by David Farrar

ACT Deputy Leader Brooke van Velden has announced she will retire at the election, after two terms as an MP. She is only 33 years old and many (including me) thought she would succeed David Seymour as ACT leader.

This is a big loss for ACT. I worked with Brooke on the End of Life bill when she was a staffer, and it was clear back then how talented she was. She worked with MPs from Greens, Labour, NZ First etc to get the bill through (as did David Seymour, whose bill it was). Her Holidays Act reform is a masterclass in good policy and politics.

I am sure she will do amazing things in her next career, and it will probably be one that will give her a better work life balance.

ACT hope to still retain Tamaki, but without Brooke standing it will be challenging. National’s Mahesh Muralidhar should go buy a lotto ticket as it is a very lucky week for him!

by Geoffrey Churchman

The announcement was a big surprise for me when the Leftist Legacy Media reported it yesterday (something that clearly delighted them), but on reflection it’s understandable.

Parliament is a brutalising arena and you need to be made of tough material to withstand it, particularly if you’re a minister. The opposition will constantly throw barbs at you and if it’s a Leftist opposition, it’s much worse. Not all Leftists are bad people — I have a small number of them as friends — but plenty of them are horrible, and the way some of them behave just leave you shaking your head, wondering what’s wrong with them.

Last year, Brooke van Velden took the time in Parliament to call out the Stuffer Andrea Vance for her disgusting tirade in the Sunday Times: “I do not agree with the clearly gendered and patronising language that Andrea Vance used to reduce senior cabinet ministers to ‘girlbosses”, ‘hype-squads’, references to ‘girl math’, and ‘cunts’.” Then she turned her fire back to Labour’s Jan Tinetti, criticising the former minister for women for repeating parts of “a clearly misogynistic article” in the house.

When the Treaty Principles Bill episode was concluded last year I said that all of ACT’s MPs deserved a medal for bravery because of the vitriol that had been thrown at them by Iwi radicals and Leftists. Even though the Bill itself was fatally flawed (the Treaty of Waitangi did not mention any principles), it was a good attempt to stimulate discussion about eliminating the Leftist systemic rascism that was massively increased under the Jacinda regime.

At present a Minister in Cabinet gets about $NZ 320K a year, which for a probable 80-100-hour work week isn’t a lot. In Brooke’s case, at her age it no doubt means she misses out on a lot of the social life that her contemporaries enjoy. Although a senior position in a big company in the private sector won’t reduce the work time requirement a lot, it will pay better and take her out of the Leftist Legacy Media spotlight.