Matthew Hooton: We need to talk about Christopher Luxon

OPINION:

The National Party remains committed to its existing strategy despite the Prime Minister’s radical repositioning of Labour in not much more than a fortnight.

Reminiscent of the British Conservative Party’s “New Labour, New Danger” message against Tony Blair in 1997, National insists, as Christopher Luxon puts it, “the leader may have changed but Labour hasn’t”.

The party line is that Chris Hipkins was part of Jacinda Ardern’s quinquevirate, which also included Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson, deputy Labour leader Kelvin Davis and campaign strategist Megan Woods.

National insists nothing has really changed and that Hipkins is just “pretending” to drop the Government’s more unpopular policies, including those personally associated with Ardern.

The problem with the hidden-agenda game is that two sides can play it. Luxon’s unpopularity and poor communications skills mean it wouldn’t take much for Labour to convince crucial median voters that the National leader plans to slash taxes for the rich, pay for it by ending entitlement programmes and outlaw abortion.

National’s denial might be excused given the magnitude of the changes — even if just presentational — that Labour has pulled off.

Especially in its conservative and sometimes smug environment, the National hierarchy would have dismissed as delusional any party strategist who suggested before Christmas that it ought to plan for Ardern throwing in the towel, Hipkins rather than Robertson replacing her, followed by the public burning of Ardern’s hate-speech legislation, her “nuclear-free moment” biofuels mandate, Robertson’s beloved income insurance scheme and Willie Jackson’s media merger.

National takes comfort that Hipkins is yet to abandon Three Waters and Ardern’s ludicrous $30 billion Auckland light rail project — but both are on track to be thrown into Hipkins’ second policy bonfire, said to be three weeks away but potentially to be brought forward to maintain Labour’s unprecedented New Year momentum.

Watch too for changes to resource-management legislation to minimise the risks of it being portrayed as giving iwi too much power.

National’s nonchalance stems first from it not understanding just how much Hipkins, Robertson and Woods want to win a third term, along with the new members of the inner circle, Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni and Auckland and Transport Minister Michael Wood.

What makes today’s Labour so dangerous is that it has adopted the attitude that made National so successful for most of its history since 1936: that it exists primarily to keep the other side out.

For National, its original constitutional mission was “to combat communism and socialism”.

For today’s Labour, it’s about permanently keeping out of power the remnants of the 1990s National Party that Hipkins’ circle so deeply believes harmed their families, communities and childhoods — and which they are convinced remains ready to re-emerge.

In this, they almost certainly give National too much credit. National’s early 1990s reforming spirit existed for no more than three years of its 87-year history. John Key, Bill English and now Luxon have surely proven they are just as happy to preside and hold office with no more intent to exercise power than Keith Holyoake and most of the Muldoon Cabinet.

Despite Helen Clark and MMP transforming Labour into a similarly pointless political movement nearly 20 years ago, the National Party seems yet to recognise that its opponent has adopted its own values and utter determination to merely preside that made the blue team the so-called “natural party of government” for the two generations after World War II.

The second reason for National’s apparent composure is that it thinks it worked everything out about winning elections in 2008. An almost identical campaign has been developed, including the Key-era claim to be “ambitious for New Zealand”.

How long can it be before we hear about the “step change”, “brighter future” or “a rolling maul of policies”?

It is extremely unlikely that an identically vacuous campaign will work in 2023 as it did in 2008 after the grinding Clark era. The very reason Ardern had to go was because of public fury, particularly in Auckland, of her empty sloganeering.

Even if a hollow 2008 or 2017-style campaign could work in 2023, Luxon is no Key or Ardern.

Those two cloud-hoppers could promise a “brighter future” or even just “this” and voters would believe them. For a Luxon, like an early Clark or Bolger, substance is going to matter. He has said or done nothing so far to give voters confidence he has any.

The charitable argue that this is just because he spent 16 years out of New Zealand and so lacks the necessary general knowledge to make him intellectually or verbally agile. Others say he really is just an executive with no feel for politics. Eyebrows were raised when he left former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley — who retired a generation ago — as the most senior National Party figure at Waitangi.

The other big problem is that National doesn’t understand David Seymour’s Act party, the Nats’ only credible coalition partner as long as Luxon can’t get them well above 40 per cent.

Act has no intention of allowing a 1998-99 situation to emerge, where it felt obliged to support whatever poor Shipley managed to negotiate with the five former NZ First MPs in Mauri Pacific and former Alliance MP Alamein Kopu. Supporting a National-NZ First coalition on confidence and supply is out of the question. If National thinks Act will just rumble along with events, it is mistaken.

Act party leader David Seymour. Photo / Dean Purcell

Seymour and his young, idealistic team have made Act stronger than ever. They say they are not interested in office for themselves. Instead, they want to bequeath New Zealand a genuine classical liberal party that they’ll be able to vote for in their old age. Seymour’s “Road to Real Change” speech this week betrayed growing frustration with National, accusing it of opposing Labour’s policies from Opposition but then bedding them in when in Government.

“They just want to manage [Labour’s policies],” he snarked but not unfairly, “and they always find big Government feels better from the back of a ministerial limo.”

Act strategists say they really do want to end what they see as a distortion of the text of the Treaty of Waitangi, fundamentally improve education opportunities for everyone and radically cut red tape.

They argue they will have made policy promises to their voters, already around one in eight of us. If National won’t allow those promises to be implemented, they’ll tell National it can set up a minority Government, but if it wants to get anything done then it knows Act’s number.

For Act MPs, of which there will be perhaps double the number after October, waiting another three years for real change is preferable to embarrassing themselves again by supporting a Shipley or Key-style Government. Luxon and his team need to wake up.

- Matthew Hooton is a political and public affairs strategist. His clients include the mayor of Auckland. These views, including those on Three Waters, resource management reform and light rail, are his own and may or may not reflect those of the mayor.