OPINION:
In the end, it has taken Christopher Luxon just 40 days and 40 nights to form his Government.
We may never know what temptations he faced during his lengthy fast, or which of his interlocutors was most satanic.
Was it she who insisted bread could be made from stones? Or he who promised to break Luxon’s fall should he take a leap into the unknown?
Did the incoming Prime Minister ever come close to worshipping the tempter in exchange for the kingdom?
We can only hope Luxon’s 40 days in the wilderness have prepared him well as he begins his new ministry.
Aucklanders, in particular, have wanted change for several elections and now expect it fast.
The first inkling that Labour had lost Auckland was Wayne Brown’s 2022 mayoral campaign, in which I was involved.
Aucklanders were furious about the inhumane 2021 lockdown and border closures. But more generally, they were outraged by the bullshit they’d been fed by successive governments and by the incumbent Labour mayor.
Voters no longer trusted or even wanted visions or plans, but for politicians to just fix the basic services that government is meant to provide.
By sticking to the strategy his research suggested and being clearly the biggest disruptor, Brown romped home, helped by voter cynicism predictably driving low turnout.
Similar research prompted Ardern’s resignation. Aucklanders’ fury extended well beyond National’s heartland. It even reached the Mt Albert branch of the New Zealand Labour Party, which selected Helen White over Ardern’s preferred candidate, Camilla Belich.
Mt Albert voters, who have been loyal to Labour since 1946, joined the kicking, reducing its candidate’s majority from 21,246 to 18.
Yet the most important feature of the Auckland electorate is its volatility. The big swings between left and right show Aucklanders will quickly punish elected officials who talk a big game but don’t deliver. Glib talk is a killer.
In announcing yesterday that they had reached a deal, Luxon, David Seymour and Winston Peters promised first of all “to form a Government that will deliver for all New Zealanders”.
For voters, “delivery” isn’t sloganeering, bold KiwiBuild-type targets or key performance indicators for ministers and officials.
It is things that happen. Some matters are urgent, especially in Auckland, led by law and order.
National rightly attacked Labour for criminal gangs growing by 70 per cent since 2017, to a record of 9100 members, roughly 90 per cent of police numbers.
Worse, Labour’s gun buyback mainly transferred firearms to those criminal gangs, with Aucklanders increasingly afraid of being shot as they go about their business rather than merely stabbed or beaten up.
The gangs’ illegal methamphetamine businesses have never done better.
The new Government promises hundreds more police, which is a good step, but will want a Police Commissioner whose policing philosophy includes officers being seen out on the streets and deterring crime.
An immediate test for both Luxon and liberal Police Commissioner Andy Coster comes this weekend, with the biggest gang funeral in New Zealand’s history. While Luxon’s new laws against gang patches aren’t yet in place, he was clear during the campaign that police should disrupt gang funerals if they are interfering with law-abiding citizens. Coster will be expected to respect the fact that a new Government is in place.
Aucklanders will want immediate action on the issues outlined by their mayor and councillors in their Manifesto for Auckland released in September.
It calls for Wellington to return some of the GST and other taxes Aucklanders pay on things like rates, and for the council to stop rates going up by introducing new revenue measures such as congestion charging at peak times and bed taxes for tourists staying in flash hotels.
The manifesto demands the new Government get a move-on with the integrated transport plan between it and Auckland Council that former Transport Minister Michael Wood was too busy to complete before losing his job.
Brandishing new mega-projects is out. Getting the City Rail Link, wider train network and new busways finished faster, and better planning and maintenance of roads is now an emergency, as motorists in Newmarket proved yet again last weekend.
Brown and his councillors will surely kick up a fuss if they don’t see most of their manifesto in the coalition agreement when it comes out today.
The new Government promised to abolish the Māori Health Authority and so-called “identity ministries” in Wellington, and will be expected to deliver before Christmas. There are also urgent issues with Immigration NZ.
While thousands of unskilled workers seem to be arriving willy-nilly, including those who have been victims of scams back in India, Immigration NZ continues to be unable to quickly process visa applications for skilled workers that businesses do need.
Unless the new Government puts the stick about Immigration NZ in the next few days, 2024 looks set to be yet another bad year for a once-flourishing export education industry.
Having promised them, the new Government needs to show it can deliver other administratively simple measures before Christmas, like the smartphone ban in schools, reducing the use of te reo Māori in government communications and reversing the defeated Government’s resource-management reforms.
With plans to lift the ban on foreigners buying houses surely dead, Luxon and Seymour in particular will need to show that any tax cuts are not being funded by extra borrowing. Some statement will be needed to narrow the application of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi to only those areas Parliament intends, in the absence of Act’s promised referendum.
If Luxon is to have any chance of delivering his promise to exporters to complete a free-trade agreement with India before the next election, his new Trade Minister had also better head to New Delhi before the end of this year.
Luxon needs quick wins before Christmas, even if not big and bold, to demonstrate that his Government can do what it says it will.
More important is getting work underway next week to deliver more substantial change in the first six months of next year, including May’s Budget.
It will all be handshakes, hugs and beaming smiles today, but Luxon would be naive to think insurmountable tensions won’t eventually arise among the three coalition partners, and between Act and NZ First in particular.
He must expect contrived crises and repeats of the gameplaying of the past 40 days.
Achieving anything will only get harder for his Government each day it is delayed. And the legacies left by New Zealand governments have always been the things they delivered in their first few months. Anything left for 2025, let alone 2026, will either fail or be reversed.
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