Well, the first 36 hours of viewing the Christopher Luxon selfie were always going to be the best, before the
repetitions set in. We get it, already. He’s an extroverted/big ego/high achieving/God fearing/country music
lovin’/family man who is not at all averse to mansplaining to little ladies like RNZ’s Kathryn Ryan what “technical” words like “productivity” actually mean.
But wait, there’s more. National is back! Mind you, that’s not the Bad National of recent experience, but the Good
National of days gone by. Except not that, either. Not old.Very modern, very forward looking, very inclusive. Pages have
been turned, lines have been drawn. National is the same as always, but has also been ‘reset.” It now has “unity.” The
bitterly divided bunch of um… Early Tuesday morning has now magically become a team.And if a lot of this stuff from
Luxon sounds contradictory, no worries. Paradox is his jam.
One almost felt for Luxon as he did his TED-talk best to make the implausible transformation of the National caucus
sound credible. The caucus gamely did its best to control their excitement. Yet watching the intelligent likes of Chris
Bishop and Nicola Willis getting high on their own supply has been a pretty depressing experience this week. In its hour
of desperation the National Party appears to have turned itself into a political version of the Church of Scientology,
with its new leader all but jumping off the Oprah couch and into the nation’s living rooms.
In reality of course, caucus unity cannot be conjured out of thin air. It is entirely dependent on performance.
(Disunity is merely a by-product of failure.) To National’s great advantage, there is a huge pool of fickle centre-right
voters out there – some 413,000 former National voters – who went to Labour at the last election. A sizable chunk of
them have since drifted over to the ACT Party. The good news for National is that these people seem to be up for grabs.
As the last port of call for these lost and searching souls, the ACT Party stand to be the first loser from Luxon’s
elevation. The five points that Act will almost certainly lose in the next political polls will put National up around
the hallowed 30% level of support.
Until it proves otherwise though, National is still going to be an old restaurant under new management. It can expect an
initial surge (driven partly by nostalgia) but that allegiance is no longer automatic, and it may not be sustained. Old
voting habits have been broken. A few bad reviews, an uninspired policy menu and a few serious gaffes from Luxon and the
customers are likely to be gone again. If so, caucus disunity will come roaring back faster than you can say the words
“Todd Muller.” Back in the day, Chris Bishop and Nicola Willis were pretty excited about him, too.Gaffes we have known
Talking of gaffes… John Key survived his repeated tendency to mis-speak by readily conceding the errors, and quickly
moving on. Nothing to see here. Luxon seems cut from the same cloth. Luxon’s similarities to his mentor extend beyond
the borrowed Key-isms (“What I’d say to you is..”) that pepper his speech patterns. Like Key, Luxon also has a tendency
to land in trouble whenever he strays very far from the pat phrases and the standard message lines. Here are a few
examples:
Example One. This goes back to something I wrote a year ago, after Luxon had gone on RNZ and started making up National’s welfare policy off the top of his head:
After being put under intolerable pressure in an interview with RNZ pomeranian rottweiler Susie Ferguson, Luxon went
beyond the National Party’s routine bashing of beneficiaries (no full immunisation of your kids = no benefit). Lured by
Ferguson into being logically consistent when applying the social contract to the welfare safety net, Luxon eventually
agreed that yes indeedy, National’s draft welfare policy should also set about docking the middle income recipients of
Working For Families if they failed to fully immunise their kids.
That’s not how National operates. He’ll learn. Harassing ordinary beneficiaries for political gain is fine and dandy
because… Either they don’t vote at all, or they have usually voted for Labour or New Zealand First. They’re expendable.
But bashing the middle class? Holy moly, what was Luxon thinking? Alienate the middle class, and voters might start
thinking that National governs only on behalf of the corporate fat cats.
That’s interesting, right ? And not merely because Luxon went off the reservation and attacked the middle class. He was
advocating cutting off benefits and Working for Families support for people that refused to immunise their kids. Yet this guy is now putting himself forward as a man intent on ending the divisions in this country between the
vaccinated and the unvaccinated, and bidding to attract the people tired of having Big Government telling them what to
do. Put it this way: Calling for a crackdown on Working for Families recipients who fail to immunise their children is
not a credible platform from which Luxon can now turn around, and attack the government over its vaccine mandates. It
sounds more like he’s been all for them all along, provided they can be targeted at the people receiving any form of
state assistance. So much for being the healer of what divides us.
Example Two: There’s a thin line between charm and smarm. On Tuesday, Luxon twice made the same misleading comments (at his initial
press conference, and later on TVNZ) about MIQ. Here’s what he told TVNZ’s Seven Sharp, November 30:
“There’s a million New Zealanders that can come home on January 15 but who can’t come home on December 15.” Some of this
stuff, Luxon added, just doesn’t make sense.
