Christopher Luxon - A PM without conviction

Is our Prime Minister just happy to be here? Is that enough?

Over on Twitter/X, one of the worst legal websites currently online, I asked people of all political hues what they saw as the two biggest missteps of this government.

The responses were all quite similar - they didn't know why this Government (specifically, the Luxon-led National Party part of this Government) would do A, but then also do B, when A and B seemed incongruous with one another.

People who were opposed to ACT's Treaty Principles Bill were annoyed it had been supported to its first reading - saying it had created a highly divisive national debate, only to avoid blame by abandoning it - and weren't later won back when Luxon's National decided to not support it beyond the first reading.

People who supported ACT's Treaty Principles Bill were annoyed it had only been supported to its first reading - saying it had started a productive national debate, only to abandon it before anything could be resolved - and felt betrayed when Luxon's National decided to not support it beyond the first reading.

Both sides saw it as cynical politics over a principled stance.

Luxon had burned both sides of the debate, and for no clear ideological reason.

This also coincided with the return of punitive measures to our beneficiary system.

The move came with a lot of lofty rhetoric around helping people to help themselves and the need for our government to cut its spending during what are objectively gloomy times for our economy.

It has been framed as a principled stance, but why die on this hill and not a dozen others?

Supporting ACTs bill initially but not supporting it beyond reading - practical over principle.

Bashing beneficiaries during an economic crisis - principle over practical.

As reported by Craig McCulloch for Radio NZ (https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/525891/day-after-accusing-councils-of-wasting-money-government-puts-750k-toward-dance-festival), Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee on Thursday afternoon announced the government would stump up $750,000 from its major events fund to go towards the inaugural World Dance Crew Championship in Auckland next year.

If Minister Lee was a beneficiary, she would be heavily sanctioned for such frivolity.

She might even be illegally followed by highly paid private investigators, if National are truly returning to the old days (https://www.privacy.org.nz/publications/statements-media-releases/msd-fraud-investigations-privacy-commissioner/).

This is a government that thinks beneficiaries need scrutiny and suspicion, but poorly run media enterprises deserve government support and favourable legislative changes.

National’s Paul Goldsmith, in his role as Minister for Media and Communications, announced earlier this year that he would be taking Labour’s media bailout bill forward.

Dr Eric Crampton raised several compelling concerns around the bill here (https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/opinion/media-bill-isnt-a-change-for-the-better/).

My view is that it's a transparent shake down attempt by traditional media outlets, outlets that much of the general public have already lost faith in.

Supporting this bill, one created by Labour and criticised by National when they were the Opposition, is neither principled nor pragmatic - it's just bad politics.

This is also after his own government decried the previous government’s spending on fanciful things like Te Reo branding for Public Service agencies - branding I'm against, but for possibly different reasons than many others.

So which one is it? Are we belt tightening or having a 750k dance party?

Can you stand in judgement of beneficiaries while also coddling an entitled media sector?

These many contradictions make it feel like Luxon's National is doing much of what they are on the fly and without any commitment to a consistent philosophy or ideology.

We're almost a third of the way through this electoral term and we're no closer to understanding what kind of Prime Minister we have than we were a year ago.

A long-time parliamentary staffer once told me there are two types of politicians - practical ones and ideological ones.

The English government, with its social investment philosophy, was one grounded in an ideology that combined Christian values with free market ideals.

His predecessor, John Key, was all practical.

Key knew he had big personalities in his major portfolios (English in Finance, Collins in Corrections and Police, Finlayson as AG and Treaty Negotiations Minister, Bennett in Social Development) and he largely left them to their devices, reining them in only when public sentiment started to turn.

When his own supporters were critical of his Treaty Negotiations Minister for being too open to working with iwi and engaging with ideas such as personhood for rivers and mountains, Key would challenge them to take it up with Finlayson in person - something only a fool would do, as Finlayson's legal acumen is only matched by his mean streak.

This allowed Key to float above the unpopular moves of his own Government, only intervening when practicalities demanded it. He could retain his 'bloke you can have a beer with’ image while the likes of Collins and Bennett took the heat.

The issue we have in understanding Luxon is that he doesn't fit into either camp - he's neither a true believer nor a 'if it works, it works' pragmatist.

During the last election, there were concerns raised around whether Luxon's supposed Evangelical Christianity would make him our most socially conservative Prime Minister in a generation.

Those fears now appear to have been overly generous.

Luxon has since acknowledged he is not a regular church goer, doesn't view himself as an adherent of any sect of any organised religion, and he stated in his valedictory that he "believe(s) no religion should dictate to the State, and no politician should use the political platform they have to force their beliefs on others.”

If his faith and values play a role in his politics, it is a very minor one. A cameo, with no dialogue.

While this may be comforting in some ways, it also speaks to a lack of philosophy or ideology.

When you combine this with recent concerns about a lack of clear vision for what New Zealand should be, this creates a picture of a man without non-negotiables.

Luxon is the third type of politician, one not covered by my friend's theory but one I have met many of during my three plus decades being raised around and by politicians.

This third type of politician isn't ideologically driven, nor are they practical 'here's what we want the country to be, but we're flexible about how to get there' pragmatists.

They are something more base, someone just happy to be elected in the first place. Holding power for the sake of holding power.

These politicians can be identified by their lack of a compelling ‘why’.

They don't have any background in politics or activism prior to seeking an elected office, and they either opt for centrism or a spineless ever-shifting populism whose only defining feature is chasing votes.

They can still be talented politicians - all sorts of people can step up when faced with a clear crisis even if they were originally only there for the prestige or the paycheck - but the risk is always that they will lack a ‘true north’.

The greatest issue with Christopher Luxon as Prime Minister is that you'll never be sure what you're going to get.

ACT have strayed from their libertarian roots, but their voters know what they are voting for.

Te Pāti Māori is unrecognisable to anyone who admired Dame Tariana’s original Māori Party, but their current voters too know what they are voting for.

The same rings true of every party, all but Luxon's.

During the last election that felt like an intentional choice, a strategy, but it has continued. By being amorphous, Luxon has scraped together just enough votes out of people with blind hope and people who still resent the previous Govt.

That won't last. Any popularity based on being anti, being alternative to someone else, is fleeting by its nature.

For some people, none of this will matter.

One Twitter/X respondent criticised Luxon for not being managerial enough, they wanted a quietly competent leader.

Another person said something along the lines of “I like my politicians rarely seen, and even more rarely heard from.”

Maybe there's something to this, we deified politicians during and post Covid in a way that was both sacrilegious and unearned.

To allude to one of Donald Trump’s rare moments of clarity - Jacinda, peak Jacinda, could have shot someone in the middle of Queen St and not lost a single vote because of it.

We went down a dark path towards ‘cult of personality’ politics, as the US did with Trump, and for that reason I don't begrudge anyone who fears its return and would prefer a less charismatic but more substantive approach.

Voters will tire of voting against the past, you can't keep protesting something that has long passed and expect the public to keep caring. At some point, they'll need to see a vision for the future.

Changes to housing density and development have been a big win for this government and show a glimmer of hope that National might have some values, but so far, Luxon has shown a lack of conviction.

The river Luxon is murky, its depths unknowable. To me, there's something scary about that.