Two NZ Herald columnists, Matthew Hooton and Claire Trevett have both commented on National’s prospects six months out from the general election. Both of them have made essentially the same observation: that National should be doing better, and their leader Christopher Luxon is out of his depth.
First up Matthew Hooton, observing that some National supporters are fed up waiting for Luxon to fire, and are turning to Winston Peters for answers.
As Richard Prebble explained on Wednesday, Luxon is the reason Labour is even in the game, and Chris Hipkins is the reason the Labour-Green-Te Pati Maori bloc is fractionally ahead.
There’s little sign National gets it. This month, Luxon has offered nothing except a low-key agriculture policy for which National minimised media coverage, and a hare-brained “major strategic priority” involving putting trade spokesman Todd McClay on a plane to India to “hustle” for a free-trade agreement.
Embarrassingly, the India-New Zealand Business Council, led by former Fonterra director Earl Rattray, disagreed. It said 15 years of trying for a conventional trade deal with India had “delivered nothing”. India, it said, requires a different approach, focused not on government-to-government deals but building business-to-business links.
Rattray should know. He was a Fonterra director when it tried to break into India with its unsuccessful Britannia Industries joint venture, but has since flourished with personal dairy-farming investments on the subcontinent.
Had Luxon’s people spoken to anyone who understands New Zealand-India relations, they wouldn’t have let their boss look so naive.
NZ Herald
Like most people who transition into politics, Luxon is finding out that an organisation that relies on volunteers is much harder to order around than subservient employees. He lacks a political nose and thinks glib bumper sticker slogans and a talking bobblehead will get him over the line. He’s wrong, and it is showing. National and Luxon should both be ahead of Labour. They’re not, and that is the problem.
Worse was Luxon’s failure to be ready when the utterly predictable results of Revenue Minister David Parker’s so-called Piketty project were released.
The inquiry was ethically and constitutionally dubious, given that it drew on the actual tax records of 311 individuals and their families, but National has known about it since 2021, including the fact that it motivated big donations from some of the families affected.
Since Hipkins’ elevation, Beehive strategists have made perfectly clear what they have in mind.
The day after Hipkins was sworn in, I was able to write that Labour planned to lay the ground to claim that some New Zealanders don’t pay their fair share, as a pretext for tax relief for median voters in the $50,000 to $100,000 range, and the option of a new top rate on very high incomes and perhaps a modified capital gains tax.
The new taxes could also be positioned as necessary to help pay down Covid debt and keep a lid on inflation. The Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle have made the case stronger.
All this would be deeply cynical, of course. No one seriously believes raising tax on the so-called rich could fund meaningful tax relief for median income-earners, and Treasury would feel bound to say so if it was official government policy. Labour yesterday ruled out tax rises in May’s Budget, consistent with its 2020 election promises. But Hipkins still has its longer-term tax policy to be released closer to the election, about which Treasury may not comment.
The Beehive’s real interest is National being obliged to oppose any tax increases, especially given its fundraising success among the 311 families, putting it on the wrong side of public opinion.
Luxon has known this for months, and long-time National strategists can’t believe he hadn’t worked out a credible line.
NZ Herald
It took me five minutes, and a couple of calls to taxation experts to work it all out. How come National, Luxon, and Nicola Willis were squirming and speechless?
That is an indictment on them. I’m plugged into the body politic and I can’t remember a single thing either of them said about the ridiculous IRD taxation report.
There’s little confidence Luxon can secure the necessary votes for a National-Act coalition. To the contrary, National’s vote usually falls during an election campaign, even with a popular leader like Key. Luxon’s negative net favourability is not just a problem in itself, but indicates that when people get to know him, they are more likely to dislike than to like him.
The big idea now is to get behind NZ First, including Shane Jones in Northland.
NZ Herald
All the same things I have been saying for months. The more people get to see and hear Christopher Luxon, the more people dislike him, or at best are ambivalent. It’s now obvious, and it’s too late. The dead canaries in the coal mine weren’t listened to.
Like it or not, blinkered Never Winston National types better get used to thinking about a coalition with him.
Claire Trevett makes similar observations.
Luxon has not yet developed a political instinct – or at least seems unsure if he can trust it.
Critically, he is yet to earn the trust of voters. Since Hipkins took over, Luxon’s rating as preferred PM has dropped back into the teens, although National’s polling has held fairly firm in the mid-30s. Luxon has at least won back most of National’s core base, although a significant chunk are sticking to the alternative option of Act.
In person, both Hipkins and Luxon are likeable – but Luxon is having a harder time getting voters to see that. He is not the first to have struggled to get likeability translated through mass media.
NZ Herald
Perhaps if Luxon hadn’t dismissed David Farrar’s advice when he took over he’d be better placed in the likeability stakes. He didn’t, and he didn’t just ignore it, he proceeded to do the exact opposite, and now look at the predicament he and National find themselves in.
This is, again, all the stuff I’ve been saying about Luxon and National for months. To political tragics, and those of us who make a living from observing politics this has been obvious for months, if not years.
If Christopher Luxon hasn’t connected with the electorate in two years, then he’s never going to. No amount of rehearsed and cheesy TikTok videos will change that. He looks and sounds like a dick trying to get down with the kids.
National and Luxon should have daylight between them and Labour. They don’t. In fact, they are behind with less than six months to go.
Keeping your powder dry has merits if you actually intend to use it, but if you get overrun in the meantime all you’ve done is gift your powder to the enemy.
Time’s up for Luxon. Sadly there is actually no alternative. National had better steel themselves for another three years crying over the milk they spilt themselves.
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