Christopher Luxon on the campaign trail at Riccarton Mall. Photo / George Heard
National leader Christopher Luxon is an extrovert.
That is one obvious conclusion from the election campaign. Luxon has been irrepressible.
On Tuesday, he walked the length of Christchurch’s Riccarton Mall, stopping for selfies with whoever wanted one.
In a brief fit of euphoria, Luxon departed from the main concourse and ducked into a Rodney Wayne hair salon to shake hands and take selfies, much to the consternation of some of the patrons.
One woman, mid cut-and-colour, leapt from her chair after finding herself surrounded by TV cameras chasing Luxon through the salon. She covered her face with a black cape, not wanting her unfinished in that night’s news bulletin.
Luxon, appearing to realise his mistake, beat a hasty retreat, smiling and waving his way back onto the main concourse.
“Hurry up and get the politics over,” grumbled a woman as Luxon and his entourage shuffled past her.
The next day, Luxon toured Hokitika and Greymouth on the West Coast. Catching the first flight out of Christchurch that morning, Luxon’s first stop was the Westland dairy factory in Hokitika.
Westland has been moving up the value chain by constructing a new lactoferrin plant. Lactoferrin, a protein, is present in human milk at much higher volumes than cow’s milk. It can be extracted from some milk products and re-added to others, increasing their value.
An enthusiastic Luxon donned a red hair net and toured the factory floor, emerging with a jar of butter which he liberally applied to scones baked by Karen and Ashley, who worked at the plant.
The lights flickered as he handed the scones out.
“That’s why we need local power generation on the West Coast,” said the party’s candidate for the West Coast seat, Maureen Pugh.
A worker at the plant muttered that they get 3000 lightning strikes a year on the coast. Pugh, who admits to being struck by lightning three times, was silent.
From there, Luxon drove to Greymouth, where Pugh had organised a small rally with about 30 supporters.
Luxon delivered the same stump speech he’s been using for days now. He begins with a focus on fixing the economy and lowering the cost of living, then moves on to crime and law and order, races through a couple of other issues before finishing on education, noting the education he received set him up to compete with people from Oxbridge and the Ivy League when he lived overseas.
He peppers each speech with local knowledge. In Christchurch, he delighted a crowd of pensioners with reminiscences of holidays at Duvauchelle, on Banks Peninsula. In Greymouth, he conjured up idyllic holidays spent at Iveagh Bay on nearby Lake Brunner.
Sometimes Luxon’s enthusiasm gets the better of him. After accusing his opponents of spreading fear and misinformation about National’s policy of lifting the age of eligibility for superannuation, Luxon said he would assuage the concerns of a crowd of residents at the Lady Wigram Rest Home with the truth.
The truth, Luxon said, is that National would gradually raise the pension age from 2044 which wouldn’t affect anyone in the crowd because it did not look as if they would be around then.
The gag elicited a chuckle, but it’s fair to say that for some it simply replaced a policy anxiety with a rather more existential one.
Another gag nearly got Luxon in trouble.
In Hokitika, speaking to a crowd of supporters, Luxon joked that his flight from Christchurch was “the best scenic flight in the world”.
“I sort of thought in my old mind at Air New Zealand ‘we should be charging more for that flight’ - then I realised I’m not the only CEO of Air New Zealand anymore so it’s not my worry or concern,” Luxon said.
One woman in the crowd quietly voiced concern that regional flights had become too expensive already - a frequent complaint of people who live in regional centres. Luxon has a patchy record on this issue too, having axed seven unsustainable routes in 2014.
But most of the crowd didn’t mind and laughed in good humour.
Luxon the extrovert rolled on, chatting to children on his flight to Hokitika, chatting to staff at the airport (talking to people in Air New Zealand-related settings is clearly Luxon’s happy place).
He’s had some curly questions too. In Greymouth, he stayed after his speech to talk to everyone and anyone. The concerns were Three Waters, public funding for private media companies, conservation stewardship land, and even the size of the West Coast electorate.
On the latter, one member of the public was concerned the electorate was too large and took in too many red-leaning towns, which is why National has failed to win it recently. He reckoned changes should and perhaps should be made.
Luxon heard him out, but warned that his time in the United States had taught him the perils of politicians getting too involved in drawing up electorates.
“You get what’s called Gerrymandering and you get these borders that are deliberately designed to protect incumbency. The way we do it in New Zealand is so much better to make it agnostic - to make it apolitical,” Luxon said.
It was a faintly prime ministerial moment. One of the few easy parts of being leader of the opposition is that you can say “yes” to more things than the prime minister. One of the challenges of being prime minister is you have to begin saying “no”.
He was also realistic about his ability to get the cost of oil down. Luxon will cancel Labour’s planned fuel tax hike, but said that ultimately many of the international drivers of fuel prices will be out of his control - an admission that will be music to Labour’s ears, after months of scraping over what inflation the Labour Government is and is not responsible for.
“The thing I can’t control with fuel is the global price, as you know. That will go up and down. As you are seeing from the Middle East there is a massive focus on keeping oil prices quite high for a little bit as they try and recover and make money themselves. The commodity part we can’t control but the other parts we can,” Luxon said.
Luxon’s campaign clearly has some momentum. The crowds are no Jacindamania (the visit to Rirccarton mall, where Ardern was mobbed three years ago) but people are showing up and people generally seem to like what National is offering.
Luxon is hoping the momentum does not depress turnout of supporters who think the election is a foregone conclusion. Early voting numbers suggest turnout will be low.
“A lot of people I run into say ‘I think you’re going to win,’’ Luxon told supporters in Hokitika.
“I always say to them, ‘I’d be very, very careful about that because MMP elections are incredibly close and we shouldn’t be taking anything for granted whatsoever,” Luxon said.
The statement is only partly true. The election doesn’t look to be close between left and right - National, Act, and NZ First are well ahead. But it’s that last part that’s the problem for Luxon.
What’s narrow is the gap between the chaotic Government that looks most likely on current polling and the more streamlined two-party version Luxon wants to lead.
He’s got very little time to narrow that gap.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
Act and NZ First killed the idea. Chris Hipkins has offered a way to bypass them.