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Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics is a weekly, mostly satirical column on politics that appears on listener.co.nz on Friday mornings.
Like a scatty Labrador, Christopher Luxon always seems happiest when he’s off the leash and running around outside chasing something. So he must be giddy with excitement that he’s getting out of the House once again this weekend so he can dash about with his tongue hanging out pursuing a free-trade deal in India. Good boy! Now bring it back to master!
No doubt he’ll be relieved to have four days away from exploding school lunches, dire poll results and the (surely) creeping fear that he might be leading a coalition destined to be a one-term government.
But that won’t be what’s buoying the Prime Minister the most. It will be that he’s going to be in his happy place: being a bobbing salesman trying to sell something to someone on their doorstep.
When Luxon took office, much was made by some of the political commentariat that he would be a “CEO Prime Minister”. What was meant by this, I gather, is that having spent three decades in trade, Luxon was expected to approach running the country like a steely-eyed CEO -- that he was a bold corporate titan who would use his enormous business acumen to lead us all into the sunny uplands of balanced books, record export receipts and prosperity for all.
Disappointingly, Luxon has instead looked more like Chris from Sales, who, when not apologising for selling you an exploding lunch, sweatily dashes hither and thither trying to flog a dead horse called Brand New Zealand.
His “trade delegations” -- a rather flash description for what amounts to cold calling potential customers -- have thus far achieved nothing of real substance, though his endless tiki tours have reminded one of a backpacker aimlessly bumming his way around Asia.
Luxon’s passport now has stamps from South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Japan and Vietnam as he’s flitted about searching for new trade opportunities.
Now Chris from Sales is adding India to his list in the hope he can make good on his wildly optimistic, pre-election (and pre-Trump) promise of getting a free-trade deal with India sorted by the 2026 election. This after manning a stall at his two-day “Investment Summit 2025″ this week. As an event, the summit sounded pretty much like the government was putting out a begging bowl, with Chris from Sales and his ministers pleading their case to passing international investors, hoping they’ll throw a few coins at us so we can build infrastructure we apparently can’t afford to pay for ourselves.
Now, there is no denying the energy involved in all this pitching. For sheer commitment, Luxon might even deserve the chocolate fish for Salesman of the Year. Only, he’s not going to get it because he has so signally failed, since becoming Prime Minister, to sell what really counts in politics: himself to his voters.
The Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll out this week once again highlighted Luxon’s month-by-month slide in popularity. And, for the second month in a row, a poll has indicated that Luxon leads a coalition which, if an election were held today, would no longer be in government.
But this time it is worse for Luxon: according to the survey, he is now not even our preferred PM. Labour leader Chris Hipkins is, and he’s the guy who led his party to one of the worst election results in its history in 2023, not to mention being a ginger who dresses like a schoolboy going to the prom.
Were the foreign investors who Luxon wooed at his Investment Summit concerned they were talking business with a government that might be out of office next year? Do foreign leaders who welcome his trade delegations see through -- as so many Kiwi voters now apparently do -- his hail-fellow-well-met glad-handing and glib sloganeering?
No idea. But therein lies the great Chris from Sales conundrum: if, despite the energy, commitment and endless enthusiasm, Luxon is so bad at flogging himself to his existing customers, the New Zealand people, what do you reckon the chances are that our “CEO PM” is any better at selling Brand New Zealand to the world?
Is David Seymour out to lunch?
It’s still early, but it’s almost certain we have the runaway winner for Political S*** Show of the Year 2025. It is -- drumroll, please -- David Seymour’s retooled, cut-price school lunches programme.
That’s no big surprise, I’m sure. Since it launched just a month ago, it has been a quite staggering political dumpster fire -- one so big that, chances are, you can see it from space.
And just when you thought this flaming pile of bad food and terrible headlines couldn’t get any worse, shocking new dispatches arrive from hither and yon telling of exploding lunches, a burnt child, a major lunch provider going bust and lunches being flown in from Australia.
As bad as it all is, the truly staggering thing this week wasn’t any of that, but how Seymour tried to style it out. Talking to media before question time on Tuesday, after news broke that Hamilton-based Libelle (Liability, surely? Ed.) was being put into liquidation, Seymour said “I actually think the model we have is working very well.” Oddly, no one laughed.
Seymour then went on to explain “there have been challenges. We’ve been really open and honest about them. We’ve got a track record of working through and solving them. We’ll continue to do that. And I think people are going to be very pleased with the model. Yesterday, our on-time delivery was 99.74%.”
So yes, the food might sometimes be terrible. Yes, it might explode. But just like Mussolini, Seymour has got the trains, sorry, lunch deliveries, to run on time.
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
The political surprise of the week? For the Prime Minister, it had to be the media letting him know that his self-described “inappropriate” MP Andrew Bayly was on a two-week - later upped to three-weeks - jolly in Nepal.
Luxon says he gave Bayly the time off (on the taxpayers’ dime of course; thanks for asking us) after the poor dear resigned as a minister after once again making a complete dick of himself. However, Bayly doesn’t appear to have told the PM that he wasn’t going to be spending the fortnight sobbing into his hanky at home or on an anger management course but was going to Mt Everest.
Last year, Bayly called a winery worker a “loser” several times before telling him to “take a bottle of wine and fuck off”. A fortnight ago, Bayly got into an “animated” discussion with one of his staffers and grabbed his arm, leading to his resignation as a minister. Now he seems to have left the PM flat-footed and red-faced.
Apparently, Bayly won’t actually be climbing Everest and going into the so-called “death zone” above 8000m. That’s just as well. After these three strikes, he’s surely already in the political death zone for what remains of the parliamentary term.
Or maybe not. Luxon reckons he sets high standards, but with Bayly, he’s like a love-sick sheila giving her awful boyfriend endless second chances.
Political quiz of the week
Who is the corpse between the PM and his deputy in this picture?
A/ New Zealand’s economic and trade prospects under Trump.
B/ Andrew Bayly’s political career.
C/ David Seymour’s school lunches programme.
D/ Christopher Luxon’s popularity.
