At the end of the year, commentators across the spectrum have crowned Chris Bishop as 2025’s “Politician of the Year”. It’s an almost unprecedented honour for someone who isn’t even a party leader, but he spent the year at the centre of most big political stories. He was, as The Post put it today, “the main character of New Zealand politics”, often making more headlines than the Prime Minister and driving the Government’s most ambitious reforms.
“Minister of Everything”: A Huge workload and big reforms
Holding multiple heavyweight portfolios (Transport, Housing, RMA Reform and more), Bishop became a one-man policy engine. Herald political editor Thomas Coughlan describes him today as “the Government’s busiest reformer”, with each of those portfolios enough to burden an ordinary minister.
In two years of the National-led government, Bishop led or co-led a suite of big changes. He is pushing through a once-in-a-generation Resource Management Act overhaul, replacing that cumbersome law with two new acts to streamline development. He championed housing densification, forcing councils to zone for decades of growth and flooding the market with opportunities to build in hopes of taming sky-high property prices.
On infrastructure, Bishop rolled out plans for new highways, transit lines and tunnels with fervour. The Listener’s Danyl McLauchlan even joked that he’d earned an “Ozymandias Prize” for mega-project announcements destined to be renamed or delayed by future governments. In short, Bishop made himself indispensable to National’s policy agenda.
Bishop also spearheaded a controversial new fast-track consenting law to accelerate construction of housing and infrastructure. Frustrated with slow planning approvals, he designed a regime letting ministers bulldoze through red tape for priority projects. If these gambits pay off, they could leave a lasting legacy of more homes and roads.
Stuff’s Tova O’Brien lauded Bishop for putting his head down and delivering “several meaningful changes which could in the longer term make a difference to voters and their back pocket”, even as the Government has struggled to get on top of a cost-of-living crisis this year. In many ways, Bishop’s hyperactive reformism filled a void – he was doing everything, everywhere, all at once.
Both Coughlan and The Post have also identified Bishop having the same electoral-housing strategy in their columns today: Bishop is trying to create “a voting bloc of young propertied Kiwis” who might not normally support National. Coughlan credits him with zoning for massive growth and aiming to cool house prices. It’s a bold play, potentially alienating National’s traditional homeowner base, but Coughlan sees it as far-sighted politics in a housing-crisis world.
Potentially damaging, though less discussed in the year-end columns, was Bishop’s handling of emergency housing. Coughlan was direct: “Points must also be deducted for crises in the emergency housing portfolio (partly under the control of Tama Potaka). Emergency housing, a costly disaster under Labour, is a social disaster under National.”
The Backlash: Overreach, ambition and controversy
Being Politician of the Year is a double-edged sword. Bishop’s frenetic drive also invited backlash. His top-down, executive-heavy style of ramming through policies with minimal consultation has led to murmurs of overreach. Richard Harman observed last week: “His preference for executive action, such as in his single-minded campaign to get more houses built, has begun to ruffle feathers… His preference to run everything by dictate from the Beehive goes further”.
Now, Harman reports, “Bishop is proposing to reserve a wide range of planning decisions for the Minister with his Resource Management Act reforms”. The concerns, he notes, “largely have their base in what might be called ‘old National’; the liberal, tolerant party of farmers and urban professionals who shunned ideology in favour of pragmatic commonsense.”
The clearest example was his fast-track law, which passed Parliament despite the Clerk of the House warning that parts created procedural and constitutional risks, relating to the potential to benefit private entities. After a select committee raised conflict-of-interest concerns, Bishop watered down safeguards and re-empowered ministers. As columnist Danyl McLauchlan noted with scathing irony: “Bishop has decided there’s no conflict of interest regarding political donations and fast-track approvals – so you can make a payment to a political party then ask it to change the law for you”. In the rush to “build, baby, build,” he seemed willing to ride roughshod over traditional checks and balances.
Bishop’s swashbuckling approach also caused turmoil within his own ranks. His zeal for housing densification, for example, alarmed some National colleagues worried about a suburban voter backlash. (Harman reports that at least one senior National minister privately echoes Act Party concerns about Bishop’s intensification plan.)
More explosively, Bishop flirted with a leadership coup against Prime Minister Christopher Luxon towards the end of the year. The putsch fizzled for lack of caucus support, but tellingly Luxon did not fire the would-be usurper. Bishop was simply too central to the Government’s agenda to scapegoat. By year’s end, The Post concluded he had become “the main threat to Luxon’s leadership” – so powerful that sacking him would be impossible.
Bishop’s ubiquity in 2025 made him a lightning rod for controversy beyond policy as well. A spat at a music awards show (earning him a public “shut up” from a Kiwi music legend) only cemented his status as an outsized presence. From economic woes to cultural skirmishes, Bishop had a knack for being in the thick of it and the face of both the government’s bold action and its rough edges.
That Aotearoa Music Awards incident, although minor, gave a glimpse into Bishop’s character. On the humorous side, it led to some banter in the end-of-year awards: Bevan Rapson of the Listener awarded Bishop “The Compulsory Counselling Certificate and Testosterone Top-Up for Aggressive Mouthiness by Stale, Pale Males.”
But it has meant that others have started to label Bishop a “larrikin”. For instance, in Newsroom’s end-of-year discussion, co-editor Tim Murphy acknowledged Bishop’s workload but questioned whether he’s the future for the National Party: “I don’t see a political larrikin like Chris Bishop being the answer.”
Power, ambition and integrity
Phil Smith of RNZ, crunching the Hansard numbers of activity in Parliament’s debating chamber this year, found Bishop gave 208 speeches and 86,000 words in the House this year – “the most loquacious of the government ministers.”
That’s perhaps the central tension. Bishop is undoubtedly effective by conventional measures. He gets things done. He dominates the agenda. He shapes the government’s reform programme more than anyone else, including the Prime Minister.
But effectiveness at what cost? The concentration of ministerial power, the dismissal of conflict of interest concerns, the Muldoonist overtones in his approach to executive authority – these aren’t minor quibbles. They go to the heart of how we govern ourselves.
So, in crowning Bishop as their politician of the year, commentators are right that he has been the most consequential figure in 2025. Whether that’s something to celebrate or something to worry about depends on whether you think democratic accountability should be a constraint on ministerial ambition or just an obstacle to getting things done.
What does Bishop’s banner year tell us about political power and process in New Zealand? It’s a case study in how sheer ambition and hustle can bend a government’s direction. Bishop identified the big bottlenecks (housing, infrastructure, planning) and barreled through them, achieving in months what previous governments only talked about for years.
His “minister of everything” act shows the impact one determined politician can have. That kind of power can be productive, even visionary. But it comes with risks. Bishop’s story also highlights the danger when ambition outstrips accountability. By concentrating so much initiative in one man’s hands, the Government arguably sidestepped some democratic safeguards. Bishop’s impatience with procedural niceties and even his own Prime Minister’s preferences exposed a strain of governance-by-force that doesn’t sit easily in a consensual democracy.
In the end, the plaudits for Bishop are both an accolade and a warning. They acknowledge his effectiveness at shaking up the status quo and sound an alarm about the costs of concentrated power. New Zealand’s democracy has long prized collegial, consensus-driven politics.
In 2025, Chris Bishop tested those values – sometimes for the better (when boldly tackling long-term problems), sometimes for the worse (when stretching the limits of executive power). As an election year dawns, Bishop’s “main character” energy remains a defining force. Whether it turns out to be a story of bold leadership or a cautionary tale of overreach will depend on how well ambition is kept in check by accountability.
Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of the Democracy Project
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