It’s often strange and instructive to see one’s country as interpreted by or for outsiders. As an Australian, both Crocodile Dundee and The Simpsons’ “Bart vs Australia” are perfect examples. The depictions of Australians in Flight of the Conchords is another.
Just as I report on Australian affairs for Good Oil readers, Oliver Hartwich of the New Zealand Initiative writes on New Zealand affairs for the Australian. So, let’s step into the hall of mirrors and allow me to reflect back his reflections on New Zealand and see what you make of it. The New Zealand Institute is a ‘pro-free-market’ thinktank, so Hartwich is warmly pre-disposed to a C-suite suit like Luxon.
Whether Good Oil readers share his enthusiasm… well, let’s see.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has just issued his government’s plan for the final quarter of 2024. If that sounds more like a corporate earnings call than political leadership, you would not be far off the mark.
Luxon, who has been in office for just under a year, is running New Zealand’s government as if it were listed on the NZX. This is most visible in his penchant for action plans and key performance indicators for his ministers.
Such managerialism might warm the cockles of a fellow C-suite type, but many Kiwis are clearly disturbed by the direction their country has taken under successive governments, from John Key unilaterally signing them up to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), to the turbo-charged Māori separatism under Jacinda Ardern and the political class’s near-universal disdain for freedom during the Covid pandemic.
Luxon’s government is the antithesis of the previous administrations under Jacinda Ardern and her successor, Chris Hipkins. Their tenure was marked by grand ambitions and sweeping rhetoric, but often fell short on delivery and implementation. Policies were frequently rushed, poorly thought through and rarely subjected to rigorous evaluation or amendment.
Luxon’s government, by contrast, is all about measurable progress. His action plans read like a corporate to-do list: ‘Introduce legislation to bring back Charter Schools by June’, ‘Legalise foreign building products’ by September, ‘Begin resource management reform by December.’ It is politics reduced to bullet points, but each point represents a concrete policy goal.
But is this what the people who booted out the Ardern/Hipkins government really want?
Critics might argue that this approach lacks vision or overarching narrative. Yet, as these quarterly plans accumulate, a bigger picture is emerging. Piece by piece, like a jigsaw puzzle, Luxon is reshaping New Zealand’s political and economic landscape.
How much of that, though, is Luxon’s ‘vision’, rather than the prodding of coalition partners ACT and, even more so, New Zealand First?
More importantly, will Luxon’s background as a CEO – where he’s used to giving orders and having them obeyed – succeed against a bureaucracy and judiciary, not to mention a chattering class, so thoroughly subsumed by the Long March through the Institutions? Especially the media. Jacinda Ardern didn’t have to buy the media: they’d have laid back and put out for free. The PIJF was less a bribe than a payoff.
But an even bigger question is whether Luxon can maintain this momentum. Most governments begin with big ambitions, only to sooner or later find themselves bogged down by bureaucratic inertia and the relentless demands of day-to-day governance. So how long will it take until the guardians of the status quo are back in charge? When will ‘the blob’ derail the government’s quarterly plans? […]
Luxon’s method might have a more natural home in a place like Singapore, where the machinery of government already operates more like a corporation. Indeed, there is a touch of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew in Luxon’s technocratic style.
In New Zealand, however, with its labyrinthine bureaucracy, myriad stakeholder groups and sacred policy cows, achieving Singaporean style policy development is a far more daunting task.
Good luck with that, indeed. Will Luxon be up to the task?
