It was a good week for… Mark Mitchell’s love life

The Spinoff’s winners and losers of the week. 

• It was a good week for police and corrections minister Mark Mitchell, who announced he is about to get married for the fourth time. Mitchell has always been a strong supporter of the three strikes law. Now that he’s on wife number four, he’s eligible for a lifetime sentence.
• It was a bad week for Shane Reti, whose political career ended with a whimper. National once took pride that it had recruited Reti to be minister of health; Māori, rural, and a highly regarded GP with decades of hands-on experience. So naturally, the party replaced him with a Pākehā Christian conservative from Auckland who has been in politics since he was 22. 
• It was a good week for the Otago peninsula, which was officially declared possum-free. But with the city promoting itself as a Hollywood filming destination, there will be many more imported pests on the way. 
• It was a bad week for former Labour MP Paul Eagle, who was found to have taken the absolute piss with his spending as Chatham Islands council CEO. In Eagle’s defence, the Chathams are very far away and he may have assumed the auditors wouldn’t bother making the trip.
• It was a bad week for the Dunedin job market. Heinz-Watties confirmed it will close the century-old Gregg’s coffee factory. On the bright side, the North Dunedin air will no longer smell of burnt beans, allowing it to return to its natural odour of stale piss and spilled RTDs. 
• It was a good week for Christopher Luxon, who is still prime minister, still leader of the National Party and is heading off on a lovely wee trip to the Pacific. This seems like the perfect time to sip on a coconut and let his scheming underlings plot while he is away. 

• It was a bad week for Te Pāti Māori, which was ordered by a court to reinstate Mariameno Kapa-Kingi as an MP. That’s sure to bring great energy to the breakroom. 
• It was a good week for Wellington, which is set to open its new central library this weekend. The rebuild has taken significantly longer and added more cost than was necessary because campaigners demanded the council save the 35-year-old heritage building. At least everyone’s happy now, right? Wait, nope, the same campaigners are now mad that the council changed the colour of the pavement. 
• It was a bad week for Green MP Mike Davidson, who was bumped down to an unwinnable spot on the party’s provisional list ahead of the election. He’s only been in parliament for six months, which is about a standard-length career for a Green MP.