The government succeeded in getting wide media coverage of its plan to lure more rich foreign investors with new visas. Photo: The Post
"Small parties are always going to try and get media attention. That's politics," Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Morning Report last Tuesday.
The ACT leader's conduct certainly attracted plenty of that this past week.
"Not since Richard Prebble openly criticised David Lange have we seen such a challenge to a prime minister," wrote Richard Harman, a political journalist of long experience with a long memory.
It was in 1988 that Prebble was fired after he questioned Lange's mental health live on TV, Harman recalled on his subscriber site Politik, under the headline 'Seymour tells Luxon where to go' (that was the polite version).
He was referring to the ACT leader telling media the PM lacked the facts when Luxon said it was "unadvisable" for Seymour to have advocated for Dr Philip Polkinghorne in 2022 after he was charged with murder.
That was revealed in a Herald on Sunday scoop last weekend in which also asked Seymour if Polkinghorne had been an ACT Party donor or supporter.
Given that Stuart Nash and Morris Williamson were sacked as ministers in recent years after controversies over potential conflicts created by responding to donors' requests, it was a reasonable question (even though Seymour was not a minister himself in 2022)
But Seymour criticised the Herald reporter on Newstalk ZB the next day.
"There's been some tawdry innuendo from Carolyne Meng-Yee… suggesting that somehow I only would help people if they were donors. I think that's outrageous. I've helped people who are penniless. I've helped people that are on the hard left.
"People might start asking journalists if they're on the take for the stories that they write. I don't think that Meng-Yee would like that - and I certainly would never suggest it," he added.
"You kind of just did, in a roundabout way," replied ZB host Ryan Bridge.
"Well…. that's what she would say. One of the things about the media is you tend to believe it until you've been in a story. And I personally wouldn't believe a story that that journalist wrote again."
The media also invited the PM to comment on Seymour's now-notorious Land Rover charity stunt at Parliament on Monday, but he declined.
RNZ political editor Jo Moir reckoned the media focus on that was actually good news for Seymour.
"The Polkinghorne letter and the Tim Jago situation... are far worse situations for David Seymour than the Land Rover one," she said on Morning Report's weekly political panel on Friday.
Philip Polkinghorne. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
The same could be said of headlines about this week's school lunch problems.
That same day, the main provider of the new cheaper options Seymour had insisted upon had to use pies and cold food from a fast food chain to cover a supply failure.
Shortly after lunchtime, Stuff also revealed the new lunches weren't halal-certified and Seymour's subsequent 'like it or lump it'-type response led TVNZ's 1News at 6pm that night - even ahead of the loss of 230 jobs and the end of paper production at Kinleith mill.
It wasn't the only big news overshadowed by the focus on ACT's leader.
In her weekly column the Herald's political commentator Audrey Young said "the focus on David Seymour's antics has diverted attention away from the most worrying diplomatic crisis Winston Peters has dealt with".
She was referring to the Cook Islands' deal with China cutting across 60 years of free association with New Zealand, and called the citizenship that goes with it into question.
All this has also pulled the media's focus away from the message the PM's been boosting lately - this year as a year of economic growth.
And last weekend that had started well for Luxon - thanks in part to some canny media management.
Golden visas a golden ticket?
The announcement of new so-called golden visas for offshore investors was carried live on the websites of major news media last Sunday.
It was second only to the developing spat with Cook Islands on the 6pm TV news, but some journalists had been briefed in advance.
The previous day - under the headline 'Government to overhaul 'golden visa' for wealthy migrants who want to take risks', Stuff's Andrea Vance said Immigration Minister Erica Stanford had already told the Post the visas would be coming.
On Monday, Newstalk ZB's morning bulletins led with former Labour minister Stuart Nash's endorsement of the Active Investor Plus visa.
"Your wealth has got to be proven as coming from legitimate sources. These are good people. They add value," Nash told host Mike Hosking.
(Former minister Stuart Nash has skin in this game. After leaving politics he became the commercial director here for global headhunting and recruitment form Robert Walter.)
But when the story led RNZ's Midday Report last on Monday, business editor Gyles Beckford pointed out New Zealand is liberalising rules at a time when other countries, particularly in Europe, have been tightening up.
"In Europe… the concerns are about money laundering arising out of Russia, Belarus, involvement in the Ukraine war. [They] have been concerned about…the sort of people that they're getting," he said.
On Scoop.co.nz Gordon Campbell cited a recent Bloomberg News analysis of that.
"The golden visa schemes are packaged and sold as bolt-holes for people - and their riches - should the wisdom of heading for the airport at short notice ever become apparent," Campbell wrote.
Pushback on talkback
The same morning, Newstalk ZB's Wellington morning host Nick Mills was worried about that too.
"I would be concerned if the oligarchs started appearing from Russia - people that no one knows where they get their money from," he told ZB listeners.
"We're opening the doors. There's gonna be a couple of sneaky ones that come through, isn't there?" he asked.
But it wasn't just where they and their money came from that worried Mills.
"We damn well should speak English. We need to speak some sort of English to do any kind of business in New Zealand," Mills said after recounting communication problems he encountered running his businesses.
It's unlikely anyone fixing faults at his hospo business would be cashed-up holders of the Active Investor Plus visa holders.
But his anxiety about dropping the English language requirement was shared by callers to his show.
"I want them to speak English. If we get too many of them, our language gets diminished," said caller Deborah.
"We're still pretty great compared to some countries, and I don't want people who've got a bit of an agenda to secretly come in here. Saying you can't come if you can't speak English, is one way of holding [back] those sorts of people."
No one pointed out that the language requirement remains for most would-be immigrants outside the special class created for the new 'golden' visa.
The impact of more diversity also triggered ZB caller Trevor.
"Cultural problems have come with other beliefs and other languages. In New Zealand and Australia they were all British. We had the Christian values. We all spoke the same language, and life was a lot simpler," he told Nick Mills on ZB.
And especially so at Easter, according to Trevor.
"Cadbury's easter eggs haven't got 'Easter' on them, because we don't want to offend other cultures. Things like that are the sort of counter towards immigration. I'll never buy another Cadbury Easter egg again,".
It's part of our commercial culture these days that Easter stuff is already on sale halfway through February. And a quick check of supermarket shelves and websites shows Easter was still on Cadbury's packaging.
(Cadbury's eggs by the way are no longer made here. Global owner Mondelez moved Dunedin's production to Melbourne years ago in circumstances that really did cause some Kiwis to turn their back on the brand.)
It's likely Trevor was misinformed by stories circulating years ago in the UK. In 2016, the highly unreliable Daily Star said Cadbury had "banned Easter… to stop offending other religions", accompanied by pictures of boxes without 'Easter' on display.
Not so said the company, pointing out Easter was on other sides of the packs the paper had pictured.
So why de-Easterfy the front?
"Because it is very obvious through the packaging that it is an Easter egg," a spokesman said at the time.
Whether the Active Investor Plus visas turbo-charge the economy, as the government hopes, remains to be seen.
But a dip in Easter eggs sales seems unlikely to impact our economic growth prospects.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
