How brave will Chris Luxon be after the October 14 election, if he gets the chance to steer the ship of state off the rocks?
Very brave, one would hope, if you take Luxon’s election rhetoric at face value.
It is obvious that National wants to take a scytheto the Wellington bureaucracy. That is, after all, how a future National-led government wants to partially fund its pledge to deliver tax cuts (along with myriad other initiatives including sacking consultants).
But there’s more to this than simply “chopping the head off the snake”.
If a Luxon-led government wants to effect major change and lift the tempo of New Zealand’s economic and business life, it has to be bold.
It could start by immediately involving the private sector in those “adult-to-adult” relationships he says he wants government and business to have.
And appoint a private-sector chief with special powers to cut through the bureaucratic morass he believes prevents some departments and ministries from achieving real outcomes.
Then re-establish a Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council to challenge the status quo.
Luxon showed he had the chops to be prime minister at the BusinessNZ election summit in Wellington on Tuesday.
After a patchy defence of National’s tax policies earlier in the week — think political dustpan and broom and confidently swishing those pesky questions to the corner rather than grappling with the substance — he was on safe ground.
Businesspeople there lapped up his pledge to treat them like adults. “I want us to actually work together in an adult-to-adult way, not a parent-child way, which is what I feel has been happening in New Zealand over the last six years,” he said. “Your job is to build kick-arse companies.”
The National Party leader is ably qualified to lead just such a switch — assuming he leads the next government after the October 14 election.
As a former CEO, Luxon has had plenty of experience grappling with governments with a controlling parental style. (It goes with the territory.)
That was not only as chief executive of Air New Zealand — a role he held for eight years, straddling the National-led government headed by Sir John Key, along with the Labour-New Zealand First coalition government headed by Dame Jacinda Ardern and its successor.
But also as chair of Ardern’s one-time Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council.
This was both a source of pride for Luxon and a frustration.
There was the opportunity to work with a high-powered bunch of CEOs and strategic thinkers to bring new ideas to the table on how to scale up New Zealand businesses and grow export-led wealth. But there was also the frustration of seeing well-worked-up policy initiatives scuttled by the bureaucracy as they were sat on by Cabinet ministers rather than articulated publicly, debated, fine-tuned and implemented.
When the council was announced in October 2018, its purpose was to:
Provide high-level free and frank advice to the prime minister on policies that directly affect business
Harness the expertise of the private sector to inform government policy, and
Build closer relationships between government and business
It was well-known by 2018 that Luxon was considering a post-CEO career in politics, modelled on the steps Key took when he transitioned from Merrill Lynch to become a National Party MP.
Some — including this columnist — felt it was a clever move by Ardern to effectively “duchess” the then-Air New Zealand chief executive by inviting him into her tent to help her government be more effective.
A slew of work ensued: McKinsey on the “Future of Work” — remember that? It is not talked about these days, but with Wellbeing Budgets and the like, it was a key philosophical element of Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s economic agenda.
Then there was the “infrastructure crisis”.
Christopher Luxon, then former Air New Zealand CEO, was brought onto the Business Advisory Council by former prime minister Dame Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Jason Oxenham
By June 26, 2019, the council was warning Ardern that New Zealand was at an “infrastructure crisis point” and lacked a national master plan to tangibly map out “our immediate, medium and long-term infrastructure future in an integrated way”.
Apart from the national master plan, which is heavily redolent of the Singapore government’s approach to infrastructure development, the council wanted to see funding and financing mechanisms that would allow for long-term, debt-funded or investable opportunities.
By July 2019, Luxon had signalled he would leave Air New Zealand.
A number of initiatives favoured by the advisory council are part of National’s policy suite for this year’s election.
The question is: will a Luxon-led government strip away crippling regulation and free up businesses to get on and do what they do best?
These are two sides of the “government as parent” coin.
What happens also when those “adult-to-adult” conversations take place on matters of national and business significance? Will CEOs be sworn to confidence by the politicians, as Ardern insisted as the effective price of admittance to the inner circle on Covid issues?
Would it lower the boom on businesses by stopping them from performing like adults — as Ardern’s government did — when it stopped them ordering in Rat tests for their businesses during the Covid pandemic, effectively seizing them for broader use?
Or does “adult-to-adult” mean the freedom for business leaders to raise their concerns publicly as well — not just inside the prime ministerial tent?
On Tuesday, Luxon had boiled his standard stump speech down to 15 minutes instead of the allotted 20. He was on-message. Fluent. No stumbles. But he was nonplussed to find he would not be allowed to use up his remaining five minutes for questions. If they get the opportunity, businesspeople should put them: adult to adult.
