Luxon's trial by fire: How did he fare?
Will Seymour's bill bring him 'the winter of our discontent'?
I’m not alone in having anticipated that these last three weeks would set the tone for Christopher Luxon’s prime-ministership. So how well has he done?
He gets marks just for showing up at Rātana and Waitangi, but there were mixed views about his absence from Turangawaewae Marae. It’s the Waitangi Day performance that’s the keynote speech, however, so I’ll look more closely at that.
Mr Luxon made a few remarks about the country’s past and acknowledged ‘historical wrongs’ – in the same sentence as ‘an ambitious national reconciliation project’. Pain arising from past injustices was quickly glossed over. He was looking for unity, despite the past let alone the present discontents.
Luxon had two main questions: ‘Where do we want to be as a nation by 2040? And what do we need to focus on in the next three years to get there?’ That’s strategy and tactics, as found in an undergraduate management textbook.
On the first question, he invited New Zealanders to ‘imagine’ a prosperous and flourishing nation. His repeated call to ‘imagine’ better things naturally made me think of John Lennon. On the second question, Mr Luxon repeated his government’s main policy goals: economy, fiscal prudence, law and order, etc. – as heard ad nauseam before the election. In other words, if people stick with him for three years at least, Kiwis will be on their way towards that imagined brighter future for the bicentenary in 2040.
He wants Māori to thrive, he told us. And surely everyone wants that. It would be a very cynical lefty who’d secretly hope for Māori to fare more poorly over the next three years just for the pleasure of hating the National-led government even more. By mid-2026, however, people will be looking at the statistics for signs of improvement.
A key point in Luxon’s speech was this: ‘despite all the words and rhetoric, outcomes for Māori, and indeed all New Zealanders, went backwards in the past six years’.
It wasn’t a good idea to use the phrase ‘all New Zealanders’ in that context, as it evokes the ACT Party’s version of Treaty principles. Instead, he might have chosen ‘everyone who lives in this country’ or similar.
To test his oddly worded claim that ‘outcomes went backwards’ (which I guess means ‘things got worse’), the debate could descend into ‘statistics at twenty paces’. People will selectively present social and economic statistics to support him on this, or not, depending on their political leanings. High inflation would figure prominently, though, and majorities in pre-election surveys were saying that the country was heading in the wrong direction. But I’ll focus more on Luxon’s rhetoric, as against Ardern’s rhetoric of ‘the past six years’.
From her first speech as Labour leader in August 2017, through to her Waitangi speeches as prime minister, Ardern fostered a sense of promise and hope that she and her government proved unable to fulfill in practice. As for whether people were worse off after six years of her (and Hipkins’s) government, we have to acknowledge that there was a global pandemic in the meantime. But Labour fell from a stellar 50% party vote to a humiliating 26.9% last October, and that was the people’s verdict on the matter.
Luxon was distancing himself from, as he sees it, Ardern’s over-promising and under-delivering. He reckons that, if he keeps repeating the same policy messages, then people will gradually see things his way, if they don’t already. The proof will be in the pudding, however.
This approach might get him a pass grade in Management 101, but he flunks Advanced Political Communication – because his speech showed little concern for his real-world audience. Does he rehearse his speeches in front of a mirror? On site, he was confronted by an angry and defiant protest; many people were feeling hurt, distressed and threatened by what his government’s doing. Protestors had powerfully appropriated ‘white’ as their theme, and presented themselves in peaceful defiance to defend progress on te Tiriti and te reo. Around the country, many more people, on both sides of the debate, were feeling angry or cynical.
In such a situation, the leading speaker needs to acknowledge the volatile mix of strong emotions and to show that people have been heard and understood. Rationally explaining and persuading doesn’t work for people who are feeling mad or distressed. It can make it even worse.
Despite an intellectual interest in ‘unity’ in Luxon’s speech, there was no heartfelt effort to connect with those who don’t trust him. And, according to past surveys, most people don’t. His speech didn’t help to engender national unity, and it didn’t allay anyone’s fears about the messages coming from coalition partner David Seymour – who, whatever you think of him, writes better speeches.
For Mr Luxon, it was an opportunity lost. No one bothered to compose an eloquent and memorable speech for the prime minister that went to the heart of the matter, and yet avoided raising unrealistic hopes. I’d anticipate more of the same. As he put it himself, his communications plan is all about ‘consistency’. Consistently unimaginative.
Luxon has muddled through so far, but the worst is yet to come, I fear.
As a price of gaining power through a coalition agreement that knowingly included a divisive policy, Mr Luxon will share the blame for heated public debates for the rest of this year, including debate about whether the country should even be having a debate about principles of the Treaty. It’s expected that Mr Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill will be introduced in late May. That’ll mean ‘the winter of our discontent’ and a storm of strongly worded public submissions to select committee. Treaty experts, activists, conspiracy theorists and racists will slug it out. National will try to control the dogs of war that they let slip. The last thing Luxon wants is for ‘ordinary’ folk to have a vote on constitutional principles that affect them, especially after the havoc caused by the Voice referendum in Australia. No matter how it plays out, though, David Seymour will enjoy a ‘glorious summer’ from this debate, all the way to the next election.