Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson hits back at National's claims she's spending more time on social media than doing her job

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson has hit back at National's Chris Bishop after he accused her of spending too much time on social media, rather than doing her job. 

Newshub revealed on Wednesday Davidson had issued just eight press releases and introduced no new laws since becoming the Associate Minister for Housing in 2020. 

The National Party used these findings to accuse her of spending more time on social media than doing her job.

"I would call her a zero-time homelessness minister. She seems to spend very little time doing any work," Bishop said. 

Davidson told AM Early on Thursday the allegations are hypocritical. 

"It's funny because I know Mr Bishop actually loves social media also, so it's quite interesting that he wants to have a go," she told AM Early host Bernadine Oliver Kerby.

"Firstly, social media, whether we like it or not as politicians, is where many of our people are, our communities and people who want to engage with us, that's where we do a lot of it. We all do that, including National, including Mr Bishop. It's a valid place for being able to be accessible as politicians."

Davidson said the work she's doing could be equivalent to 100 press releases. 

"I just want to be clear though, that it's interesting that there was absolutely no mention whatsoever of the historic work that I've been doing and my prevention violence strategy, which has included pulling together for the first time ever, a 25-year generational prevention violence strategy," she told AM Early. 

"That has had to pull together about ten of our public agencies, our Ministers, our leaders of those agencies to actually even get them on the page in the first place and agree and commit to eliminating violence. If you want to measure things by press releases, that could be 100 press releases. So those are not good measures."

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said the allegations are hypocritical.
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said the allegations are hypocritical. Photo credit: AM

Davidson also used her time on AM Early to hit out at National leader Christopher Luxon over his party's past handling of KiwiSaver. 

The Government made a major U-turn in less than 24 hours on a tax that would make Kiwi investors $103 billion poorer by 2070.

The plan to subject all KiwiSaver providers' fees to a 15 percent GST rate was met with an instant backlash from savers and fund providers while the Opposition slammed it as a retirement tax.

After public outrage, Revenue Minister David Parker announced the tax would not be going ahead. 

Davidson said National should be careful with gloating, considering its track record with KiwiSaver. 

"I just want to mention that while Luxon was gloating quite a bit about that change and backtrack, yes, it was an absolute backtrack yesterday, it would do him well to remember that it was actually National who cut back and made it harder for people to save," Davidson said.

"It was National who introduced a new tax on employer contributions to KiwiSaver in 2011. They halved the maximum Government contribution from $1000 to just over $500, and they took away the thousand-dollar kickstart that people were provided for when they opened a KiwiSaver account."