Nor do his numbers. Luxon was (mistakenly, deliberately?) conflating the number of Kiwis who live abroad – and as the New York Times said recently, these do indeed amount to about one million people - with the number of Kiwis actively trying to come home, and trying
to get into MIQ. But not every Kiwi expatriate is itching to return to this country. Duh. If National really thinks
there are one million Kiwis trying to get home by December 15 – and who are only being stopped from doing so by the
feckless Ardern government – then maybe he can tell us what National has in the way of housing policy to cope with the
one million Kiwis that would (apparently) be allowed to return overnight, on his watch. In fact, Luxon was vastly
over-egging the current blockages at MIQ. He was also urging risk-taking with MIQ, before the full extent of the threat
posed by the Omicron variant was known. All pose, no responsibility. Who said that being the leader of the Opposition
was the toughest job in politics?
By way of useful contrast… Yes, Australia also has a million expatriates living elsewhere in the world. As this BBC article shows, exactly the same claims of “chaotic” and “ arbitrary” access to quarantine and calls for a purpose-built facility have
been levelled at the centre-right government in Australia as has been levelled at the centre-left government in New
Zealand. In both countries, there has been an imperfect response to an unprecedented challenge. But is there any good
reason to think that a National government would have excelled where the Morrison and Ardern governments have not? No,
there isn’t.
For the record… After the pandemic left Australians stranded offshore the number of Aussies registered for government
action to help get them home was not a million. For almost all of 2021 it sat between 36,000 and 45,000. As for New
Zealand… In late October, “up to 19,000” New Zealanders were reportedly trying to get into the MIQ virtual lobby to book MIQ spots. Not a million. The figure was 19,000 tops. Call me a ruthless smiling assassin, but if the CEO of a major corporation publicly misrepresented a maximum of 19,000 as 1,000,000 on the company balance
sheet, he'd deserve to be fired.
Example Three: During the same Seven Sharp interview, Luxon asked a rhetorical question about why would you restructure the health system in the middle of a
pandemic? Implication: this is an obvious case of wrong priorities by an incompetent government. Well no, it isn’t. This
government at least, has the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. Here’s the reality: New Zealand is a country
of only five million people, yet it has 20 separate DHBs competing for the funds and the facilities necessary to deliver
a range of modern health services.
National championed this insanely fragmented system in the early 1990s and John Key and Bill English systematically ran
down its funding during National’s last term of government. For these and other reasons, New Zealand was left woefully
ill-equipped to cope with the pandemic. The DHB system is no longer fit for purpose either for this pandemic, or for the
ones that are bound to follow in its wake. To use the language that Luxon might be able to comprehend, the new health
reforms are what is called “future proofing”– so that New Zealanders can enjoy a more effective, more affordable, and
less ruinously replicated health system in future.
In particular, the proposed health reforms aim to better serve the needs of Maori and Pasifika communities long
neglected by the current health system – and it will do so by putting more funds and more decision-making powers in
their hands. Amid all his spin and bluster, Luxon has just made it perfectly clear that these sort of forward-looking
improvements to public health delivery would not happen on his watch. National is back alright, and it is still facing
backwards.Freedom To Not Choose
The National caucus did not have a contested vote for the leadership. It has even congratulated itself on this
achievement. Clearly, National’s fragile sense of unity would not have survived this basic exercise in caucus democracy.
On Tuesday afternoon, centre-right political commentator Ben Thomas was even suggesting to RNZ’s Jesse Mulligan that
Judith Collins should perhaps be “excised” from the caucus. In the name of unity, of course. No wonder John Key regards Xi Jinping as a “friend.” Like Xi’s focussed, can-do team in Beijing, National appears to stand for everyone feeling free to
promote the same message.
We’ll never know for sure (unless she tells us) whether Luxon may have Judith Collins to thank for the fact that his
final path to the leadership proved to be so smooth. Clearly, Simon Bridges still felt - on Tuesday morning - that the
numbers were so close that he still had a chance. As RNZ reported on Tuesday:
There was a widespread desire within the party to avoid a contested vote but neither sides were backing down as late as
Tuesday morning, with the party having to book two different press conference locations in Parliament as each contender
wanted a different space.
So, sometime on Tuesday morning, it was made clear to Bridges that he couldn’t (quite) win. As the likely close loser,
he would cop all the blame for dividing the caucus and spoiling the new leader’s attempt to present the public with a
façade of unity. Did Collins and her small but faithful team of MPs make the vital difference between the two aspirants?
If so, what will she receive in return? What will Bridges get as a consolation prize for picking up the revolver left on
his desk, and doing the decent thing?
Taking him on faith
It is an easy peg, but the media has probably put too much emphasis on Luxon’s religious faith. IMO, it seems more
worrisome that his self-chosen favourite song is country singer Tim McGraw’s ode to an early forties identity crisis
called “Live Like You Were Dyin’’ Besides being a dreadful song, McGraw’s message – sky dive, rock climb, ride bulls and
be a nicer person as if you have cancer and there may not be many tomorrows – is a pretty odd one for an alleged
Christian to take so much to heart. I mean, what about the afterlife? It isn’t a song indicative of an other-directed
value system, either. Packing in as many sensory challenges and personal triumphs as you can before your time is up
sounds more (to me) like the gospel of Tom Cruise.
