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I have previously described Christopher Luxon as a ‘legacy manager’ – someone who operates by inertia, defends inherited frameworks and mistakes enforcement for imagination. His support of the current proposal to ban under-16s from the internet is a good example. The description still holds: his instinct is to reach for legislation, his reflex is to patch and his style remains managerial.
However, I do not criticise without offering solutions. The question is not whether Luxon can rehabilitate his leadership, but how. He must shift from ‘legacy management’ to ‘resilience leadership’, and he must do so before the next election. If he does not, the alternative is probably a Labour Government – and that would be a disaster. Labour is not a credible option: their style is dominated by ideology, which the midwits implement through an even worse management style than Luxon (authoritarianism by bureaucratic fiat) and New Zealand cannot afford more of that.
One way forward would be the establishment of a Commonwealth project that all New Zealanders can understand and rally behind – a project that addresses urgent vulnerabilities, delivers tangible benefits and demonstrates foresight and imagination. Such a project would allow Luxon’s reputation to evolve from ‘pedestrian managerialism’ to that of a leader who established energy resilience and national security.
New Zealand is currently very fragile, both economically and structurally, and this makes the situation all that more urgent. I have seen how storms on the West Coast can knock out transmission lines and leave communities in blackout and how Cyclone Gabrielle devastated Hawke’s Bay orchards and livelihoods. These are not isolated events. They are symptoms of a system stretched thin, exposed and unprepared. It is something I warned about over five years ago, in a letter printed in the NZ Herald concerning NZ’s electricity system and how Transpower is failing in its duties – yes, five years ago! With a relatively new CEO (James Kitty – installed in February 2025) possibly an opportunity presents itself?
· Resilience must become an organising principle of Luxon’s leadership.
‘Legacy management’ cannot cope with fragility – it defers, delays and defends the status quo. ‘Resilience leadership’, by contrast, anticipates shocks, designs for continuity and builds the confidence that the system will hold. It is not a slogan, but a structural orientation and, importantly, it is substantive. And it is precisely the kind of leadership Luxon must embrace if he is to transform his reputation and secure New Zealand’s future.
Energy is the obvious flagship because it is the lifeline of modern society: without it, everything will collapse. And already the cracks are showing, with recent disruptions in places like Tairua and Whangamatā reminding us how exposed communities are. The West Coast is perhaps the clearest case study in fragility. When transmission corridors are knocked out by storms or substations are inundated, the region is left in blackout. That exposure makes the coast the perfect demonstration of why resilience leadership must move beyond patchwork fixes and into structural solutions.
The answer is not more legislation or reactive gestures.
· It is reinforcement and imported baseload (in this case, ironically, the suggestion is geothermal energy imported from the North Island to the South Island!)
This would require more than patchwork upgrades. Redundant corridors, storm‑rated towers, flood‑proof substations and voltage support systems are needed to create a backbone that can withstand shocks. HVDC integration would allow North Island geothermal baseload to move both south and west, lifting firm import capacity by 100–300 MW. The expansion of geothermal capacity in the central North Island would also create jobs and opportunities. That shift directly lowers the risk of blackouts and strengthens resilience in measurable terms. This is structural work, not marginal tinkering. It is the scale of project that signals imagination, long‑horizon planning and competence in execution. For Luxon, backing such an initiative would mark a transition from caretaker management to resilience leadership.
Resilience leadership is not confined to electricity. It can be extended into agriculture, regional towns and supply chains. Dannevirke offers a telling example: repeated outages forced the community to host a major solar and storage project to secure continuity of supply. Resilience leadership here means keeping irrigation, cold storage and processing online during disasters. It means protecting livelihoods by ensuring continuity of critical loads. That is precisely the kind of initiative Luxon needs to notice, elevate and replicate. He should ‘pull finger’ and get involved. Politically this initiative is ‘low risk’ and ‘high reward’. It is exactly the sort of thing that Labour presumably borrowed $20 billion NZD for – ‘shovel-ready jobs’!
The same principle applies in places exposed to floods and earthquakes. Christchurch and Kaikōura remind us how quickly lifelines can be severed when shocks hit. Communities demand hardening of power, water and communications, and frameworks that ensure continuity when infrastructure is damaged. Processing plants, transport hubs and logistics networks must be designed to survive disruption. Power continuity is the anchor, but the wider principle is clear: resilience portfolios can and must be built across sectors. Luxon’s role is not to watch these projects emerge in isolation, but to champion them as part of a national strategy. That is how he shifts from managerial patchwork to resilience leadership – not corporate theatre like cutting ribbons at IKEA opening ceremonies. That is not prime ministerial, but performative: signalling deference to multinationals rather than leadership of a nation. He does have better things to do with his time and this sort of behaviour is not ‘leadership’.
Luxon’s opportunity is visible. He can move from a caretaker and legacy management role to resilience leadership by championing structural projects that harden the grid, secure agriculture and protect regional lifelines. That requires abandoning inertia and adopting resilience as the organising principle of his leadership. If he does, he will not only rehabilitate his reputation but also anchor New Zealand’s future in continuity and competence.
