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When you’re Prime Minister, you got to know when to hold ‘em. You also got to know when to fold ‘em, when to walk away and when to run. You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table, because there will be time enough to count it when you’re out of office and on the lucrative international speaking circuit.
Also, you know that when you’ve dealt yourself a couple of useless cards, you need to throw them away as quickly as possible so that -- as our newest Prime Minister said while sacking two ministers on Wednesday -- “I’ve got my aces in their places”.
Melissa Lee being chucked out of her broadcasting portfolio -- and cabinet -- and Penny Simmonds being chucked out of her disability ministry should have come as no surprise to anyone: they were useless. Nor will most people have much sympathy for them, particularly given that they remain ministers outside cabinet and on cabinet ministers’ salaries.
What was surprising was the flippant language used by the down-to-earth multimillionaire Christopher “Luxe” Luxon in announcing the utter humiliation of two ministers he put in their jobs in the first place.
“This is how I roll; this is how I lead,” he rapped at Wednesday’s press conference-cum-witch burning. “This is simply about me looking across my team. I want to make sure I’ve got my aces in their places.”
Here’s a question: can you get sacked from cabinet for bad metaphors? If you could, Luxon should have sacked himself months back when he started describing the process of breaking big problems down into smaller, more manageable parts as “chunking it down”, which sounds more like what one might do after too long at the pub.
Luxon trotted out his dodgy playing card analogy because he was doing a useless job himself in avoiding questions about whether Lee and Simmonds had been useless. Instead, he repeatedly said he was replacing them because the portfolios had become “too complex”, whatever that means.
What wasn’t “too complex” was the conclusion that he didn’t want to talk about Lee and Simmonds’ performances because to do so would call into question his own. For a guy who likes having his aces in their places, he doesn’t have much of a poker face.
The Luxe shouldn’t feel too bad. While he mocked Labour’s Chris Hipkins last year for losing four ministers in his 10 months as prime minister, Luxon has had to sack only two so far.
Still, as the great Kenny Rogers said, every gambler knows that the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep. ‘Cause every hand’s a winner, and every hand’s a loser, and the best that you can hope for is not to be chunked down yourself.
Judge, jury and striking cynicism
All rise, the Kangaroo Court of Populist Politics is now in session. The case to be heard is whether the reinstatement of the “Three Strikes” law is an evidence-based prescription that will make an observable difference to tackling crime in our society, or just a shameless bit of “tough on crime” fakery dressed up as a serious crime-fighting policy.
Acting for the defence is the Sheriff-in-Chief, Prime Minister Luxon. And for the prosecution, the complete absence of compelling evidence that such policies work.
The return of a Three Strikes law similar to the one passed under John Key’s National government in 2010, along with this week’s select committee hearing on the planned ban on gang patches, tells us everything we need to know about this new coalition’s approach to justice: tough-on-crime virtual signalling is what matters, not facts.
It is a fact, for example, that the effectiveness of the original Three Strikes law is unknown. A Ministry of Justice report from 2018 found that — even after eight years — it was impossible to measure the legislation’s worth, the report calling its effectiveness in reducing crime “inconclusive”. The worth of similar laws overseas has proven equally elusive.
However, the Sheriff-in-Chief made it abundantly clear when announcing the return of Three Strikes that he wasn’t interested in inconvenient truths. “If this piece of legislation actually saves one person from the pain and suffering caused by violent, sexual criminal activity … that’s a good thing,” Luxon said.
But will it? Asked directly whether he had had advice saying the new version would lead to an actual reduction in crime, the Luxe offered up a word salad which was as inconclusive in its effectiveness as Three Strikes 1.0.
In the end, Luxon failed to make his case. But then so did the prosecution. Out in the real world, there is no way to conclusively prove — or disprove — that Three Strikes laws deter criminals from being criminal. Which makes it faith-based policy.
Not that proof matters in the Kangaroo Court of Populist Politics. Following the Sheriff-in-Chief summing up that he “makes no apologies” for the new Three Strikes, the judge has made his final ruling: the return of this law isn’t about successfully catching and keeping criminals from their harming ways, it was about cynically catching votes last October — and keeping them in 2026.
Ticktock, ticktock, boom
For the second time this year, the political science boffins here at Another Kind of Politics have moved the coalition government Doomsday Clock minute hand forward, putting the time until the coalition goes KABOOM! at 4 minutes and 30 seconds to midnight.
The consensus among our experts is that the mysterious force that holds the coalition together has once again been disturbed by the Prime Minister publicly caning his junior coalition partners like naughty schoolboys.
After Act leader David Seymour and NZ First deputy Shane Jones separately criticised the Waitangi Tribunal for its failed attempt to drag Children’s Minister Karen Chhour into a hearing to explain the government’s repeal of Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, headmaster Luxon told media the pair’s comments were “ill-considered”.
While the Jones Boy appeared not to care about the thrashing, Sulky Seymour got the hump, telling media if the headmaster had “a concern about another leader’s comments [he] should raise them directly rather than through media, which is what I now intend to do”.
In a statement issued to mark the moving of the coalition government Doomsday Clock, our experts advised all three should be sent on a couple’s counselling weekend in a neutral-but-leafy electorate to learn about expressing one’s needs in a “safe” and non-judgmental way.
