Question Time 22 July 2025

Got some great footage of the Falun Gong people. Ray Chung was supposed to speak, but he just stood there with his assistant. - Ministerial Statement: Middle East crisis. 'Untold death and unimaginable suffering' - Winston. Gary: 'Genocide. Say it!' 'one classroom of children killed getting food each day' 'New Zealand has limited influence ... we want dialogue, we want diplomacy' - Winston 'They should be aligning us with the UN' - Gary. Peeni spoke for Labour: 'We know that actions speak louder than words' 'There is more that NZ can do and must do' He addressed some pointed questions to Winston, who seemed slightly flustered.

One of these was about supporting the Palestinian diaspora in New Zealand, and Winston said that they're not offering any help with finding missing relatives, then he turned the whole thing into an anti-migrant rant that sounded 20 years out of date. Teanau spoke for the Greens: 'Over 17,000 children killed' 'This House can actually move fast' 'They want to know their families are safe' He mentioned sanctions, and Winston went on a rant about Russia had repeatedly violated international law in Georgia and Crimea, as if Israel was a lesser evil. Something interesting happened. When it came to the two-state solution, Winston said some stuff that sounds very much like Trump: 'lowering our standards of statehood' and then the kicker: 'so-called state' Rawiri: 'Israel is starving' - think he meant Gaza, but whatever. He's an improviser. 'Merciless butchering' '1 in 4 children are severely malnourished' 'pathetic lip-service' Said something in te reo that he translated as 'following the flatulence of others' Gary's answer to Winston: 'they need to create the idea of a state in order to manifest that state' - 1. Lu to Willis NL 4, NW 4 After half an hour of charged debate, Question Time was mostly filler. CPI inflation = 2.7% - within target range for the fourth consecutive quarter. Zoned out. Boring patsy question. 2. Ricardo to Louise Upston RMM 7, LU 3 Income inadequacy. A scathing new report has come out. 'There will be a range of policies ... to support more Kiwis into jobs' - Upston. Wasn't addressing the questions. '80,000 have left the benefit into jobs' 3. Chippy to Omelette C 7, PO 4 How many have received the much-fabled $250 a week from their 2023 campaign? This was a running gag today, and the evasive answers were striking. 'Everyone receives their full entitlement' - Omelette. Gary: 'they're desperate for Labour to announce a policy so they can attack it' The disorder in the House continues... 4. Bidois to Bishop DB 5, CB 6 $6 billion infrastructure spend. 'Spades in the ground' - Bish. 'All old Labour projects' - Gary. 'Thousands of employment opportunities' - Bish. NZ has a rather strange problem, which was the subject of an ad campaign in the late 2010's: nobody middle-class wants their kids to work in construction, so they made these lame ads to say that it was ok to be a tradie. We have building supply shortages since Covid that are curiously under-reported, so our housing market is highly constrained. The government's solution was to reclassify a bunch of green land as development land. 5. Edmonds to Willis BE -, NW - More on the $250 a week... 'She's out of touch' - Nicola to Barbara. The irony was palpable. 'Our government will put money in your bank account, while Chris Hipkins and Barbara Edmonds will take it away' - Nicola. This was really out of order, but nothing happened. 6. Stephenson to Pink Skull TS 5, PS 5 Pharmac. 'Pharmac has made very good progress ... they are changing their culture' - PS. 'Speech!' - Gary. 7. Hamilton to Slimeon RH 4, SB 4 Waikato uni medical school. Three questions on this topic today. 'This is a transformational change' - Slimeon. Rural medicine focus. Another big problem in NZ: it's gotten so bad that people are now using teleconferencing for life-threatening diseases. 8. Arena to Scott Simpson AW 6, SS 5 'Boosting competition' - Simpson 'First overhaul of the Commerce Act in 20 years' Are Aussie banks being protected from paying back their customers? Long answer: pretty much. Toothless tinkering at the edges. 3pm! Ran until 3:30. 9. Rawiri to Omelette RW 7, CL 3 Rawiri chose an interesting tactic, which was to use the rights of seniors as a way of discussing the Regulatory Standards Bill that has been in all the headlines. Drawing analogies between those rights and Tiriti rights. Luxon said something curious, saying that Rawiri was 'mixing bottles', which appeared to be a suggestion that he's a heavy drinker. Dog whistle politics: that's his legacy. 10. Marcroft to Costello JM 4, CC 5 Patsy question. Smokefree Aotearoa. Old people are still smoking, young people are vaping, which isn't an improvement. 11. Shanan to Slimeon SH 7, SB 5 Waikato medical school, round 2. Are they funding all medical students from 2028? No. '60% of nursing graduates couldn't get a job' - Gary. 12. Hernandez to Slimeon FH 8, SB 4 Waikato medical school, round 3. Francisco seemed the best-prepared. 'Stronger, more diverse' - Slimeon. Will it deliver more doctors? 'Sounds like a no' - interjection. This is a public-private partnership, so Francisco said that they'd need 'big philanthropist backers' to actually build it. In doing so, he said that they'd leveraged too much and that the financial risk of Waikato Uni had been reclassified from medium to high. Mariameno: what did the iwi boards say? Slimeon: we heard from a range of consultants. And that's that....