Chris Bishop Doesn’t Need Premiership
April 23, 2026
By NZB3
My Anarchy-bent mind reads these news headlines a bit differently to how a Statist would. An example from breaking news:
“Infrastructure Commission to take over monitoring multibillion-dollar projects from Treasury” – [Dominion] Post
“The government has thrown Treasury under the bus by taking infrastructure away from it. Instead, the Infrastructure Commission will now oversee all infrastructure in this country.” – Heather’s Drive Show, Newstalk Zb [22/4/26]
What a power grab for Chris Bishop away from Treasury which is supposedly an independent, clinical, oversight of government projects. They are supposed to be the ones providing unbiased information which would prevent a Minister from creating and judging their own gold-plated palace projects. And….here we are last night with Bishop doing a 180 degree re-arrangement because it turns out, he tells us, that the opposite course is what will “..stop the government from wasting money on gold-plated palace projects.” That’s Bishop’s line from the newspaper. Ref. Post (22/4/2026)
Silly us, right? We had it backward. The best oversight not to have oversight!
Treasury, not being political, is unlikely to complain about being stripped like this. Nor, I suppose, will anyone else complain about the power grab here that will allow Bishop to mark his own homework.
The only ones who could and should complain about a side being torn off Treasury would be Treasurer (aka Finance Minister) Nicola Willis. She, along with Prime Minister Chris Luxon will not say a word about it though because of what also happened yesterday.
Luxon’s leadership has been under attack this week after yet another poor polling result. In an unusual move he called a caucus confidence vote and emerged with what he stated to the House as “unanimous” support. Under the cover of this situation Bishop made his own announcement about his new powers. You know, the ones transferred from Luxon-Willis into his own pocket.
Now you might say that this was a deal these power players made by consent. The price of Chris B supporting Chris L. Perhaps.
But I think Bishop simply recognised an opportunity that he could make the change and nobody could stop him. The only way to stop him would be to damage the life-ring of “unanimous support” that Luxon has fitted himself with. If Luxon/Willis picked up a mic and announced that Bishop was rogue and making things up, taking badges of office from their chests and pinning them upon himself, well that would blow up in their faces. Dissent in the ranks? But you just said everyone supported you, Prime Minister! Bishop is that much out of control…on your watch…after what you just said…what a lame duck you are, sir! What kind of political party do we have here? What kind of government!?
“You can’t touch this,” quoth M.C. Hammer.
Bishop, last night, knew he had a Free Move card to play and played it. To stop him would, frankly, bring down the government. I wonder if any of the other Ministers tried to pull this sort of thing too and if not why not? I’ve seen it before with Simeon Brown and perhaps Nichola Willis. All Luxon tends to do is an indirect attack. Last time I remember Bishop making such a power move Luxon came out and expressed support for his MP in the wake of a scandal we wouldn’t have otherwise known about. By praising Bishop with faint support Luxon actually broke a story about the marginal holder of the Hutt South seat (Bishop) for reallocating housing money to a cycle bridge in his own electorate. More recently, Bishop was re-shuffled out of being the election campaign chair and Leader of the House.
Chris Bishop doesn’t really need to roll Luxon does he? Provided he keeps his seat there are plenty of schemes and scams he can get up to with the powers he does have. Now, especially, he can push and pull those levers with impunity because the pretense of unity must be kept up. Luxon and Willis might love to get rid of this shark in their pool but can only smile to the cameras. Luxon being Luxon he will probably throw a couple of stones at the shark in that passive aggressive way if, indeed, he has any left to throw. I’m sure he has a bounty out for parliamentary researchers looking for a stone that Prime Minister Golliath can throw at Minister ‘David’.
But, no. Until the election Luxon is Bishop’s meat shield. Being Prime Minister means Luxon has to keep busy at point and take the hits while Bishop can get on with dirty jobs and campaigning for himself. Who the hell would fight to become Leader of the party at a time like this? After the election is the time for rolling. Chris Bishop doesn’t need the Premiership because he is right where he wants to be in the slipstream of Luxon’s racecar until the time is right. He is the one in power this week more so than Luxon who is on the back foot and yet to take any initiatives the way Bishop just has.
Stand by to see how Luxon contrives to take initiative on something to signal he’s a boss. And, stand by for some frail attempt at a passive aggressive bitch slap directed toward Bishop. But, oh-oh, it’s already Thursday leading into a long weekend so the curtain on this news cycle is about to expire. Better hurry up Luxon. It’s raining on the fireworks.
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