OPINION
Christopher Luxon’s brutal despatch of Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee and Disabilities Minister Penny Simmonds after just 149 days is to be commended.
It’s probably the Prime Minister’s most important decision so far.
If he sticks with this political heresy that ministers can be removed so quickly on performance grounds – and especially if it becomes doctrine for future governments – it could be enough on its own to establish a Luxon legacy. It’s often best to let people fail fast.
How much better off might the previous Government have been – and New Zealand – had Jacinda Ardern applied the same rigour to, say, the problem of Phil Twyford, her first Minister of Housing and also Transport?
As early as March 2018, just months since it too had been sworn in, experts in the property industry were saying that the Ardern Government was going about KiwiBuild all wrong.
That was the moment to sack Twyford. Instead Ardern waited another 15 months before sacking him as Housing Minister. By then, her signature policy lay in ruins, having become a laughing stock.
Ardern then let Twyford struggle on for another 16 months before sacking him as Transport Minister, but not before he had turned her other signature policy, light rail, into an even worse fiasco.
Yet Ardern still refused to sack him entirely, giving him the consolation job of Minister of Disarmament and Arms Control. I could leave it to Jon Stewart to point out Russia invaded Ukraine soon after, following one of the biggest global military rearmaments since the end of the Cold War.
It wasn’t until Chris Hipkins became Prime Minister that Twyford was finally despatched to the backbench altogether.
When Hipkins finds out who was responsible for the further dumbing down of the nation’s primary schools since 2017 with an overemphasis on “inquiry learning”, and who failed to order Covid vaccine in time to prevent the 2021 lockdown, hopefully he’ll give them the sack too.
The closest parallel to what Luxon did on Wednesday was when John Key sacked Housing Minister Phil Heatley and Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson in January 2013, but that was in his fifth year as Prime Minister - not his fifth month.
At one measure at least, Luxon is working at 12 times his mentor’s pace.
The 2013 Heatley and Wilkinson sackings came as more of a surprise to some journalists than Wednesday’s, since neither was quite so poor at answering their questions as Lee and Simmonds.
But that is just a symptom of our political culture having become so debased by the dominance of the now almost constant two-minute media stand-ups as MPs head in and out of caucus meetings and Parliament.
Prime Ministers hopefully take into account feedback from senior officials and the private sector on how ministers are operating day-to-day, their competence at developing policy ideas and moving them through the system, and their contributions to internal debates in Cabinet, Cabinet-committee, caucus and ministerial meetings.
That assumes, probably too optimistically, that these too aren’t now dominated entirely by monologues from leaders and senior ministers about polling, media coverage, social media posts and short-term political calls.
Luxon promises to strike again soon with further Cabinet reshuffles, and make them a regular part of how his Government works.
If so, he ought to demonstrate, as he rightly claims, that his prime ministerial purview extends to ministers from Act and NZ First, albeit necessarily in consultation with their leaders.
And he ought to follow Key’s 2013 approach with Heatley and Wilkinson, and Hipkins’ January 2023 despatch of Twyford, Poto Williams, David Clark and Aupito William Sio, by not just removing portfolios but by sacking ministers altogether.
Luxon’s rationale for his moves on Wednesday was that broadcasting and the disabilities sector have become so much more complex since he appointed Lee and Simmonds that they need the attention of more senior ministers.
Yet Simmonds stays in charge of the nation’s universities, polytechnics, industry-training system and environment, while Lee remains boss of that 6000-plus behemoth called the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
With no disrespect to journalists, media owners or disabled people, if Luxon thinks broadcasting and disabilities are too complex for Simmonds and Lee, it’s difficult to believe he genuinely has confidence in them in their bigger roles.
Moreover, with Lee no longer required to attend Cabinet meetings on Mondays – to be replaced by Climate Change Minister Simon Watts, who should have been there all along – it’s odd that the Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Tertiary Education and Skills and Minister for the Environment are all second-tier jobs in the Luxon Government.
Lee and Simmonds will be upset with their demotions, but Luxon not sacking them completely has failed to create space for promotions from the backbench, including the 2023 intake, National’s most promising since 2005.
Luxon might remember that while its leader might be the chief executive, a parliamentary party is like a workers’ co-op, with the caucus being the board that hires and fires the boss.
It would be prudent to give some of his new backbenchers meaningful jobs before too long.
In fact, if he maintains his policy that ministers must perform each quarter to keep their jobs, he may end up with more vacancies than he expects.
To use one example, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey promises to improve access to services in his first term or make way for someone who will.
Going up the ministerial ranks, Luxon and Trade Minister Todd McClay also promised before the election to deliver exporters a free-trade agreement with India in the first term.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell says if our communities don’t become safer, he too will step down.
What happens if Paul Goldsmith doesn’t deliver any Treaty of Waitangi settlements? Or Erica Stanford fails to rebalance “inquiry learning” with knowledge-based learning in our schools?
At the very top end, what happens if Chris Bishop doesn’t produce legislation by the next election to permanently replace the Resource Management Act?
What if Nicola Willis follows Bill English in just giving nine years of speeches about social investment rather than making it happen?
What if she can’t deliver a balanced Budget?
If Luxon is true to his word, any of these would also get the sack. The very idea seems too radical to take seriously.
Then again, if any or all of these ministers did fail to deliver their basic outcomes they have promised, why shouldn’t Luxon sack them? After all, if you failed that badly, your boss would sack you.
And, probably, your job isn’t as important to the nation - avoiding irreversible decline - as most of theirs.
- Matthew Hooton has over 30 years’ experience in political and corporate communications and strategy for clients in Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America, including the National and Act parties, and the Mayor of Auckland.
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