Nothing encapsulates this anti-charismatic approach so well as TOP posting a job ad to find a new party leader. The approach is novel, and as a marketing tool might even work to increase awareness and brand recognition. But the idea that the selection of political leaders could be reduced to a mechanical or technocratic choice based on the relative merit of different candidates is anathema to how politics actually works.

What next? Should TOP write a job description for list candidates?

So what is it about Hamas that people are so concerned about? It can’t be the fact that they are seeking the establishment of a sovereign state and are prepared to use violence to achieve that. After all, we take no such issue with the leaders of Zimbabwe or Ireland, whose predecessors also engaged in armed resistance against colonial oppressors.

It can’t be that their values are so different to our own. After all, we glorify historical figures like the American Founding Fathers, a great many of whom owned slaves.

It can’t be that they are murderers. After all, the Israeli Defence Force is deliberately killing journalists reporting on their war crimes, and yet we do nothing to stop them.

Ready for lower household energy prices? Then drill, baby, drill - rights into a bedrock of pure imagination.

Just societies feed their people. Not some of them; not most of them most of the time: everyone, all the time. New Zealand produces many times more food than is required to feed our population. We have state institutions, iwi and NGOs with the organisational capacity to distribute food to anyone who needs it. There is no reason anyone should go hungry - this is a choice that successive governments have made on our behalf, and it is a stain on our nation’s soul.

So if you believe that children in New Zealand deserve to eat, why not children in Gaza?

Planners cop a lot of flak from, well, everyone. For everything.

Sometimes it is nice to show the planners a bit of love.

To leave you with some food for thought, 29% of babies born in NZ in 2024 were Māori. That proportion is growing over time as well – Stats NZ reckons it won’t be long before 1 in 3 babies are Māori. At that rate, it will soon become effectively impossible to form government in NZ without the support of a meaningful number of Māori voters. Ironically, those who vehemently oppose the recognition of rights guaranteed in Te Tiriti might soon need to start thinking about a Māori upper house as an option to protect the political interests of Pākehā.

The long and the short of it is that despite, on face value, having almost unlimited power to determine what is acceptable conduct by ministers, the Prime Minister actually only has one feasible option when it comes to the Deputy Prime Minister: ignore it and try to move on. So it shouldn't be a surprise that, rather like children who turn up to school to find a substitute teacher with little talent for classroom management, the leaders of both ACT and NZ First have been doing quite a bit of boundary testing with their behaviour this term.