National Party leader Christopher Luxon (right) with MP for Tauranga Sam Uffindell. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION
Christopher Luxon can no longer doubt that — with obvious exceptions like his deputy Nicola Willis and number three Chris Bishop — he is largely working with numpties.
Luxon, Willis and campaign director Jo de Joux delivered a highly successful first conference for the new leader.
Willis, a party favourite, was careful not to overshadow her boss. Delegates found policy forums meaty and meaningful.
Luxon's speech was a triumph, with all the rhetoric party activists adore, a fair but brutal critique of their Labour foe, a clearly articulated ideology about the power of local communities over distant bureaucracies, and a policy exemplar to bring it together.
Willis' speech endorsed the themes of her 2022 tax proposal. That included the controversial promise to increase the take-home pay of the chief executive of Air New Zealand by $270,000 a year and risk fuelling inflation, by cutting the top tax rate despite still-high fiscal deficits.
But her emphasis was towards the more urgent issue of tax relief for the middle and working class, by indexing tax thresholds against inflation. Indexation is so desperately needed that National fears Finance Minister Grant Robertson will trump them in his pre-election Budget.
Wisely, Willis gave no dates for rolling out each element of her promised new tax plan.
She retains the option of delivering indexation in her first 100 days while linking the 39 per cent top-rate cut to a return to surplus.
Luxon's speech thrilled National's conservatives by promising "one standard of democracy, equal voting rights and no co-governance of public services".
It delighted its liberals by including emissions reductions in his vision for a "more confident, positive, ambitious and aspirational New Zealand than we know today".
But these were single sentences. The speech primarily focused on the basic economic and social issues voters care about most, including household budgets and interest rates, hospitals and schools, and a hand-up for the struggling.
The policy announcement bringing it together was getting young people at risk of long-term welfare dependency into work.
Most widely reported was Luxon's message to under-25s who don't want to work that "you might have a free ride under Labour but, under National, it ends". That prompted the furious reaction from the Grey Lynn establishment that National strategists seek, communicating to centre voters that Luxon was saying something important.
Luxon positioned his policy as saving money long-term, telling taxpayers that "National is on your side".
But these were the second and third audiences he addressed directly. Luxon spoke first to unemployed under-25s genuinely looking for a job, empathising that "that's a hard place to be" and promising "more support and encouragement from your own job coach".
These coaches wouldn't be yet more Wellington bureaucrats or remote call-centre workers. They'd be local social workers in community-led organisations like iwi and urban Māori authorities; churches and other faith-based groups; perhaps Lions, Rotary or Zonta clubs; and other NGOs.
Luxon name-checked approvingly the Māori social agencies that successfully sued the Ministry of Health to fix its failing Covid vaccination programme.
In the short run, National accepts Luxon's policy would cost more, but believes it would deliver welfare savings and greater tax revenue in the out-years.
National has talked about this sort of thing since the 1980s.
Paula Rebstock's Welfare Working Group advised in 2011 how the welfare system could move to an actuarial approach.
National has sloganeered about "Bill English's social investment approach" ever since.
Like an investment banker's net present value calculation, it's about estimating how much misery particular individuals or groups face without intervention, how much they might cost taxpayers, and investing early on to prevent those harms occurring.
It would progressively shift the balance of taxpayers' welfare spending from ambulances at the bottom of the cliff to fences at the top. Luxon's new policy gave meaning to the old mantra.
Within a day, Labour surrogates shifted their attack. Luxon's proposals weren't evil after all, but already happening.
That's true only if you think centralised bureaucracies in Wellington are better than local community organisations, a remaining ideological flashpoint between the two big parties.
Luxon's messages were tougher than John Key worrying about the underclass and taking young Aroha Nathan up to Waitangi in the summer of 2007.
His choosing the Baptist Church's Visionwest programme to promote his policy also departed from Key, who would have preferred a more secular symbol of community-based services.
Luxon charting his own course is good news because National's biggest problem has been its fruitless search for "the next John Key". There won't be another Key, just as there won't be another Helen Clark, Jim Bolger, David Lange or Rob Muldoon. Leaders must be comfortable in their own skins, with who they are and with what they are doing.
National's quest for the next Key has caused some of its biggest selection fiascos, including the Sam Uffindell disaster.
National's socially and intellectually in-bred nomenklatura thinks having worked in an international bank is enough, ironically insulting Key who was not some middle-manager fraud investigator but global head of foreign exchange for Merrill Lynch and one of the world's most respected leaders in the industry.
Luxon had every right to be furious when the Uffindell debacle overshadowed not just his successful conference but the first 1News Kantar Poll suggesting he will be prime minister. The poll only confirmed what other reputable agencies reported through autumn, but gets more attention.
Yet, when Luxon took control, his crisis management was prime ministerial. Initially, he accepted his MP's word that the bullying was a one-off. When further allegations emerged, Luxon decisively suspended Uffindell from caucus and brought in Maria Dew, QC to investigate.
If Dew finds against Uffindell, Luxon has the ammunition to force him out permanently and confront the incompetence and entitlement culture that developed under former president Peter Goodfellow. If she clears him, Dew's reputation means everyone will accept her finding.
Luxon's lesson is that he can only rely on a very small circle of competent MPs and staff.
That means he must take more personal control of the party and campaign than is desirable. But for many reasons, including the party's unfortunate centralisation and de-democraticisation in 2003, National's administrative wing and selection processes are broken. Luxon has no choice for the next 12 months but to be as hands-on as he was this week.
If that means he can stamp his mark on the party, the Uffindell scandal may yet work out for him. More importantly longer term, it has empowered those who care about restoring National as a democratic, federal institution controlled by its members rather than its failed centralised ruling clique.
- Matthew Hooton is an Auckland-based public relations consultant.
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