PM and ministers caught in glare

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Both major party leaders found themselves in the headlights last week but for Christopher Luxon it was a brief dazzling, while things were glaringly and uncomfortably bright for Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and two wayward senior ministers.

Luxon found himself criticised over his plea for New Zealanders to have more babies, but behind it was a serious subject. He made the comment at an infrastructure conference and described it as a tongue-in-cheek one.

And he was right when he said in a question-and-answer session that “New Zealand stopped replacing itself in 2016”. Our birth rate has fallen over the past decade and with an ageing population, we share a problem faced by many other developed countries — how to provide the workers to support the senior citizens.

An example of the country’s labour market challenges was shown in a 1News piece on an employer having to fill a months-long vacancy by hiring a tyre fitter from the Philippines

Importing more people is an obvious answer, and immigration has surged back to pre-pandemic levels. But that brings the same problem of providing the infrastructure needed, especially housing.

Luxon also faced a grilling by Q+A host Jack Tame over his $16 million, seven-house housing portfolio.

But at the end of the week he got another favourable poll result with a Taxpayers’ Union-Curia one showing again that National and ACT would be able to form a government.

Hipkins was clearly irritated after suspending Transport Minister Michael Wood over the issue of him retaining shares in Auckland Airport despite being advised 12 times by the Cabinet Office to sell them.

Wood, seen by some as a potential future prime minister, has badly blotted his copybook and his future could hang on an inquiry being held.

At the same time Minister of Education Jan Tinetti was before Parliament’s privileges committee for taking too long to correct a comment that she did not have a say in releasing truancy data, when she did.

Both situations are hard to fathom and Hipkins will be intensely frustrated as he and the Labour Party face a tight election.

His problems pale before those of former US President Donald Trump who has been indicted for removing about 300 classified documents from the White House, while the former UK prime minister Boris Johnson has resigned from Parliament ahead of the release of a report on the Partygate scandal — parties at No 10 Downing St while the country was in lockdown.

Still, as the old saw goes, a week is a long time in politics — Hipkins has plenty of time to try to regain his earlier momentum.