National leader Christopher Luxon and deputy leader Nicola Willis on a walkabout in Tawa, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
National leader Christopher Luxon and deputy leader Nicola Willis on a walkabout in Tawa, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
EDITORIAL
New Zealand goes to the polls in 100 days and political events are gaining in significance as their potential impact on votes increases.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has presented well on the international stage in recent weeks while at home his Cabinet has struggled to demonstrate a unified purpose.
Last night, he was scheduled to speak at 70th-anniversary celebrations of the first ascent of Mt Everest. It is tempting to draw comparisons with the challenge he and his party face but recent polls suggest he has as much of a chance as anyone in the electoral race to the top.
Tomorrow, Hipkins will again head abroad, en route to Brussels to ink an NZ-EU Free Trade Agreement and to attend the Nato Summit in Lithuania. One imagines he will have his fingers crossed that his MPs are on their best behaviour while he’s away, unlike his attendance at the King’s Coronation when Meka Whaitiri wandered off to Te Pāti Māori and when he visited China while allegations of fractious working relationships emerged from Cabinet minister Kiri Allan’s office.
Prime Minster Chris Hipkins at a Zespri promotion in Shanghai during the trade delegation to China. Photo / MFAT
In each and of themselves, these episodes amount to not a great deal. But strung together on the heels of the demotions of Cabinet Ministers Stuart Nash and Michael Wood, with the Privileges Committee hearing for Jan Tinetti and a perception emerges of a house in disarray.
On the other side of the House, National Party Leader Christopher Luxon has been on the road around New Zealand, attempting to become more recognisable to the public.
Luxon, with his background in business, has less of a “common touch” than many political leaders and has had to work hard to connect with those outside boardrooms and shareholder briefings.
The outcomes haven’t always translated well into short attention-grabbing soundbites. A joke about needing more babies might have worked at the Comedy Fest but Luxon’s delivery of, “Here is the deal. Essentially New Zealand stopped replacing itself in 2016. I encourage all of you to go out there and have more babies if you wish. That would be helpful,” was too easily converted into memes illustrating his conservative values.
This followed his unfortunate comment to farmers at Fieldays that New Zealand was a “very negative, wet, whiny, inward-looking country”.
Since these episodes, Luxon has retreated more to the hard-and-fast lines he’s been directed on, that “this Government is soft on crime” and New Zealand needs to”get its mojo back”.
With the countdown clock now activated to the General Election and the 53rd Parliament dissolving on September 8, Hipkins appears to have too many liabilities in his team and Luxon seems to be the major one in his party’s ambitions.
Political polls steadily show a National/Act or Labour/Green coalition might still occur, but possibly needing the support of a “kingmaker” in the Te Pāti Māori support - already ruled out by Luxon and the Māori party.
In the US, October 14 is National Dessert Day. Who’ll get “just desserts” and who’ll take the cake here? The stakes are rising with each new political misstep.
