Prime Minister Christopher Luxon will no longer claim a $52,000 accommodation allowance for living in the Wellington apartment he owns.
Video / Newstalk ZB
Opinion by Heather du Plessis-Allan
Heather du Plessis-Allan is the drive host for Newstalk ZB and a columnist for the Herald on Sunday
Christopher Luxon’s political radar is broken. Or maybe he just doesn’t have one at all.
He’s made a couple of errors so basic you’d expect a distracted back bencher with a second-hand political radar to know better.
The list of reasons why he shouldn’t have taken the href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/benefit-mansion-christopher-luxon-claims-52k-top-up-to-rent-his-own-apartment/W3OD34M7RBAZRCMFMEXZ5XKPEU/">$52,000 accommodation allowance is long and we don’t need to relitigate them but at least one of those reasons should’ve occurred to him as he put in his claim.
But even further back in very recent history, there was the Tesla rebate debacle where he - or his wife - claimed the free government money for the new Tesla Y while he publicly criticised the Government for handing out free money for Teslas to rich people. Again, that should’ve occurred to him - or his wife - as maybe being a little bit of a problem.
Credit to the Prime Minister for swallowing his pride and changing his mind so quickly on the accommodation money in what has been dubbed the Talkback Walkback. At least he has the political skill of admitting an error. That’s a good one to have. The previous Labour Government had almost none of that at all. Even though talkback went nuts over the Bike Bridge to Birkenhead it took them four months to admit they were wrong and can the stupid project, but by then they’d wasted $51 million of our money.
But Luxon and his advisors need to be honest with themselves that - among his many skills - judging what is going to peeve Kiwis is not one of them.
Maybe Luxon has been rich for too long. That is not a criticism. Being rich sounds awesome and more of us should aspire to it rather than ragging on it. But it is possible that he has simply forgotten how much money $52,000 is. It’s an annual income. It’s years of savings towards a home deposit. It’s a new car you can’t afford.
Or maybe Luxon is still thinking like a CEO. Back in his old corporate life, he would’ve got used to making a call and expecting everyone in the company or division to say “yes sir” and follow instructions. That’s how businesses work. It’s a transactional relationship where the boss has the power. They pay the salary, you do what they say.
Christopher Luxon is still new in the job. Photo / Hagen Hopkins
It’s different in politics. Luxon might be the PM but he’s not the boss. Voters are. He can make a call, but we do not have to like it. It’s a transactional relationship where the voters have the power. We give him the vote only if he does what we like.
Luxon’s dicky political radar is a fact but it’s not necessarily fatal, as long as he and his inner circle are honest about it and have plans to protect him from it.
Clearly money is a blindspot, so every financial decision that Luxon takes that could be perceived by the public as benefiting him because of his position - no matter how personal or embarrassing - has to have a second pair of eyes on it. Luxon basically needs to take his decisions to someone less rich and more politically savvy to double-check them.
He also needs to listen to that advice and follow it. That’s often harder than it sounds, especially for politicians who are in a job that constantly reinforces how special they are. Or for bosses used to making the ultimate call.
Luxon’s still new in the job. He’ll get some grace for making rookie mistakes because he is still a rookie. But it’s unusual to have a PM with such a broken political radar so he’d better find ways to hide how dodgy it clearly is.
