Senior Labour MP Damien O’Connor told a reporter to “f*** off” today as tensions ran high in the capital after the party’s crushing loss in Saturday’s election.
The outburst, aimed at a Newshub political editor Jenna Lynch, came in a corridor outside the meeting where Labour leader Chris Hipkins was talking with his caucus about the party’s future.
“F*** off. I am just going to the toilet,” he said, waving his hands, when Lynch asked if Hipkins was still the leader.
When O’Connor returned, Lynch queried if the former minister of agriculture wanted to reconsider his answer.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped.
When Hipkins was asked about the incident after the meeting, he said: “Look, I think emotions have been running a little high today.
“It’s been a difficult day.”
When the Herald approached O’Connor’s office for comment, a spokesman for the MP said O’Connor had since been in contact with Lynch and apologised.
The Labour Party was founded on the West Coast and the seat has always been considered a Labour fortress.
Since the current electorate was founded in 1996, O’Connor, who was responsible for the ministerial portfolios of agriculture, biosecurity, land information, trade and export growth, and transportation, has virtually always retained the seat. He has only lost it once, in 2008.
Prior to resigning in 2013 and running as National’s candidate for the West Coast-Tasman constituency in the 2014 general election, Pugh was the first woman elected to office as mayor on the West Coast. She held the position for nine years.
Pugh, who has famously survived three lightning strikes, made headlines in February this year after she said she was “waiting on the evidence” on the extent to which climate change was influenced by human actions.
She quickly redacted the comments and accepted the scientific consensus that human-induced climate change was real and that it was a factor in extreme weather such as Cyclone Gabrielle.
Pugh was once described as “f****** useless” by former National leader Simon Bridges in a leaked recording of a private conversation.
