsmith remarked that he was fond of Mt Albert since he “found” his wife there, which made it sound like she had been a lost item. In any case they have been married for 31 years.
My question on whether Goldsmith regarded sex and gender as two different concepts in law and could he give examples where sex trumped gender was rewarded with a bewildered, blinking Goldsmith obviously casting around in the recesses of his mind for the facts on this issue. “That’s the NZ First bill isn’t it? Oh yes, well we’re happy with the way things are. Men not in sport. Yes, yes.”
Verdict? Looking around at the audience (mainly older), I recognised people who had been to other meetings, namely the Opportunity Party, and I sensed a level of scepticism in the room. These people were not necessarily Nat loyalists.
Perhaps because Lee and Kinser had little to do or say that evening, the level of enthusiasm for the meeting felt somewhat muted. I couldn’t help feeling they didn’t really want to be there. By the time it ended I, too, wanted to leave. But I was also left with a reminder courtesy Goldsmith of the mammoth task this coalition had faced in 2023.
Finally I have a suggestion for future meetings – ditch question time with a roving microphone. Paul Henry was right. Some of the questions were shit. Ask people to email or text them in and then select. This would also give the candidates time to do some research.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
