National deputy leader Nicola Willis during budget day at Parliament in Wellington. Photo / Marty Melville
OPINION:
Nicola Willis has cast herself in the unfortunate role of being National’s chief sweeper-upper. She should stop right now.
It probably goes with the territory for a female deputy political leader to have to clean up after her boss. (Think Nikki Kaye and the hapless Todd Muller – and for that matter, Desley Simpson and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.)
But at a time when Willis should be raining blows on the Labour Government, having to run defence over untidy comments by Chris Luxon on prescription charging for contraceptives is a waste of her time and undermines her authority.
It projects her in the role of a political helpmeet.
Given that Willis is the party’s finance spokesperson, this simply undercuts her prime task, which is to convince voters she will make a better job of running the country’s finances than Labour’s Grant Robertson.
There’s more to this of course.
National has been criticised for being tardy in getting its prime economic and taxation policies in front of the public.
What it is doing however – off the back of the large war chest it has built from a surge in political donations from some of New Zealand’s highest net-worthers – is getting its messaging out around Auckland through an outdoor advertising campaign.
Massive digital billboards down the outside of a building close by the Cordis Hotel in Auckland’s Symonds St yesterday showed five separate campaign advertisements on rotate.
Each advertisement has a photo of Luxon and Willis (Luxon’s shoulder marginally ahead of hers) making election pledges.
The two most relevant to Willis say: “National will end reckless Government spending and bring the cost of living down”; and “National will provide tax relief and let you keep more of your money.”
It doesn’t tell you how and where and by how much National will cut government expenditure to fund tax cuts. That won’t happen until later in the campaign.
But those heading up Symonds St to join the motorway at the Karangahape Rd corner won’t miss the messaging.
Three other advertisements promise boot camps for serious youth offenders, say the party will ensure that schools teach an hour of reading, writing and maths every day, and will introduce bonding for nurses and midwives.
But neither news media nor National’s prime political opponent, Labour, will focus overly on these issues when National’s leader keeps falling into holes of his own making. Too many times, Luxon has made ill-judged comments on the fly, then had to walk them back the next day.
This is not irredeemable.
He has also been misinterpreted in reportage of his recent meetings and needs to be clearer to avoid the insinuation that he and his party are racist.
In truth, National has a proud liberal tradition and there is much for Luxon to leverage when it comes to the party’s record on Treaty of Waitangi settlements, irrespective of wanting to draw a line under co-governance.
The lack of clarity may be a reflection of his political inexperience before becoming leader after just one year as an MP. This compares to the more than four years that Sir John Key had to learn the ropes before becoming National’s leader two years out from the 2008 election.
Political polls indicate that Luxon’s party is much more popular with men than women. The latest Roy Morgan poll shows women favour a Labour-Greens coalition whereas men favour a National-Act coalition
On an overall basis, women favour the current governing Labour-Greens coalition, on 52 per cent, 14 percentage points ahead of a potential National-Act coalition on 38 per cent.
Younger women – aged 18 to 49 – are the core support for the governing Labour-Greens coalition, the preference for 56 per cent of them, well ahead of the 33.5 per cent of this age group who support a potential National-Act coalition.
Older women aged 50-plus narrowly prefer the governing Labour-Greens, on 48 per cent, compared to 43 per cent who support National-Act – a gap of 5 percentage points.
In a world where “women with uteruses” number around half the voting population, making comments that lend themselves to misinterpretation as anti-women (even when on closer examination they are not) will not help Luxon’s profile with female voters. This applies even to the 50-plus cohort who may be past the childbearing age themselves but will have had to manage their own contraception in the past and may have family members who are doing so now.
So, when Labour campaign manager Megan Woods suggested via an overblown tweet that life for women under a Luxon-led Government would resemble the dystopian world of The Handmaid’s Tale (essentially where women’s role is to be breeders) it unsurprisingly got quick carry-through.
The problem is that Luxon has been prone to misinterpretation in the past.
When asked by Newshub’s Jenna Lynch in an interview shortly after becoming leader to confirm if abortion was tantamount to murder, he replied, “that’s what a pro-life position is”.
He conceded it was a big issue for women: “I fully respect that and I fully understand it is deeply personal ... we all hold deeply personal views.”
But he has been dogged ever since by suggestions that his Christian beliefs will colour his politics as a Prime Minister, even if he says they won’t.
News media could simply take him at his word.
Former National Prime Minister Sir William (Bill) English, who opposed liberalising the abortion laws while in government, did not attract the same opprobrium.
Interestingly, his views did not stop National from scoring 44.4 per cent of the vote at the 2017 election, to Labour’s 36.9 per cent. It was New Zealand First which conferred the prime ministership on Jacinda Ardern.
Another difficulty National faces is that its liberal wing within caucus is diminished – particularly the women.
When Nikki Kaye, Paula Bennett and Amy Adams walked out the door at the 2017 election after Muller’s disastrous coup resulted in his resignation as leader, National was wounded.
Not only did the trio have seniority as National front-benchers, but they were also former Cabinet ministers in Sir John Key’s Government.
Importantly, they were liberals. All three voted for the 2020 legislation which decriminalised abortion, as did MPs Judith Collins, Barbara Kuriger, Erica Stanford and Willis herself.
But even while some of the 2020 election’s female intake appear liberal, they have not been tested in the heat of complex legislation. The caucus is male-dominated.
If Luxon is to project himself as friendly to women’s interests, he needs to play that liberal female faction forward - not simply turn up, as he has in the past, with a phalanx of male spokespersons.
Tax cuts will take a party so far. But National also needs to project a brand which embraces women’s issues.
Willis is not the person to do that. But other female MPs could. She needs to be “in brand” as a potential Finance Minister.
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