It was evident from National’s gloat-athon in Question Time on Tuesday that the party was buoyed by its annual conference at the weekend.
Leader Christopher Luxon decided that while Chris Hipkins was in China, all of his questions to Acting Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni would attempt to humiliate herfor not knowing things he believed she should know about the state of the economy.
Almost every question Luxon asked was framed with such detail, there was an in-built expectation that Sepuloni would fail, either to admit New Zealand was a cot-case or to know detail.
Her stock answer was New Zealand could always improve but it’s doing better than most in some measures.
And as she fudged and hedged and deflected in the way most nimble politicians would do most of Luxon’s caucus howled in derision at her apparent ignorance.
His deputy leader and finance spokeswoman, Nicola Willis, did not appear to join in the derision.
She may be still getting over that awkward moment after Luxon’s conference speech, when he grabbed her hand to hold it up in his triumphal moment, only to have it shaken off after a couple of seconds.
An exchange between Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis has been described as 'awkward' by social media users. Photo / Supplied
Amid Tuesday’s hubris by National MPs, there was not a thought for the recent display of Luxon’s own ignorance at the conference.
After his speech unveiling a new law and order policy that would almost certainly increase the prison muster, Luxon could not answer a simple journalist’s question: how much does it cost to house a prisoner?
He deferred to his Corrections spokesman, Mark Mitchell, although it was Newshub reporter Amelia Wade who gave the specific answer.
The point is not that Luxon didn’t grasp the detail; it is that, like Sepuloni, he should not have been expected to know it all. Throwing quiz questions has become a cheap substitute for political debate, employed by journalists and politicians alike.
Luxon was unfair to expect Sepuloni to emulate The Chase’s Dark Destroyer on most of the gotcha questions he asked:
- Has New Zealand’s economy grown faster or slower than Australia’s in the last two quarters?
- Are any of Australia, the United States, Canada, China, Japan or any other comparable country in the Asia Pacific region in recession or is it just New Zealand?
- Can she actually name a country other than New Zealand with a current account deficit, a large fiscal deficit, high inflation, high interest rates and a recession?
- What is the current account deficit and why does it matter so much to the credit agencies?
At that point, Finance Minister Grant Robertson interjected with “8.5 per cent of GDP” to assist Sepuloni.
Acting Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni at the post-cabinet press conference this week. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Luxon then asked Sepuloni again: and why does it matter so much to credit agencies?
That is the point at which Sepuloni surrendered and said she didn’t have the answer.
She had been doing reasonably up until that point, and perhaps could have reached for a basic answer such as “the view of the credit agencies on every country’s economy can have an impact on the ratings they give every country.”
The chances are that if Luxon himself were asked those questions before the -0.1 per cent GDP growth rate tipped New Zealand into recession, he would not have known the answers to all of them.
He has not known the answer to some pretty important points in the past. Last year, for example, in an interview with the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan, he didn’t realise the top tax rate of 39c kicked in at $180,000 instead of $79,000 which was all the more surprising because it is National’s policy to remove the top rate.
In today’s question time, Luxon did not want a good answer. He did not want to debate policy. He wanted to rattle Sepuloni and ask questions that he hoped would show her up.
He looked smug and she looked annoyed at herself.
One of them failed, and it wasn’t her.
Audrey Young, senior political correspondent at The New Zealand Herald, is based at Parliament and specialises in writing about politics and power. She was the Herald’s political editor for 18 years and is the current Voyager Media Awards political journalist of the year.
