Last month, on the first day of Parliament, new PM Chris Hipkins spent 20 minutes outlining his programme for the year, a speech which was keenly watched as it was his House debut in his new job.
The following 13 hours of speeches, you will be stunned to hear, do not muster quite the same level of enthusiasm or interest, which is a shame, because among the partisan blustering some MPs actually manage to make constructive and interesting contributions.
Dunedin National list MP Michael Woodhouse was the first southerner out of the blocks on Wednesday and his speech, while entertaining knockabout stuff, was definitely of the former variety.
Having given Labour a kicking on everything from the Census to consultants, Mr Woodhouse ceded his second five minutes to his Invercargill colleague Penny Simmonds who, to the surprise of absolutely no-one, wanted to talk about the polytechnic and industry training sector.
"I use this opportunity to voice my concerns about the credibility of the new Prime Minister, having watched his inept performance as the Minister of Education over the past five years," Ms Simmonds boomed, getting a predictably loud reaction from the other side of the chamber.
After going on to claim hundreds of millions of dollars were being wasted and that the whole merger plan had been "an unmitigated disaster", Ms Simmonds settled down and made a couple of cogent points: that another 487 staff looked likely to lose their jobs by the end of 2026, 104 of them by the end of this year, and that the merger of the previously independent institutions into Te Pukenga had stifled innovation in the sector.
"The head office has decided that the same fees should be charged by everyone all across the country," she said.
"Do they not know when we are out in the world marketing for international students, we’re competing against Australia and Canada and the US and the UK, not each other? We don’t have to have the same fees.
"If we can do something innovative in our own communities, that should be encouraged, not stamped on."
Half an hour later, Taieri Labour MP Ingrid Leary was up and, unsurprisingly, she was much more rosy in her assessment of the infancy of Mr Hipkins’ Prime Ministership.
It being International Women’s Day Ms Leary — not for the first time — extolled how Labour was putting women first and foremost in its economic thinking.
"There’s a whole context around which these changes are coming, and there are many things that our government has done to specifically increase support for women," she said.
"We’ve introduced the Families Package, we’ve recorded the lowest gender pay gap in recent history, we’ve got the highest number of women in Cabinet, we have the highest number of women in our Parliament—many thanks to the Labour Party.
"So the Prime Minister’s statement definitely looked at the impact on women, and for that reason I’m very proud to support it."
Winding up for the South was Southland National MP Joseph Mooney, with a focused local contribution, much of which reflected recent Otago Daily Times front pages.
"For the last 10 to 15 years, Gore Health’s been forced to take 5% funding cuts, restructure staff on three occasions, and reconfigure their clinical workforce, given the lack of funding, which has made employing rural hospital specialists unfeasible," Mr Mooney said.
"They’re running at deficits of roughly half a million dollars per year, solely due to significant under-funding. I would suggest that issue needs to be addressed urgently."
He was far from finished on health care, a particularly important issue for the many Southlanders who live far from a main hospital.
"Patients in Te Ānau have to pay for their own blood tests and X-rays or travel four and a-half hours return to Invercargill or Queenstown to get to the nearest hospital service where those services are free.
"I have asked repeatedly for this to be addressed, as have the health care providers in that region who have been asking for about a decade for that issue to be addressed; it has still not been addressed."
Given the parlous state of statistics management at Te Whatu Ora — as revealed on Thursday when even its own medical director had to concede some were clearly not accurate — those southern concerns may be some way from resolution.
But at least Parliament has now been appraised of them.
More local issues
Wednesday was a big day of local politics for Mr Mooney, who presented the petition of Andrew Wilson, which calls for the rules governing eligibility for the accommodation supplement to be amended.
As the law stands eligibility for the allowance, often vital for families to get by, is determined by Statistics NZ’s 2017 information. That was drafted using land use boundaries which date back to 1992, and anyone who was in Queenstown in 1992 would barely recognise the place now.
"I hope the government will start taking this issue seriously as the cost of living and accommodation crises affects families across our district," Mr Mooney said.
The road not travelled
Ms Leary is currently promoting the annual Dame Dorothy Fraser lecture, being held in Dunedin for the 11th time later this month.
Louisa Wall is the guest of honour but, as Ms Leary said in the House on Wednesday, that was not the original plan ... Georgina Beyer, the world’s first openly trans MP and mayor, had originally been approached to speak but given her ill-health and now her sad death last week, that was not to be.
