When you wheel out Judith Collins as your weapon of last resort, you’ve already lost the battle for public opinion, and are pitching your messages solely to the party faithful. This week, unions are being demonised for “being political” when their members go out on strike – even though they’re taking action against a plan to impose worse pay and conditions on public health and state education systems that are already in crisis. How dare they!
To re-state the obvious: it is the government that’s playing politics here, by trying to distract the public’s attention away from the shambles that its own underfunding and staffing freezes are causing in health and education. Medical staff and teachers are leaving this country because the government is “being political” with their livelihoods, and with the people in their care.
Wage rises in line with inflation are affordable. Time and again, the government cries poverty when it comes to meeting social needs, but it has no qualms about fore-going billions of tax revenue in order to boost the income of landlords. It can also readily spend $9 billion of new money on Defence, to enable us to help mount a pre-emptive attack on our main trading partner. Meanwhile, the genuine health needs in this country are going unmet. Onwards and downwards.
Why is this man still PM?
As the polls have been indicating for months, Christopher Luxon is not anyone’s idea of a political asset. He is a proven liability to New Zealand, to the National Party, to the coalition government he heads, and to the Cabinet he leads. Even the bluest of National voters are starting to treat Luxon as that embarrassing uncle at the family gathering who everyone tolerates, but wishes would stop talking, and go home.
That being the case, it isn’t surprising that there has been chatter for months about Luxon being replaced. Erica Stanford? Chris Bishop? The more interesting question is why he hasn’t been replaced already. There have to be reasons (beyond inertia) as to why Luxon has not been given his marching orders for his repeated gaffes, weak leadership, bad decisions, poor personal polling and general lack of credibility and gravitas. Increasing numbers of voters don’t like him, or the direction in which he is steering the country.
And yet…Luxon endures, and we have to endure him. The obvious explanation for his longevity as PM is that National has decided it can win the next election despite him, so why go to all the bother of a coup – merely to save a few of its endangered centre-right MPs who came into Parliament on the 2023 landslide.
Historically, that’s a sound judgement. National can win with Luxon regardless. This country hasn’t had a genuine one term government since the Labour government of 1957-1960. (If Norman Kirk hadn’t died, his government would probably have been re-elected in 1975.) In passing, this track record is a good argument against extending the parliamentary term. In reality, New Zealand governments already have de facto six year terms.
The polling is another argument for keeping him. Much as the media likes to suggest that next year’s election is a tight race, it really isn’t. Level pegging in a year when all of the public focus is on the failings of the current government must be a quietly acceptable position for National to be in. As we saw in Australia, the political landscape changes in an election year, once the focus shifts from how bad the current government is, to how scary the alternative (a Labour/Greens/TPM coalition) can be made to look.
To have a reasonable chance of an election victory next year the centre-left bloc would (a) need to be between five and ten points in front once the campaign starts and would also (b) need the public resentment of the coalition government to be increasing. Instead, the polls are almost as deadlocked now as they were six months ago. The centre-left isn’t recruiting the disenchanted, not in anything like the numbers needed to win next year.
In line with this thinking…all along, Labour has been acting as if it expects to lose next year’s election. It has kept Chris Hipkins in place and so far, has chosen not to change leaders and waste Kieran McAnulty – its next best hope – on what it plainly sees to be a suicide run in 2026. Despite the mood of anger and despair on the centre left, this also explains why Labour has failed to offer strong policy alternatives, and position itself as a serious government in waiting. Quite the contrary. Labour continues to act like a party already resigned to losing in 2026, while keeping its powder dry for 2029.
But why Luxon?
These externals aside… what internal reasons can possibly explain why a centre-right bloc that preaches the gospel of excellence in all worldly matters, continues to tolerate such a mediocrity at the top of the National Party? I have a two-word explanation: Nicola Willis. National would have replaced Luxon long ago, if doing so didn’t compound the increasingly vexed problem of what to do with the Finance Minister.
A double change would look like panic. Yet toppling Luxon without dumping Willis would look like re-arranging the deck-chairs, after hitting the iceberg. And who has steered the economy straight into that iceberg? Nicola Willis. Much of the government’s bad news has been related to its mis-management of the economy: GDP shrinking, unemployment and job insecurity rising, user charges increasing, consumer spending evaporating, the retail sector wilting, jobs bleeding away in construction and the public service etc…These and other dire outcomes can be traced directly back to the decisions made by Willis, who has chosen to pursue austerity policies during a recession. Her colleagues (and the Reserve Bank) have been left to carry the can. (Winston Peters is doing his best to bail Willis out for her ferries decision.)
At least the late, recently lamented Jim Bolger had the backbone to fire his Finance Minister, once the ideological fixations of Ruth Richardson became a millstone around the neck of the National Party. Luxon won’t do the same, partly because Willis has some powerful friends.
Meaning: since 2017, Willis and Chris Bishop have operated as a team, and their political fortunes have risen in tandem. In a Cat in the Hat reference, I once described them as the Thing One and Thing Two of the National Party caucus. Together, the duo were instrumental in dumping Simon Bridges and installing Todd Muller as party leader. Subsequently, a weakened Judith Collins was not in a position to punish them for that folly.
Bishop is now being touted as a Luxon replacement. (Last month, it was Erica Stanford.) Yet it is impossible to imagine Chris Bishop ever supporting any moves to demote Nicola Willis. Thus, the current impasse continues. Replacing Luxon without getting rid of Willis would be only a cosmetic change. For now, the National Party – and the nation – are stuck with both of them.
Footnote. If the National Party do win next year’s election with Luxon at the helm, we will be stuck with him for the rest of the decade. Yikes.
United in song, and spirit
Since unions are so routinely demonised, its worth lionising them. The sentiments on this 1970s hit track by the British band Strawbs sound a lot more than 50 years old, but their message of solidarity is timeless. In 2025, unions are still the spearheads of workplace progress – on pay, on staffing, on health and safety, on pay equity – as well as being the last line of defence for the work force.