OPINION
Winston Peters’ resurrection in the Herald’s poll of polls is being privately celebrated by some of Christopher Luxon’s biggest backers.
The Luxon project was always about restoration rather than revolution. The goal was establishing the fourth term of the Key-English Government — or, more accurately, the seventh term of the long Clark-Key-English meander.
National never really understood that, justifiably or not, Peters and Shane Jones felt patronised by Bill English and Steven Joyce through the 2017 coalition negotiations.
That unfortunate disconnect was as responsible for NZ First choosing Labour as anything Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson did.
While dismissing 2017 as unfair, National also believes, more justifiably, that any incumbent — including a fourth-term English-led Government — would have won 2020′s Covid election.
Through that lens, key Luxon backers argue the Key-English Government, first elected 15 years ago, was never rejected by voters. What median voters want most, they believe, is its return.
Luxon is an imperfect apparition of Key in 2008 or English in 2017, but the rest of his campaign wins much better marks for nostalgia.
In 2008, Key’s slogan was a promise to build a brighter future. For the 2023 Luxon, that would be too forward-looking. Hence, his slogan is simply to get New Zealand back on track, an unashamedly nostalgic proposition.
National’s 2023 billboards, including their light blue, were similarly designed to evoke the glories of 2008-17.
Likewise, National’s policy offering, at least so far, is mainly about reversing the last six years, doing some reviews and returning to 2017.
Luxon’s first promise, with then-finance spokesman Simon Bridges, was to abolish the top 39 per cent tax rate, just as Key and English abolished Helen Clark and Michael Cullen’s 39 per cent rate in 2008. Luxon also promised to adjust income-tax thresholds back to where they were in real terms when English left office in 2017.
Alas, Nicola Willis’ greater commitment to fiscal rectitude means she has already had to drop the 39 per cent commitment, at least for now, and limit threshold adjustments to 11.5 per cent, half of what’s now needed to honour Luxon’s original promise.
While National’s final tax policy is yet to be released, its current position is for us to all keep paying more tax in nominal and real terms than in 2017.
More promisingly, Willis promises to remove Robertson’s silly but largely meaningless and thereby mostly ignored unemployment clause from the Reserve Bank’s remit, sensibly returning to the 2017 rule.
Overseas, the free trade agreement with India that Key imagined in 2011 has been announced as a major Luxon priority. His government can be expected to reverse Ardern and Chris Hipkins’ tilt to Australia, Five Eyes and Nato, and to reinstate Key’s more pro-China line.
National’s microeconomic agenda is also chiefly restorative.
Its urban development spokesman Chris Bishop promises to repeal Labour’s new resource management laws before Christmas and return to the existing Resource Management Act (RMA) 1991.
He promises some amendments over the next three years, but to “begin work on a longer-term programme to repeal and replace the RMA”.
Worryingly, that means another three years of working groups and uncertainty.
Bishop and transport spokesman Simeon Brown are bolder on infrastructure.
In 2008, Key — having spoken admiringly of Lee Kuan Yew’s transformation of Singapore — emphasised infrastructure investment, promising to spend an extra $8.6 billion on projects over the following six years, just over $12b in today’s money.
Key’s platform included the successful roads of national significance and ultra-fast broadband programmes, plus new infrastructure bonds, public-private partnerships and a requirement for the Superannuation Fund to invest at least 40 per cent of its funds in New Zealand.
He promised there would be new priority consenting and — you guessed it — reform of the RMA.
National’s 2023 infrastructure policy remains consistent with Key’s from 15 years ago.
In social policy, Key’s boot camps are back, plus other measures to present as tough on crime.
Also restored is social investment, English’s passion for his nine years as Finance Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and eventually Prime Minister, but which he sadly failed to fully implement before the 2017 election.
Exactly what social investment means on the ground isn’t clear. Chris Hipkins says Labour’s main objection was its name, and that it is basically in place now.
More differentiated from Labour is Erica Stanford’s back-to-basics education policy, requiring primary schools to focus on reading, writing and maths, as Key also promised in 2008.
National’s health policy is still to be fully released, but spokesman Shane Reti has always been fond of the district health boards set up by Clark in 2000, kept by Key and abolished by Ardern last year.
The historic Treaty of Waitangi settlement process will continue as it did so successfully under Key.
Perhaps the biggest differences between Clark, Key, English and Ardern on one hand and Luxon on the other concern agriculture and climate change.
Whereas those four former prime ministers were all influenced by the international marketing end of agribusiness, Luxon’s National leans more towards the grassroots Groundswell movement.
Not to worry: Fonterra, Zespri and the meat companies can be trusted to stop a Luxon Government doing anything to jeopardise their international branding.
If this sounds bleak, then cheer up. Even an unambitious, cautious, incrementalist and working group-driven Luxon government would be better than a third term of the six-year Ardern-Hipkins farce.
But Luxon’s backers increasingly worry Act is a barrier to this vision.
Their worry is not so much that Act would have genuine leverage. They know Luxon could always tell David Seymour and Brooke van Velden to try their luck with Hipkins or whoever replaces him as Labour leader after the election.
The real problem would be presentational. Like Ardern and Hipkins after Labour won a clear majority in 2020, Luxon would have to spend three long years making excuses for his government’s lack of action.
This is where Peters fits in.
For nine years, Key and English could blame either Peter Dunne or Te Pāti Māori for being so middling. A majority National-Act government would give Luxon no such excuse.
If your vision is not to do anything substantial but simply to restore a version of the past, who better than Peters to bring into the mix?
The Herald’s poll of polls suggests NZ First is not quite guaranteed to get 5 per cent yet. But, just quietly, Peters has a bunch of National Party big beasts, including those helping Jones in Northland, cheering on NZ First to get over the line.
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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