The media could scarcely ignore the startling story of a Minister of Justice under arrest, but the circumstances of that and her sudden resignation raised many other issues. The media seized on one in particular - the possible impact on an election that's still almost three months away.
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"It's all quiet on this front at the moment, but this is going to be a crazy week in politics. It's an extraordinary development," RNZ's political reporter Anneke Smith outside Parliament told Morning Report last Monday.
She wasn't wrong - and the frenzy was already under way in the media.
In a breakdown of how things unfolded that night, the capital's daily The Post said that word of Kiri Allan's crash and arrest spread after it happened at 9pm on Sunday.
The Post said reporters "flocked to an otherwise quiet Wellington central police station" and saw someone who looked like Allan arrive about 10.45pm.
"It was difficult, however, to 100 percent confirm that was the minister in the back of the police car," said The Post (leaving open the possibility that confirmation might not require certainty).
Probably that was just the result of reporting in haste - and the lack of response from the prime minister's office would have been frustrating.
The Post said it contacted the PM's office soon after the reports of the crash and asked for comment about 11pm. But it was not until shortly before 7am on Monday that RNZ's Morning Report told listeners the justice minister was taken into police custody.
After 7am, a statement from the PM's office was rushed to air on TVNZ's Breakfast by a reporter reading it directly from her phone - and on Newstalk ZB, Mike Hosking broke the news to his listeners as "news from our 'who would want to be Chris Hipkins' file".
He said the prime minister's office repeatedly refused to answer questions "and this does raise the question as to whether Allan should ever have been back at the office last week".
That was a question raised by many in the media later on - though not in the same breath as actually breaking the news, as Mike Hosking did.
Confirmation of her resignation as a minister in statements from the PM and Allan herself followed soon after - as well as some condemnation.
"This just set a new low in terms of bad behaviour from a Cabinet minister. As far as we can tell, there has never been a Cabinet minister arrested by police before,” Heather du Plessis-Allan told Newstalk ZB listeners later that day.
But it still was not entirely clear what had happened on Wellington's waterfront that night.
The full story?
Initially, there was confusion about who might have been in the car, and the eventual charges for careless driving and refusing to accompany officers at the scene were less grave than the 'dangerous driving' and 'resisting arrest' mentioned in the earliest statements.
After the prime minister's media conference on Monday, Newstalk ZB's veteran political correspondent Barry Soper was not sure that he was getting the truth.
"Kiri Allan is a lawyer. She must have been told that's what she's being charged with. Well, it's been downgraded. Hipkins was quite cagey. I think he's probably got the information that she wants to impart to him," he said on air.
Soper and Hosking on Newstalk ZB also blamed Hipkins for allowing Allan back to work after a break to address personal issues - and also Jacinda Ardern for leaving behind 'timebombs' when she quit as PM.
Also weighing in on where the buck should stop was Stuff's new chief political correspondent Tova O'Brien.
"The overwhelming sentiment that I've heard people express about the Prime Minister is actually pity. These are seen as things that are outside of his control ... but he is the one who will be punished and the Labour Party will be punished," she told Stuff’s daily podcast Newsable.
"Pity he doesn't win elections," she wrote for Stuff the same day, claiming the best Hipkins could hope for now is that "pity provides a pathway for him to retain power of the party".
Done and dusted?
The headline on that article was 'The Kiri Allan saga means the result of the election may have been sealed'.
It was one of many opinions rushed out about what all this would mean for the election in October.
'Did Labour just lose the election?' asked TVNZ's Felix Desmarais on 1News.co.nz
“Some might say the wheels are falling off, but perhaps it's just a popped tyre and a few dents. But, undeniably, nobody's getting far on three wheels,” he said.
(How many wheels would have to fall off to leave three still on?)
"Being charged with criminal offending while the Minister of Justice is not something that will ever be wiped from public memory," said Newsroom's Jo Moir.
"The charges against Allan may be a final nail for the Labour government," her colleague Jonathan Milne said, declaring the election campaign itself "a car crash".
"It will be miraculous if Hipkins can rescue the government from this quagmire. The Allan car crash may prove to be the tipping point for Labour's own electoral crash," wrote the Herald’s Audrey Young.
Words to that effect also made up the headline on the front page of the Otago Daily Times on Tuesday.
But even as the news was breaking, RNZ's Craig McCulloch told Morning Report "it is still early days - and not entirely clear where the story will go".
"But you do not need to be a political analyst to know this isn't good news for Labour," he added.
Soon after Morning Report had political analysts on the line to say so.
"The odds of Labour being re-elected have just plummeted really today. We may look back at this as a turning point where a lot of swing voters who were considering voting Labour or now will think it's a shambles," said Dr Bryce Edwards.
"To have the Justice Minister ... taken into custody resisting arrest is just going to be symbolic I think for median voters," he added.
"A week ago, I was calling it a hung parliament. This week, I don't think so," former MP Tau Henare told Morning Report soon after.
Others had decided the election was already lost.
"Are you more or slightly more reassured by my prediction that this is going to be little short of a landslide come October 14?," Mike Hosking asked his listeners on Newstalk ZB. "It's done and dusted for Labour," ZB's Barry Soper told Heather Du Plessis-Allan on her Drive show that day.
"I think National and Act is going to win this election and it is not going to be close. It's going to be a clear victory for the right," said Du Plessis-Allan in trailers for her Drive show made before news of the car crash.
But on Checkpoint RNZ's Craig McCulloch was not so sure.
"No one can tell you yet whether this might be a turning point. It's not all over for Labour yet. It is rarely all over in an MMP election so nobody should be counting the chickens just yet," he said on Monday, while many political pundits were engaging in a full inventory of the poultry.
As pundits aired suddenly-formed opinions about how millions of citizens will vote three months from now, the Herald's deputy political editor Thomas Coughlan told the Herald's Front Page podcast on Tuesday this may make no difference at all at election time.
"The latest polling doesn't appear to have a direct relationship to (the government) ministerial issues. People are clearly a bit disaffected with the Labour government ... but those voters are not swinging towards National, and that does suggest that there's a certain amount of frustrated forgiveness of the Labour Party among the electorate," Coughlan said.
The following day Morning Report began with another pundit being asked the same question all over again.
"This is being described as a turning point for the election by some people. Is that what you think?" Morning Report asked Massey University’s Grant Duncan.
"I would have to wait and see but you're very likely with the benefit of hindsight late we may very well say that it was," he replied.
It's hard to be wrong with hindsight…
This week, Richard Sutherland came to the end of four years as RNZ's head of news - and more than 25 years in journalism at most of New Zealand's major news broadcasters.
"I think the thing that's changed most over the last sort of 20 to 30 years is the amount of commentary, opinion and analysis that gets thrown at any story these days. Back in the 1990s, it would have been a straight news story and there might be a sternly-worded editorial - and that would be it," he told Mediawatch.
"But these days, there seems to be a lot more appetite for the the commentary and the opinion piece and the analysis piece. There are a lot more content providers too - and a lot more people pumping out a lot more stuff," he said.
The PM was also asked by Newshub Nation this weekend if Allan's chaotic departure meant their election campaign was doomed.
"No, that's premature. The campaign hasn't started yet," he replied.
But it is already well under way as far as the media are concerned, especially those convinced they know how people will vote three months from now.
