The HAPPY HUNTER

Sometimes people, mostly those people she calls “lefties”, come up to Nicole McKee, the hunting and shooting newbie Act MP, and say, “Oh, you’re the gun lady.” This, as with her use of “lefties”, is not a compliment.

I looked up gun ladies on the internet. There is a trend on Instagram, dubbed “Hunstagram”, which is all glammed-up babes, mostly sporting perfect make-up, sometimes wearing pristine camo gear, killing animals and posing with them. It’s a thing. Hunting is now, apparently, sexy and glamorous. Is it? I ask. “No!” she says.

She isn’t wearing any make-up. She hates make-up and wears it only when she absolutely has to. After she made it into Parliament as number three on Act’s list, she had to take make-up lessons. She also had to buy an entirely new wardrobe. Her old wardrobe consisted of polo shirts, old hoodies and jeans.

But she doesn’t wear camo gear. She doesn’t have a Hunstagram page. She doesn’t have a single photograph of herself posing with a dead animal. She doesn’t have the heads of dead animals on her walls at home. We are at a Wellington restaurant for lunch. She has the fish. All this is a bit disappointing.

I had asked if she could take me hunting, but she said she hadn’t been hunting for ages because she no longer has the time. That was not at all disappointing. I