Or more accurately… It sounds as though Luxon’s faith has the same basic contours as the prosperity gospel preached by the US tele-evangelist Joel Osteen. To Osteen, prayer can make you rich. Wealth and power are not the
product of privilege, but are to be taken as a sign of God’s endorsement of your personal brand. Poverty, on the other
hand, is a sign of mediocrity, or of godlessness. Dwelling on past mistakes is only a distraction, and one of the many
lies put in your path by the Enemy. Be deaf to the negative, people. Here for instance, is a randomly chosen Osteen tweet from a week ago:
If you start letting the negative play, you’ll get discouraged, give up on dreams, live below your potential. Don’t fall
into that trap. Start tuning out the lies.
And here from the UK Financial Times, is a pitch perfect echo of Luxon’s can-do attitude to life and to politics. Osteen was asked by the FT whether God
would have hesitated before creating the universe:
“He didn’t check with accounting and say, ‘I am about to create the stars, galaxies and planets,’” says Osteen. He just
went ahead and did it. All that is holding the rest of us back is a lack of self-belief: “God spoke worlds into
creation,” says Osteen. “He didn’t Google it to see if it was possible.” We, too, can achieve anything we set our sights
on.
Amusingly, there is also a sizeable serving of Luxon-speak in a New York Times profile this week of the actor Matthew McConaughey. The similarities are striking. Both McConaughey and Luxon seem
equally at home with a version of masculinity that says “I’m vulnerable, but I also have a big ego.” To the Texan
dreamboat, “ego” and “ service” are not necessarily horses that pull you in opposite directions. He talks a lot about
something called “responsible freedom” that Luxon would endorse:
So when I say responsible freedom — take responsibility today to have more freedom tomorrow. Now, that sounds like
McConaughey’s putting me to work. But I look back and go, because I did choose responsibility, son of a gun if I didn’t
get this reward because I took that risk, because I went to Peru or Mali chasing a wet dream.”
This is exactly the thinking that enables Luxon to rationalise owning seven homes while presenting himself as someone in
tune with the struggles of ordinary New Zealanders. Reader, he earned it. He forced himself to dream, and then took the
actions necessary to make it happen. You can, too. You may not, as Luxon does, have God on your team. But getting onside
with National is the next best thing, right?
Luxon’s worldview has made him at least, a very wealthy man. But it is going to be a difficult message for him to
sustain. It is nearly two years until the next election. How will two years of exposure to Luxon’s Energiser Bunny
quasi-religious spin going to wear on us all, over that time? It feels overbearing already, after only two days. We
shall see. For better or worse, the National caucus has chosen to settle down with Luxon, while still barely on its
first date with him. They have elected to follow someone without having any idea about the policy directions in which he
might lead them. Whatever else that is, it looks like the very definition of desperation.
Footnote One: I mentioned above how Key-isms crop up in Luxon’s speech patterns. Time and again, he sounds remarkably like John Key
risen again from his ermine-lined political crypt. Yet given that in the intervening years, the shine has gone off Key’s
confident method of dissembling, the public may be less susceptible this time around.
Footnote Three: Will the new National be able to offer the electorate anything that goes beyond the usual neo-liberal policies in
gumboots? Impossible to tell. At this stage, Luxon is a blank slate on policy. We don’t yet know what his approach to
tax, to social spending and to debt repayment will look like. His potential coalition partner, Act, has extreme policies
on all such matters. No-one can yet imagine how the twain shall meet. For his part, David Seymour has yet to
meaningfully comment on what Luxon’s promotion may herald for the centre-right.
Already though, Luxon has strongly endorsed Bill English’s so-called “social investment” approach to welfare provision.
This approach envisages a reduction in the state’s responsibility for maintaining the welfare safety net, and it does so
mainly by fostering competitive bidding between private providers for the contracts involved in the delivery of social
services. Apparently, Luxon thinks the way to do “social investment” in welfare is by privatising its delivery. After
all, that approach worked so well for us when we experimented with letting some prisons be privately run, right?
Footnote Three. And finally on a lighter note… When RNZ’s Lisa Owen asked Luxon to name his favourite animal, he surprisingly replied ”guinea pig.” Given all the
wonders of Creation, what can explain the sense of kinship that the new leader of the National Party evidently feels
with the humble guinea pig? Both of them do have rather large heads relative to their body size. For further insight, I
looked up the Anti-Cruelty Society website to learn more about some of the characteristics of this animal:
Guinea pigs are usually very expressive, vocal animals that will whistle or grunt when they see their favourite people
enter the room.
Good to know. And then there’s this cautionary information about how they behave if they get annoyed:
They are generally gentle and not prone to biting, but they will nip at threatening animals or people that are
mishandling them…you should build a rapport slowly, by hand feeding them small treats in the cage.
No doubt, the parliamentary press gallery will keep all of this in mind.Who Are You When He’s Not Looking?
Here’s a song by Blake Shelton for all the country music lovin’ control freaks of the world. Who are you when he’s not
looking? Can women, can voters, can anyone be trusted to keep to the programme if he takes his eyes off them for even one minute?