New Zealand election: Who is Toni? Chris Hipkins thanks new partner in concession speech after Christopher Luxon win

In former PM Christopher Hipkins’ concession speech he thanked his children and then thanked his new partner Toni, whose existence had been kept quiet during the campaign.

During Covid, Hipkins’ relationship with his wife of 15 years broke down, not long after they got married in 2020.

Since then, NZ thought their PM was single. However, that quick thank you had Kiwis racing to Google.

The search term Toni skyrocketed on Saturday night with hundreds of people trying to find out exactly who Toni is.

The search for Tony also went through the roof, with Kiwis apparently wondering if their PM had found love with a man.

Kiwis then took to Reddit to share their confusion.

“(New prime minister) Luxon better address this in his first speech, it’s a national issue now,” one concerned citizen joked.

“I was wondering that as well! We were wondering if it was Tony or Toni (doesn’t matter, purely curious),” a second wrote.

“Bi Chippy was the funniest thing to come out of this whole election. Almost making up for the loss with the sheer mayhem. Damn the media for confirming it was Toni,” a third added.

This article originally appeared on PerthNow and has been reproduced here with permission