The Beehive, where politicians try to win and retain power. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
Choosing a politician of the year was not an easy task in a year in which the form of the viable contenders has been as volatile as the Black Caps.
It was sometimes tempting to simply opt for the referee during deliberations. New Speaker Adrian Rurawhe has had a marvellous start in the job, partly by dint of his own equanimity but also because Opposition MPs are so relieved to be rid of Trevor Mallard that there are choruses of alleluia every time Rurawhe deals with a point of order.
In the end, guidance came from John Armstrong - a former NZ Herald political editor and a treasured mentor until he had to retire because of the toll Parkinson’s disease was taking on him. John died recently and I reread his final column for the NZ Herald in 2015.
He wrote: “Never forget that politics boils down to power - winning it and, just as importantly, retaining it. The fascination comes in watching how politicians play the game.”
On that metric there is a clear winner – although it comes with the caveat that it is still unclear just what he would do with that power if he does win it.
That is National Party leader Christopher Luxon, who is the politician of the year despite barely being a politician at all.
Admittedly, Luxon very nearly disqualified himself by merrily nominating himself when he was asked who he thought deserved the title. At least we know he will not suffer from self-doubt.
But Luxon took over as leader in December 2021, just a year after becoming an MP.
HIs caucus was in a state of crisis and polling in the mid-20s.
He ends this year with polling in the high-30s and a realistic chance of becoming Prime Minister in 2023.
He does not get this award for painting a convincing picture of his vision for New Zealand.
He has barely got out the sketching pencil in that regard. He talks a lot about the need to have a plan, but is yet to produce one beyond a few scattered areas of policy. That is next year’s job.
He has had many fumbles along the way – and a lot of help.
His greatest help was the timing – he took over just as the public mood was turning against Labour.
Luxon was charged with giving them somewhere else to put their vote.
That meant delivering something of a miracle: Turning the zoo that was the National Party caucus of 2020 and 2021 back into a well-disciplined, focused and generally hard-working team.
The caucus of today is like a different lot of MPs than late last year.
Luxon’s greatest asset in delivering on that is also his greatest liability: His newness to politics and inexperience as a politician.
It meant Luxon took on the leadership without any baggage or favourites among the MPs. That could also pay off if he ends up having to deal with the likes of NZ First after the election.
But it is also his biggest risk in the election year that lies ahead, where missteps mean more. His training wheels must be off by then.
Many of his missteps are because he lacks a detailed knowledge of National’s usual positioning (or the enemy’s) and New Zealand politics. (Although some of the things that enraged Twitter or those on the left were not gaffes, but simply political positions they disagree with). At times, they are simply tone-deaf or unthinking: his references to South Auckland garages and “bottom-feeding” spring to mind.
He’s a quick study - and has one of the best teachers in the game. Sir John Key is his Miyagi, informally (but frequently), advising him on everything from attack line strategy to the effectiveness of taking the mickey out of himself for his blunders.
Luxon is quick to try to brush off his own inexperience and questions about his plans and vision as beltway Wellington-centric questions.
At some point he has to answer them and the answers may well determine whether or not his name might appear in this column again in 2023.
Luxon gets most of the credit for the turnaround in his party’s fortunes, but it would not have happened without his deputy, Nicola Willis.
Willis has mopped up after Luxon’s verbal whoopsies. More importantly, she has met her KPI of ensuring people saw National as credible handlers of the economy again.
Willis impressed business leaders by getting on top of the finance portfolio quickly. She is a strong woman’s voice and the liberal balance to Luxon’s moral conservatism (one of the things people are suspicious about). She will be especially critical next year, which will be almost as much a contest on the economic and finance front as the leadership front.
Willis’ stocks within caucus itself are now also very high: She has managed to put behind her the residual distrust from her role in the Todd Muller coup.
She has done enough that the left (and sometimes the media) now enjoy making mischief by posing the question of whether she should have been the leader in the first place.
The answer is no but if Luxon does not achieve his goal then there is one obvious candidate to replace him.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern deserves more credit for the year just gone than she will ever really get.
Ardern has faced intense levels of criticism. Sometimes it was warranted. At other times, it has amounted to incoherent ranting. We are an ungrateful pack of people sometimes.
The change in her fortunes over the year was highlighted by a relatively small thing: News that her annual Waitangi Day barbecue would be cancelled in 2023 because of security concerns.
She started that in 2018 at the height of Jacinda-mania – and contrasted it with former PM Sir John Key’s approach of a Waitangi Day speech at a breakfast with iwi leaders and other dignitaries. Hers was the feast from a Prime Minister of the People. No longer.
Overseas she remained a force to be reckoned with – now more mature and experienced in the art of foreign relations and peddling New Zealand. As soon as the borders reopened she was off – selling New Zealand in the US, Europe, Asia on trade and political trips. She made her first visit to the White House and at Apec had a one-on-one with China’s President Xi Jinping.
The change in Government in Australia to Anthony Albanese bore dividends for her – and for New Zealanders living in Australia. Those dividends will be announced next Anzac Day.
But Ardern overseas was almost a different person to Ardern at home. Here, her road was pitted with potholes Labour itself had put there - and a seeming inability to realise that they were potholes and fill them in before they drove into them.
Labour will have to be more cut-throat about that in 2023.
Grant Robertson’s books actually still look okay – the problem is that many New Zealanders’ books don’t.
Ardern – having once spoken of the need for governments to reform slowly to take the people with them – fell into the temptation that having a majority government offered of ramming through everything possible while it had the chance.
It did not readjust its programme to take account of the new longer-term problems that Covid-19 threw up, the Covid-exhausted public, the capacity of the public service to deliver, or the economic outlook.
Ardern is, by nature (and Covid-19), prone to acting on evidence and principle rather than politics. Sometimes it has cost her.
The belated realisation of that was showing at the end of the year with shifts in immigration policy and putting the co-governance agenda on hold – perhaps too late, although Labour hopes it will be just in time.
Act leader David Seymour won this award last year due to his efforts filling in as the effective Leader of the Opposition while National was distracted with itself.
Luxon has now reclaimed that position for himself.
Seymour remains very effective – and a better performer than Luxon in Parliament itself, although Luxon has not disgraced himself.
Seymour has also managed to keep Act’s polling high, despite National’s recovery.
But of Seymour and Luxon, only one of them could end up becoming Prime Minister and it isn’t Seymour.
As for the chances of that, when Labour’s Chris Hipkins gave his final speech in Parliament, he had a warning for the politicians opposite him on the National Party benches.
He noted that at the same time in 2019 – a year before an election – National was well ahead of Labour in the polls – and it was in the mid-40s. Its leader Simon Bridges was all but measuring the drapes in Premier House and folks were wondering if the Jacinda-mania train had done its dash and Labour would be a one-term Government. Then came Covid, and Labour went on to get its historic election result.
“A lot can change in one year,” Hipkins warned them.
While the exhaustion of the year was showing, Ardern was starting to show a spark of fight-back by the year’s end – and more willingness to kick Labour’s problem areas to touch.
She – and the rest of Labour’s caucus – will be hoping the spark catches the tinder for next year.
This time round, they won’t have the help of a self-destructing National applying the bellows.
National and NZ First will will not support the bill past a first reading.