Heather du Plessis-Allan: Winston Peters undermines Christopher Luxon, defends silly policies

OPINION

Two things are almost certainly true of the first week of this new Government.

Winston Peters enjoyed his week more than Chris Luxon did. The public are much less outraged than the media.

Firstly, Winston’s week. He should be thrilled. He had an almost unbroken six-day stretch making headlines.

It started last Friday on the new Government’s first big day, unveiling the two coalition agreements. It was supposed to be statesmanlike, patriotic and serious. Winston derailed it, snapping at the media.

Saturday, was the new Finance Minister’s first long-form TV interview. She ended up having to defend Winston’s repeal of the smoking laws and ended up making it sound like she was trading corpses for cash.

Sunday was a rest day.

National Party finance spokesperson Nicola Willis. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday saw the media melting down over Winston Attacking The Media. He stole the Government’s big moments: the swearing-in on Monday, the first Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, then (by dint of the questions) new PM Chris Luxon’s first post-Cabinet press conference on Wednesday.

A run of news like that is not bad for a guy who barely featured a few months ago. It’s certainly ticking the box of making sure his supporters feel they’re getting a return for their vote.

Luxon won’t be loving it though. Winston upstaged him all week. His deputy’s snapping and policies drew attention away from all the nice firsts he should’ve enjoyed. His first Cabinet meeting, his first swearing-in, his first press conference as PM.

Winston’s also undermining Luxon to some degree. He’s making it quite obvious Luxon can’t or won’t reprimand him. That won’t bother the public too much. Voters have come to expect nothing less after years of watching various PMs try and fail to force Winston and his more bombastic MPs like Shane Jones to pull their horns.

Much worse for Luxon is having to defend Winston’s silly policies. The smoke-free law repeal, the plan to force government departments to switch the priority of their Māori and English names, and the policies around trans communities. All these policies are controversial and all these policies are Winston’s ideas. But Luxon has to own them and defend them because he’s the PM who agreed to them. There might be more to come. There are more gems in that coalition agreement yet to be unearthed.

This brings us to the media. The media are almost certainly more outraged than the public are over all of the above, even the aforementioned policies, but especially over the Attacks On The Media.

The media should remember that hardly anyone really actually likes the media anymore. That automatically makes Winston a hero to some and kind of fun to many when he attacks the media.

Judging by the media outrage over his attacks, it’s quite apparent many have not registered generally how unpopular we are and specifically how much unease there is about the $55m journalism fund he’s calling a bribe.

Winston will absolutely be preaching to a fringe element by using that word, but that does not mean anyone should pretend his hits won’t land. There is a larger, more rational crowd who may not agree with the exact allegation but will certainly agree with the sentiment. It says a lot that neither Chris Luxon nor David Seymour would defend the fund. Both said it had a perception problem.

It does. Defending the taking of the money and being outraged at Winston’s allegations makes that perception only worse.

The good news for everyone is the fun of the first week probably won’t be sustained. Winston will burn through his energy and then go overseas, Luxon will learn ways to handle Winston and his problems and the media will get over the initial outrage of having Winston back.