22-05-2025
Echo Chamber, Budget 2025 edition: Who is Mr Bo-Jandals?
It may not have been a lolly scramble budget, but there were plenty of lollies in parliament during the debate – plus a curious new nickname for one MP.
Our Budget 2025 coverage is thanks to The Spinoff Members. The Spinoff is not backed by billion-dollar budgets or billionaires, we're backed by you. To meet our current goal, we need 500 new members by the end of June. Please donate now.
The debate in parliament on budget day usually hits the same beats. The finance minister gives a long, dry speech listing everything they want to emphasise from their budget and patting themselves on the back for being so clever. The leader of the opposition pre-writes half of their attack lines before the budget comes out. The prime minister delivers a smug self-congratulation. Then, the leaders of the minor parties have their turn, which can be raucously entertaining or veer way off topic. When it's a controversial budget, it can be the best debate of the year. When it's a so-so budget, like this one, it can be a bit underwhelming.
Nicola Willis laid out her budget soberly, the only identifiable joke a reheated line about 'defunding da police' ('woop woop' sang Tim van de Molen, who is apparently not tired of this yet). She gave a shoutout to her kids in the public gallery, and got a kiss on the cheek from Chris Luxon as she finished.
For his response, Chris Hipkins dialled his outrage as high as he could muster, lashing the government's pay equity change. It was 'the budget that left women out', he said. 'The country that was first to allow women the vote has nothing to be proud of today when it comes to advancing the cause of women.' Carmel Sepuloni, Megan Woods and Barbara Edmonds formed a chorus of 'shame', 'shocking', and 'that's right' after every second sentence. 'You don't even know what a woman is,' Winston Peters heckled.
Hipkins claimed an 18-year-old would be $66,000 worse off by retirement due to the government's KiwiSaver changes. 'Boring,' Shane Jones moaned. 'Yeah, you're boring,' Katie Nimon echoed.'I thought he was finished, he's still talking,' David Seymour said.
Mark Mitchell had a packet of M&Ms on his desk and looked very pleased about it. He ate them methodically, one at a time, every three seconds, like a pendulum of candy-coated chocolate. He offered them to Todd McClay and Scott Simpson, each time with a cheeky grin as if to say 'haha, look at me, I'm eating M&Ms in parliament'. Andy Foster and Jamie Arbuckle shared some Mackintosh's Toffees (an on-brand lolly for New Zealand First). Winston Peters scrolled through a group chat that seemed to be entirely people sending context-free GIFs.
As Luxon stood, Tama Potaka pumped his fist and whooped, 'leshgo'. Luxon was in full attack dog mode; he was so preoccupied with Labour that it took him 22 minutes to mention any positives about his government's budget. He was particularly proud of a new nickname he'd invented for Hipkins: 'Mr Bo-Jandals', which he repeated four times throughout his speech. It meant absolutely nothing to me, but it is apparently a mashup of Mr Bojangles, a song about a travelling entertainer who hides their true identity (it peaked at number two on the New Zealand Music charts in 1971) and the word 'jandals', alternatively known as flip-flops. It was a convoluted way to call Hipkins a flip-flopper who hasn't taken a clear position on some key issues.
It might not make the annals of political attack lines, but Simeon Brown loved it. Every mediocre joke from his leader's mouth looked like it might kill him with laughter. After Luxon said Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori 'couldn't run a pub', Brown slapped his desk and repeated the line to himself. 'Can't run a pub,' he muttered, shaking his head as if it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard.
The writing left much to be desired, but Luxon's delivery was impassioned, and his MPs responded to his energy. He finished with the same line he used last year – 'Get New Zealand back on track' – and the government benches erupted in applause.
Chlöe Swarbrick had had a few too many Weetbix and was feeling extra excitable and/or frustrated. She started yelling into her microphone, causing government MPs to moan 'shut up' and 'too loud'. Winston Peters walked out of the chambers, plugging his ears with his fingers. She dubbed it the 'let them eat cake budget' and called the decision to cut jobseeker benefits for 18 and 19-year-olds 'a cruel and callous decision to punch down on young people'. Chris Penk wandered around the back benches until he found a container of Fruit Bursts in an empty desk. He picked out three grape ones and ate them with his head down, like he was trying to hide. I saw you, Chris, and I'm going to tell your F45 instructor.
David Seymour spent half of his speech attacking the opposition, and half promoting the Regulatory Standards Bill. 'You know, you can always tell when a politician's speechwriter doesn't like her very much, and that was certainly one of those circumstances,' he began, following Swarbrick. 'She wrote it herself,' James Meager said. 'That's not very nice,' Seymour replied, deadpan. He hit Labour with the same attack line as Luxon but landed a much better joke: 'Their whole electoral strategy is kind of the opposite of the Kama Sutra; they don't have a position on anything.'
Shane Jones was a last-minute call-up to give New Zealand First's speech. For unknown reasons, Winston Peters subbed his deputy in with 45 minutes' notice. In typical Jones fashion, he delivered a soliloquy to fossil fuels, praising the $200m in new funding for new gas fields. He held up a small bottle of Māui-1 crude oil, 1969. 'I'd like to take the lid off and invite the Green Party to sniff it,' he said. 'We don't want your mung bean, pronoun version.'
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngārewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi were notably absent for the entire debate. In fact, no one stuck around long. Both Labour and National's front benches cleared out after their leaders' speeches. Tākuta Ferris rounded out the debate on his leaders' behalf with a sermon about how no budget had ever given an appropriate proportion of funding or focus to Māori and a history lesson about the harms of colonisation. It was a generic Te Pāti Māori budget response, almost identical to Waititi's speech last year, and it didn't seem like his heart was really in it. Certainly, no one else in the chamber was paying much attention.
Three hours of debate ended with a whimper, and Chris Bishop moved to enter urgency for the first reading of the Regulatory Standards Bill. The wheels of parliament keep on turning, and MPs keep on snacking.
