The interesting thing about Maniapoto's opening gambit was that, right now, there's a lot of chatter going on about whether an accident-prone Luxon has the wherewithal to supplant Jacinda Ardern — the task that must sit atop his list of leadership KPIs.
Surely the National Party's revolving door of leaders is in the locked position for the remainder of this parliamentary term, isn't it?
After all, with Luxon at the helm, National is back in the game.
National voters who strayed in 2020 are returning to the fold, leaving the left and right blocs level-pegging. If an election was held today, there is a fair chance Luxon would become Prime Minister.
That's all well and dandy, except the election isn't today, it's an 18-month voyage away, a voyage that will present a risk for National that Luxon will continue to habitually find himself — to use the words of The Bard — "bound in shallows and in miseries".
Witness the past few weeks, where he has left a trail of bewilderment.
It has included a case of casual misogyny (Luxon's claim that the PM wouldn't know how to wear Red Band gumboots); a major public policy fail (his ignorance of the role subsidies play in ensuring public transport is viable); a scornful jibe about the most hard-up members of society (he used the term "bottom feeders"); a claim there are no viable EVs to substitute for utes (there are indeed, say vehicle importers); and his call, greeted with alarm, to cancel the Labour Day holiday as a counterbalance to the new Matariki holiday.
Then during this week's interview on Māori Television, Luxon strenuously denied having ever described co-governance — a Crown-Māori partnering concept forged by the last National Government — as separatist.
Worryingly for him, transcripts of interviews on Newstalk ZB and TVNZ's Q+A in early December show the s-word being used on three occasions.
Most who come to the role of Opposition leader have been in Parliament a while and have been able to watch and learn. Helen Clark had been an MP for 12 years, three of them as a minister. John Key had four years of parliamentary experience under his belt, Jacinda Ardern near-on nine. Simon Bridges, like Clark, had also had ministerial experience during nearly 10 years in the House.
Luxon was promoted to the leader's chair a little over one year after becoming an MP. He is very much a parliamentary apprentice who is still being schooled in the art of politics.
It's not just in his media interactions that his inexperience surfaces. It shows, too, in his duels with Ardern at Question Time. He appears to lack an ability to anticipate the PM's answers and then ask supplementary questions that pick up on her replies, choosing instead to read "supps" that have been scripted for him.
However, National's leader has chutzpah, and that's what gets him into hot water. He thinks quickly and speaks quickly, often in the rah-rah syntax of the corporate top table — terms like outcomes, journeys, efficiencies, tasking and timeframes are liberally sprinkled about. Facts don't always get in the way of a good soundbite.
But perhaps Luxon and his handlers are relying on a mood for change to sweep them into power. An old maxim of politics is that when reason and emotion collide, it's invariably emotion that prevails. An electorate that is grumpy about Covid's disruption to daily living, and now severe cost-of-living pressures, might forgive Luxon's shortcomings and opt instead to "punish" the Government.
What National strategists will be troubled by already is how Luxon's propensity to make gaffes will play out during election year, when the media spotlight is more intense and he has to front for televised head-to-head debates with Ardern. That is when many voters are deciding if a challenger is fit to govern.
Blunders during a campaign can be very harmful, fatal even, as Australian Labor leader Anthony Albanese is learning in the federal election dogfight across the Tasman.
An Australian commentator this week described Albanese's first-week campaign trail mistakes — namely his inability to answer "gotcha" questions about economic data — as spontaneous, damaging and inexcusable.
It is a description that applies equally to Luxon's recent lapses.
- Mike Munro is a former chief of staff for Jacinda Ardern and was chief press secretary for Helen Clark.
