It was a good week for fans of the 1pm briefing

The Spinoff’s winners and losers of the week.

• It was a good week for fans of the 1pm briefing. Never one to waste a good crisis, Nicola Willis has brought back the Covid-era announcements for the petrol supply crunch. Now the government just needs to bring back car-free days so we can all stay at home and watch the briefings together, just like old times. 
• It was a bad week for Chris Hipkins, who was caught in a messy storm of allegations from his ex-wife and a swirling social media rumour mill. At points, it wasn’t clear if either major party would have a Chris as leader on election day. 
• It was a bad week for fans of a four-year election term. The government confirmed it was scrapping plans for a referendum. But it was great news for unemployed political consultants and social media sickos who get shaky when they haven’t voted in a while.
• It was a bad week for happiness. New Zealand ranked outside the top 10 on the annual World Happiness Report. As usual, it’s the young peoples’ fault. There has been a major decline in life satisfaction among 15-24 year olds. Sure, the world is at war, the planet is burning, the job market is in the shitter, but they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and buy a house 30 years ago. 
• It was a good week for Rod Drury, who won New Zealander of the Year. The founder of accounting software company Xero has spent the past few years focused on the renewable energy transition, a natural progression from extracting fees from invoices to extracting energy from the sun.

• It was a bad week for former Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast, who had her license suspended after repeated speeding offences. She previously had trouble parking, launching an extended legal battle in 2024 to challenge a $40 parking ticket because she parked on a footpath but claimed it didn’t have any signs saying parking wasn’t allowed. For the same reason, we assume it’s free to park here: 

• It was a good week for Western Brown Kiwi, some of which were released back into the wild near Ruapehu. And if the mountains keep having such bad snow seasons, there’ll be a lot fewer people around to disturb them. 
• It was a good week for fans of cheeky chappies: Robbie Williams announced he will play Auckland and Christchurch in November, supported by the government’s $70 million major events and tourism fund. But let’s be real: he totally would have come anyway, right? 
• It was a bad week to be an undersized fish. Fisheries minister Shane Jones wants to scrap minimum size limits for commercial fishers via the Fisheries Amendment Bill, which applies to pretty much all major species except the slow-growing red moki. The government hopes this will encourage small fish to get off their backside and start contributing to the economy.