Lionisation of Chris Bishop’s Political Career

After Chris Bishop lost his Hutt South seat in the latest election, I was surprised to hear that many journalists in New Zealand were lionizing his record, calling him one of the most relatable and “moderate” National MPs.

I’ve written about Bishop for years, and have followed his record and policies closely -from designing the anti-democractic, corruption laded Fast Track Law (which took Labour’s RMA but modified it to make it less democratic and more open to lobbyists) to persistently hiding information from the public, and being reprimanded by the Ombudsman for illegal behaviour on a number of occasions.

In any case, here is a very small sample of what I saw Chris Bishop did in his time as a NZ Government Minister. Links are to media or videos of Bishop on the record:

• Championed fast-track housing on flood plains by National Party’s mega donor Chris Meechan (Winton was rejected for years by all other authoritiesh. Auckland Council is now having to sue the govt to try to stop the approved project)
• Cancelled at least 3500 builds and sold 1000 after aspiring to cancel 10,000 state homes to mostly developer donors in what was labelled a “lolly scramble”. Also effectively froze state houses – cancelling thousands of builds and using Labour’s left over money to build a few hundred annually until 2026, while seeing homelessness double and triple
• Gave $500,000 to Bill English from emergency housing money, for a Kainga Ora report that locked out KO’s then Board and management from its review (the review ended up echoing Bishop’s public views). Agreed with English via SMS
• Blocked Councils from regulating forestry slash that killed children and demolished local infrastructure
• Architected Fast-Track law that locks out community, Councils, environmental groups and neighbours while centralising power in the hands of hand picked “experts” and Ministers. Said “we make no apologies” for it
• Boasted donors want to “use the law” to get things done, and said that lobbying is good, while admitting “I am getting loobied hard” by donors
• Heckled “what a load of crap” and “what a load of bullshit” during a music performance where Māori symbols and unity was featured
• Sowed culture wars, denigrating the left as “woke” and lied regularly and often
• Said Nicola Willis would rather listen to “penguins” than 15 credentialed economists who warned that National’s economic plans would hurt the economy and lead to significant job losses (NZ subsequently broke 10 year unemployment and business failure records, and the economy tanked – all before the Iran war)
• Promised 10,000 EV chargers and when National was revealed to not even try, said promise was only ever “aspirational”
• Lied about speed limit changes around schools that schools said put kids at risk and death
• Changed laws to allow increased pollution of waterways and snuck inchanges after telling submitters it wasn’t in scope (denying the chance to comment for feedback via select committee process)
• Identified by environmental groups as key part of the government’s disastrous “war on nature” and climate
• Called Atlas Network a “conspiracy” and attacked Mihi Forbes the day after David Seymour was caught lying about his connections to the fossil fuel/tobacco group. Taxpayers Union & NZ Initiative are proud partners of Atlas, which has now come out in force to claim Atlas is a legitimate organisation, after Seymour/Bishop’s attempts to paint Atlas Network as “Pizzagate” failed (A later MATA documentary spoke of Seymour’s genocide conspiracy & Atlas Network connections
• Designed a transport plan and planned tens of billions of roading projects with no business case
• Lied about Tory Whanau and refused to remove the lie
• Cancelled Clean Car Standards. to allow more pollution and high emission vehicles in NZ
• Repeated a tobacco industry lie that caffeine and nicotine are both just as harmful as part of National’s repeal of the Smoke Free Generation law (which was later adopted by the UK)
• Took $27 million from Kainga Ora infrastructure money to build a bridge in his electorate
• Canceled the ferry tugboats to help international airlines save money, at the risk of being unable to rescue the ferries if anything goes wrong, and at a point in time where a ferry seemed to be breaking down almost every couple of months
• Admitted National’s voter disenfranchisement law, that the AG said breached NZ’s bill of rights, would help the right bloc win 2 extra seats in an eleection

Bishop, a former tobacco lobbyist who hinted at suing New Zealand if we went ahead with regulating tobacco products, speaks from two sides of his mouth from what I have seen.

The son of Taxpayers Union co-founder, an Israel Institute of NZ fellow, and a close friend of David Seymour, Bishop has been called “moderate” but is this the right word for him?

It’ll be interesting to evaluate it for yourself.

PS Some say the government will be more extreme without Bishop, but the fact is Bishop was the architect of much of Luxon’s agenda and plans – if the Coalition is successful in forming a Government, National will be severely diminished and the Mowbrays openly back ACT over National at this point, so any increased extremism won’t be due to Bishop’s absence, but rather due to the current configuration and numbers.