Pinning down answers from government ministers during Parliament's Question Time can be hard.

It is even harder when ministers have doppelgängers to deflect blame or shoulder the responsibility.

This week, Winston Peters' defence was a version of "It wasn't me, you'll have to ask the other Winston, but he's not here right now".

The prime minister used a different tactic.

A parliamentary whodunnit and dénouement

Much of the available attention at Parliament this week fell into the gravity well of "racist" comments aimed by Peters at a Green MP. Some of the remaining focus was spent on PM Christopher Luxon, including for his use of an air force six-seater plane to return home, after a National Party fundraising event.

This article is not about the actions - it is about the defences used by Luxon and Peters in Question Time. Both defences were a whodunnit - specifically, which versions of Peters and Luxon were involved.

Parliament has a beautiful library, the ideal setting for the dénouement of a whodunnit, but this one would have a complicated twist, because there were two Winston Peters. How many Christopher Luxons was uncertain.

Another oddity in this case was that the defensive logic employed by each MP contradicted the logic of the other.

Winston Peters: The incident

Winston Peters is both an MP and a government minister. As an MP, he is the leader of New Zealand First and, as a minister, he is the minister of foreign affairs.

In the general debate on 29 July, Peters was delivering a tirade against New Zealand's Covid response, when Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan interjected to ask: "Are you vaccinated?"

Peters did not answer the question, but he did hurl a stream of ethnic invective at Xu-Nan, that Prime Minister Luxon later agreed was "offensive and racist".

The Speaker did not intervene at the time, and Peters has not subsequently been required to withdraw or apologise for his remarks.

The Speaker did broadly address the incident the following day, when he appeared to blame Xu-Nan as much as Peters for the racist attack, calling it a "tit-for-tat".

He veered near to suggesting Xu-Nan asked for it, when he said: "When you get quite a considerable amount of interjection during a member's speech, there will always be a point of biteback."

Peters' doppelgänger dodge

A week later, during Wednesday's Question Time, Xu-Nan asked Peters in various ways about his choice of words, but received little satisfaction.

Crucially, Question Time questions are not asked of the MP themselves - Winston Peters the person - but of the role (Minister of Foreign Affairs). Ministers are responsible to Parliament for their official actions, but MPs are not.

MPs must answer to the Speaker, their party leadership and the voter, but not Parliament, unless they are named or referred to the privileges committee by the Speaker.

The answers given to Xu-Nan were from the Minister of Foreign Affairs, not the leader of New Zealand First.

Winston Peters' repeated defence was that he never said that - it was the other Winston Peters, the MP. Xu-Nan should ask him, but he's not here right now.

The 'Spartacus is that other guy' defence, if you will.

It was within the rules, so long as it was Winston the MP, not Winston the minister who was speaking in the general debate. Given the topic, that seems likely.

Chris Hipkins suggested that, if an MP who is the minister of foreign affairs insults against another country, that surely falls within his portfolio responsibilities. The Speaker did not agree.

Peters did open a hole in his own defence though, when he said: "I stand by all my comments as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. I also stand by my comments as the New Zealand First Party leader."

That's Peters the minister of foreign affairs saying he agrees with the "racist and offensive" things said by Peters the MP. That may become the subject of future questions for Peters the minister.

This may all seem like bizarre equivocation and pedantry, but it reflects the fractured roles and responsibilities MPs can have.

Christopher Luxon: Always Spartacus

The contradictory defence from the prime minister resulted from Luxon flying home from a National Party fundraiser in an air force six-seater.

Opposition leader Chris Hipkins raised this in Question Time. Could Luxon justify the Defence Force subsidising a National Party fundraiser?

Why had Luxon used air force planes more than any other Prime Minister?

Did Luxon "attend the National Party fundraising event as prime minister or as leader of the National Party?"

Luxon said the trip had earlier included prime ministerial aspects and he needed to be back in Auckland earlier the next morning, which he said necessitated the special flight home.

The Speaker provided an escape for Luxon.

"At all times, the prime minister is the prime minister," ruled Gerry Brownlee. "The point is it doesn't matter what the prime minister does, he's always prime minister."

This ruling leant in a contradictory direction to the defence used later by Winston Peters.

Previous prime ministers have used the Winston Peters defence, when useful. Brownlee's ruling would negate that.

Eight years ago, on The House, we wrote about Bill English and John Key using the doppelgänger defence. Key said, during his talks with blogger Cameron Slater, he was wearing the hat of leader of the National Party, not the hat of the prime minister, therefore he wasn't "responsible" to the House for what he said.

He had, he said, many roles other than prime minister - for example, when he put the cat out, he was not prime minister, but husband.

Brownlee's new 'always the prime minister' defence may backfire for Luxon, if he wants to copy John Key's contradictory defence in the future.

The audio version of this story can be heard at the link near the top of this article. The link immediately above is to audio from the Sunday edition of 'The House', which includes two other stories relating to Questions and Answers (or the lack of them), in Parliament.

 

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