The crime of Christopher Luxon's recently discovered jaunt to Hawaii was not that he went on holiday to Hawaii - but what looked suspiciously like a puzzling attempt to cover it up.
Nobody would begrudge Luxon his mid-year holiday. His summer holiday was rudely interruptedby him securing the leadership of the party in December last year.
That meant while other MPs were hitting the beaches, Luxon was going through the intense work required to transform himself from first-term MP to leader.
He has not had a break of any length since and the midwinter three-week recess from Parliament in the middle term of an electoral cycle is a good time to take one.
Luxon had spent the first two weeks of that break working – he was on a working trip to Singapore, Ireland and London in the first week. He visited some regional towns in the second week. One of them was Te Puke.
A week later, Luxon's team put up posts featuring him wearing hi-vis in Te Puke. Nothing in those posts suggested they were from the week earlier.
It gave the perception they were intended to trick people into thinking Luxon was hard at work in New Zealand instead of on a secret holiday sipping mock mai thais in Hawaii.
It did not help that in one of them, Luxon was in a video in which he said "today I am in Te Puke".
So we were left contemplating that existential question: Te Puke or not Te Puke?
National Party leader Christopher Luxon at a meeting in Te Puke last week. Photo / Mead Norton
Luxon insisted it was not misleading. It may well have been a rookie mistake and not intended to be misleading but misleading is very much in the eye of the beholder.
It was an unforced error Luxon could do without.
The baffling question is why Luxon's holiday was such a secret in the first place.
There are reasons for political leaders to be nervous about being seen to take holidays – because sometimes those holidays can come back to bite them.
Sometimes that is justified. Sometimes it is a matter of bad judgment to take a holiday at all.
That all depends on what else is happening in the country, how close to an election it is, and how well the party is doing in the polls.
For a Prime Minister, the general rule is that if there is a crisis at home they should stay there and work. Ask Australia's former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who got into trouble for his own visit to Hawaii while bushfires were raging at home.
For a Leader of the Opposition, things are trickier. For example, you can't be seen to go on holiday if your side has criticised a Prime Minister for also taking time off.
Timing your holidays to those of the Prime Minister is a good idea – neither side can accuse the other of slacking. On the other hand, there is a clearer field to work on while the PM is on holiday and you can look virtuous and hard-working by comparison.
For both, the golden rule is not to go on holiday if your polling is in the dumps and an election is nearing.
Exhibit A was former Labour leader David Cunliffe, who went on a long ski-ing weekend in mid 2014.
Then-PM John Key was in Hawaii at the same time on his longer midyear break, and nobody batted an eye. But Cunliffe was excoriated for it, by his own caucus more than the media.
The difference was their poll ratings – and the levels of disgruntlement among their MPs.
Lessons have been learned by Luxon's team.
When a leader takes a holiday, don't hide it and risk getting caught out
Ardern and Luxon's predecessors found out the wisest approach was simply to advise the media ahead of time that the leader would not be available for a bit because they were going on holiday, and whether that was overseas or not.
Luxon is also facing some criticism for going overseas instead of staying home to boost the tourism economy here.
The PM sometimes goes overseas on holidays, although she has not done so since Covid-19. Key also went overseas, and Clark before him.
One of the reasons they do is because they are not often recognised overseas – they do not have to be in politician mode 24/7, or shadowed by security.
Things are a bit different for leaders of the Opposition, for whom the top key performance indicator is to be recognised. Luxon will at least now be a household face in Waikiki - and Te Puke.
