National leader Christopher Luxon during a media standup. Photo / Mark Mitchell
National leader Christopher Luxon during a media standup. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
Christopher Luxon's had the warning. He needs to improve his performance.
The warning was the drop in his personal popularity in the Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll. He crashed 5.6 points down to 22.4 per cent support. Losing one in five supporters is a significant drop. By contrast, the PM isnearly twice as popular with 41.2 per cent support.
Luxon can blame most of that slide in support on his bungling of the abortion debate. And it's not wrong to describe it as a bungling.
Sure, the man's entitled to his own personal views, just like conservative PM Sir Bill English and conservative deputy PM Jim Anderton were before him. But he didn't get punished for his personal views. He got punished for failing to be clear enough.
He had to put out three statements clarifying that National would not change abortion laws before he got the language right enough to be convincing. What should've been a few news headlines on a Saturday afternoon dragged out to a four-day story into the middle of the following week when news audiences are at their peak.
But that's not the only misstep in recent days.
While in the UK he told a think-tank audience that New Zealand businesses are "getting soft". His point was a fair one. His wording was awful. Blaming businesses when he should've blamed the Government for creating a softening environment was the mistake. Saying it to an international audience made it worse. We don't like our own badmouthing us to the world. Just ask author Eleanor Catton and filmmaker Taika Waititi.
Christopher Luxon with former British prime minister Theresa May in London. Photo / Supplied
Luxon's also flip-flopping on too many policies. The most obvious example is whether he'll back Act's call for a referendum on co-governance. First he ruled it out. Then he ruled it back in. He never really sounded convincing either way. He often doesn't.
It's not a surprise that Luxon's inexperience is hurting him. That was predicted by plenty of commentators.
Luxon's mistakes are compounded by the relative inexperience of some key back-office staffers he's hired and some of the advice he seems to be getting. Some of his closest advisers are MPs who are perhaps far too concerned with what extremely PC Wellingtonians think to have the courage to pick – and stick to – policy positions.
To his credit, he is improving. As clumsy as the recent mistakes have been, they're nowhere near as bad as his error in December when he agreed with an interviewer that abortion is tantamount to murder. They're also not as bad as one of his very first media outings in 2019, when he allowed an interviewer to trap him into suggesting a no-jab, no- pay policy for people receiving Working for Families money. It wasn't National Party policy.
He's lucky these mistakes are happening - and possibly being ironed out - this early in the election cycle. There's still more than a year to go to the election and people are sick of politics after two years of intensity.
But this is no longer a totally low-risk time for Luxon. National is out-polling Labour in a series of polls. This means voters are now measuring him like a potential prime minister. That lifts expectations.
The closer the election draws, the less forgiving the public will become of rookie errors. The abortion poll drop is a case point.
Luxon is National's big hope. He is the reason they have a realistic shot at government in 2023. But he must get his performance lifted quickly because his errors are possibly the party's single biggest risk.
