Greg Dixon’s Another kind of politics: The coalition’s first year in six
As any married person will tell you, it’s bloody important to remember anniversaries.
So Another Kind of Politics really has no choice but to join in this week’s flash flood of commentary marking the first anniversary of the near-new government of National, NZ First and the Act Party, or as this column likes to think of them, the Coalition of Codswallop.
Wednesday marked the first full year since the Prime Minister, the out-of-touch multimillionaire Christopher Luxon, announced the formation of his three-headed COC.
As with any new relationship, it is very important to use the first anniversary as a time to contemplate whether it’s really working out. Here are six questions bothering Another Kind of Politics after the COC’s first year in power:
1. Why the hell does the Prime Minister, the out-of-touch multimillionaire Christopher Luxon, keeping selling off his houses?
First he had seven mortgage-free properties. Then, after he sold the flash Wellington apartment, he had six mortgage-free properties. Now he’s reportedly put another one on the market which means he will soon have (if he doesn’t already) only five mortgage-free properties.
The PM is, of course, entitled to do what he pleases with his multitudes of mortgage-free properties. But the nagging mystery is this: why would anyone who boasts he’s a successful business leader be selling property in a market that has spent the last 18 months flopped lower than whale poo?
What is the PM not telling us? And where is he reinvesting the money? Gold, Bitcoin or, given the current geopolitical situation, bomb shelters? We should be told.
2. What’s sicker, the economy or the health system?
For all National’s big talk about being sound fiscal managers, if its first year in government was a movie, it would be called Honey, I Shrunk The Economy. On a per capita basis, the economy contracted 1.5% in the third quarter of this year compared the same quarter in 2023. On top of that, those on the jobseekers’ benefit are at a record high, unemployment is still going up and we continue to have among the lowest GDP growth rates in the civilised world.
As poorly as the economy is, there are at least signs it could make it out of the ICU in 2026, unlike the New Zealand public health system.
This patient was already pretty crook a year ago when Labour left office, but under the coalition, it is beginning to look like it’s entering its terminal stages and the doctor in charge of the case, Health Minister Shane Reti, appears completely out of his depth on a cure.
Nearly every week of this last year has brought fresh news of a health system that’s failing, despite the best efforts of those working inside it. And this week we learned that to meet Reti’s back-of-an-evelope waiting list targets, patients in need of specialist care like surgery are simply not being added to public waiting lists. Think about that: to meet Reti’s treatment targets, people will not be put on a waiting list so as not to endanger Reti’s treatment targets. Outrageous.
With all the cuts to staffing and the continuing scarcity of doctors, equipment and capacity it can’t be long before our hospitals effectively become Dignitas for the unwilling.
In another, related question: how many members of cabinet do you reckon have private health insurance? A 100 bucks says all of them.
3. Does anyone remember where National’s much-vaunted tax cut ended up?
Did it go on your sky-high new insurance premiums, your massive new property rates, your surging power bill or all three? Oh well, at least inflation has slowed to under 3%.
4. Is Christopher Luxon a great negotiator in the same way Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal is a great book?
Act leader David Seymour boasted to RNZ this week that his party wields a disproportionate influence at the government’s decision-making table. Given that he appeared to completely outmanoeuvre the Prime Minister, out-of-touch multimillionaire Christopher Luxon, at the coalition negotiation table a year ago, we should not be surprised.
Seymour — surely the love child of Ayn Rand and C-3PO — proved when it comes to the art of the deal, he’s far smarter than Luxon. By agreeing to support the unprincipled Treaty Principles Bill to the first reading, Luxon got his coalition government, but he also handed Seymour a weapon to use for robbing votes from National at the 2026 election. Nice work, Einstein.
That’s the trouble with going to business school, you don’t have to read Virgil. If Luxon had, the great negotiator might have heard of Trojan horses.
5. Once all the patches are confiscated or burned or thrown in the back of a cupboard, will gangs suddenly disappear and New Zealand become a crime-free paradise of unicorns and rainbows?
Or will it make no difference at all because turning lazy rhetoric into lazy law isn’t a real-world solution for crime?
More Class Clowns Announced
Act leader David Seymour’s life-long dream of converting childhood education from a public good into just another consumer product continues apace. He announced this week that the first of the new era of charter schools, Mastery Schools New Zealand, will be open in time for the first term of 2025.
Seymour says that “Charter schools will make New Zealand’s education system more flexible and responsive to family and student needs.” Another Kind of Politics has received a list of a further five “flexible and responsive” charter schools approved for taxpayer funding thanks to Act. They are:
The David Seymour School For Crap History.
The Friedrich Nietzsche Re-education Camp For Wokesters.
The Mark Cameron Conservatoire For Ranting And Raving.
The Smith and Wesson Wild West School For Gun Law.
The APEC Institute For Junk Climate Science.
Political quiz of the week
In what classic Western is race relations cowboy David Seymour wanted “dead or alive”?
A/ The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Treaty Bill.
B/ A Fist Full Of Hypocrisy.
C/ The Man Who Shot Liberty.
D/ Utu.
