By Friday, 19 September 2025, 8:19 Am Opinion: Peter Dunne

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Governments rarely lose office because their policies are
unpopular or not working. Far more often they are defeated
because they have become arrogant and contemptuously
dismissive of those promoting different views to

Usually, this trend becomes pronounced during
a government’s second or third term, but there are already
emerging signs of increasing arrogance and intolerance from
the current government, barely two-thirds into its first
term. This week alone there have been three such displays of
the government’s mounting arrogance and disregard for
contrary views.

First was the Prime Minister’s
refusal to discuss the government’s decision regarding
recognition of a Palestinian state, saying that all would be
revealed when the Foreign Minister addressed the United
Nations General Assembly next week. The New Zealand public
will learn the government’s decision on what is arguably one
of the most sensitive foreign policy issues the country has
faced in recent years at the same time as the rest of the
world. The government seems more interested in pandering to
the Foreign Minister’s vanity of wanting to be on the
world stage than keeping New Zealanders in the loop. And the
Prime Minister seems unbothered by that.

was the Finance Minister’s response to a group of Wellington
clergy who sought a meeting with her over the government’s
approach to the genocide in Gaza. When they chained
themselves together outside her electorate office in
protest, she crudely dismissed them saying that the way to
get a meeting with her was, not to “don an adult nappy and
chain yourself to a door”.

While she was fully within
her rights to refuse their request for a meeting, it was
nonetheless unbecoming of a senior Minister to deride them
the way she did. It smacked of extraordinary arrogance and a
dismissive contempt for which she should

But the government’s arrogance is not just
limited to National Ministers. ACT’s David Seymour, the
Deputy Prime Minister, rejected a call from actress Keisha
Castle-Hughes for Māori to be automatically entitled to New
Zealand citizenship, regardless of whether they were born
here. Seymour correctly pointed out that such a move would
be contrary to the rules currently applying to every other
New Zealander. But then he added the gratuitous and
unnecessary rejoinder that Castle-Hughes “frankly should
stick to whale riding.”

In politics, tone is
critical. Both Willis’s and Seymour’s remarks failed the
tone test, coming across as cheap, nasty and smart aleck.
Each could have made their points in a far more considered
and reasonable, but no less effective, way. What Willis and
Seymour may have considered to be mildly humorous responses
looked instead to be sneering superiority.

comments, and the Prime Minister’s equally tone-deaf
deference to his Foreign Minister’s ego on the Palestine
announcement at the expense of the rest of New Zealand
reflect the type of response more typical of governments
becoming world-weary after a couple of terms in office. But
this government is displaying the same symptoms, not even
two years into its first term.

Voters turn off
governments when they feel they have stopped listening and
instead give off the air that they know best. With the
ongoing cost-of-living crisis still hitting many New Zealand
households hard, and the economy teetering on the brink of
returning to recession, the last thing the government can
afford in the lead-up to the election is for voters to
conclude that it no longer cares what they think. Yet that
is precisely the response the above examples

Times are undoubtedly unchallenging for the
government at present, with significant reform programmes
underway in health, education and the economy. The pressure
is intensifying to produce some positive results before the
election. This is even more reason for it to be showing more
humility and understanding than this week’s incidents

People abandoned the last Labour-led
government when its unctuous be-nice-to-everyone approach in
the absence of policy achievement became overbearing. That
should have been the signal to this government to go about
its business with quiet determination to make a difference,
rather than the strutting swagger it has

The Prime Minister, who presented himself
before the election as the solid, determined leader the
country required, now needs to live up to that. He needs to
re-focus his government, “laser like”, as he used to
say, on addressing the things that matter. Otherwise, his
government will be defined by side-shows like the continuous
pandering to individual Ministerial egos and smart remarks
that we are now seeing.

And if that feeling becomes
entrenched, the government’s days may well be

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