6 days ago
One MP, One Pint: Being a Survivor ‘super fan' and getting deported with Simon Court
Act MP Simon Court only has one political regret: providing menstrual advice.
It's been a tense week in parliament, as the government spends the next month mulling over whether Aotearoa should recognise Palestinian statehood. The conflict in Gaza is a topic that Simon Court is particularly passionate about, with his pro-Israel stance informed by experiences with Jewish-New Zealander friends and the belief that there's not much difference between that small nation and ours. That position has become increasingly hard to defend (according to most of our allies and the rest of the world) but we are here for only one pint so I've left that particular huge argument to the House.
There is something very different that Court and I agree on right away: west is best. Sure, he's not a native West Aucklander, but after spending summers in Piha as a teenager and field trips through the Waitākere ranges as a civil engineering student at Unitec, he's never looked back. Also, I once lived in New Lynn for four months and have had four boyfriends who lived along the 195 bus line, so I can vouch for the place being the best part of Auckland, too.
What I like about Court right away is that he shouts our round. I've got a Parrotdog, Court's got a Panhead, and he's telling me about his favourite parts of the west, like the Sugar Grill and Delicious Café in Te Atatū, but he also reckons there's a way it could be made better. Court has a member's bill currently sitting in the biscuit tin, which would abolish the liquor monopoly held by the Waitākere Licensing Trust (as well as those in Invercargill and Mataura) – not the Trust itself, but its restrictions on the sale and supply of alcohol within a community, so that Westies could have the option of buying a bottle of wine from the supermarket, or establishing a few local venues to serve the area's creatives.
'We've got a lot of musicians in West Auckland – there's lots of bands and producers, and people like King Kapisi and Fur Patrol are all Westies – yet there's nowhere for them to play locally, where they can set up and we can go have a beer and watch the band,' Court says. 'The barrier, as I see it, is the liquor licensing monopoly … We can keep the Trust, we just want them to perform better and deliver back to their community.'
And if there were more bars out West, there could be more opportunities for people to hear Court's best pub yarn: that time he got deported from Fiji. Court had been working in Suva as an engineer for MWH Global, managing Chinese government contractors the Fijian government had hired to build the largest island's roads. After discovering reinforced steel poking out of newly built bridges and soil dumped down hills (creating landslide risks), Court reported the shoddy works to the Fijian government, but 'it turns out that that was a bit embarrassing, a bit uncomfortable for everyone involved, [and] it's much easier to get rid of the Kiwi engineers [than] have a difficult conversation'. And voilà, deportation time.
You'd probably expect someone with a background in environmental engineering to be sitting in the opposition benches, rather than with Act (and Court's pretty sure his wife, a former Forest and Bird employee who has worked on Green Party campaigns, has switched her vote too). But, Court sees himself as more of an 'engineered solutions' guy rather than a 'zero waste' guy, plus, there's a lot of value in having an open mind – like the fact that while Court would rather listen to the drum and bass beats by Liquid, he can still accept that David Seymour is a 'massive fan' of Dire Straits ('you know, the thing we never wanted to hear again in the 80s and 90s').
Truly, nobody is perfect, which is why Court is totally unabashed when it comes to talking about his greatest love: reality television. Or, more specifically, Survivor. As a 'super fan' of the Australian spinoff of the series, Court has taken his family on trips through Samoa to revisit former filming locations, like the campsite and those poles that the contestants cling to in those challenges sometimes (which you'd remember if you were a true super fan). And even though he's absolutely fizzing about the show, he doesn't reckon he has what it takes to win Survivor – 'I'll go to the gym for half an hour and that's enough'.
'Maybe I should start with Celebrity Treasure Island,' Court reckons.
THE SPINOFF PUB Q+A
How much should a pint cost?
Whatever the market dictates.
Do you have a karaoke go-to?
The last time I was doing karaoke it was 'Bad Romance' by Lady Gaga … But if I'm at home singing in front of the TV with my boys, it'd be Faith No More's 'Easy'.
Favourite place to get a drink in Aotearoa?
Probably Dr Rudi's, down at the viaduct in Auckland.
Which three MPs would be on your pub quiz team?
[Act's] David Seymour, because he's exceptionally smart. [National's] Chris Bishop, because he's my mate now and he knows everything about New Zealand music and sport, and [Labour's] Dr Deborah Russell, because she keeps telling me she has three degrees, and I reckon she'd be really helpful in a pub quiz.
Which MP from across the aisle would you most like to share a drink with?
[Greens'] Steve Abel — I've heard he really likes craft beer, and I'd like to ask him how he kept his beers cold for the 240 days he spent in a tree in Avondale holding up a housing development.
What's a policy area we've been nursing without finishing the glass?
Well, I did read about a Vic Uni student's proposal to farm weka. I was thinking that maybe if we really wanted to think about our indigenous biodiversity from a market point of view, maybe we should think about farming some of our threatened species, because there's nothing that's farmed [currently] that's threatened. Cows aren't at risk of going extinct, so maybe if we farmed weka… of course, we could eat some of them, there'd be lots.
What qualities make a good drinking partner?
Somebody who's prepared to push the boundaries of a story one step further than reality. Somebody who's got this quality of embellishment, and they'll take you with them past [the point] where it's believable. You're along for the ride, you're second guessing, but you want to believe.
Have you ever had a Schnapp's election moment where you regretted your political instinct?
Well, quite a few – coming into politics after being in civil engineering and having to play it straight for 25 years, you always get the sense that, well, I could open my mouth and say something that could end my political career. But that didn't stop me.
Maybe providing suggestions for women's health and the use of appropriate, cost-effective period products. As my partner pointed out to me, most women would love to know that a man cared about their needs – [but] that's not what they were saying in the emails.
