Erica Stanford has banned phones in schools, reintroduced structured learning, and scrapped the NCEA project.
Stanford’s actions have sparked leadership speculation, highlighting Chris Luxon’s perceived drag on party popularity.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis faces pressure to match rhetoric with action on supermarkets and government spending.
It feels like Erica Stanford can’t do anything wrong at the moment.
She’s banned phones in schools, reintroduced structured learning, brought back single-cell classrooms and now – in her boldest move yet – announced she’s scrapping the failed project NCEA.
That she’s doing all of the above isimpressive. That she’s done this much in 18 months is even more so. And that she – a National Party minister – has done it without the unions kicking up merry hell is quite remarkable.
Because Stanford is showing him and basically everyone else in government up. Luxon is increasingly being seen as one of the main drags on the party’s popularity.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis is at risk of looking silly unless her upcoming action on supermarkets matches her rhetoric. Act has been busted calling press conferences to announce plans to think about what to do.
NZ First is trying on ridiculous culture war ideas many don’t care about in a grinding economy. But most importantly, the Government hasn’t done much of anything to turn around an economy most of us expected would turn around eight months ago.
That hurts Luxon. He’s the businessman voters likely believed would get the economy “back on track” by actually doing something more than waiting out the tough times.
Erica Stanford is now being openly discussed as a possible leadership replacement for Chris Luxon. Photo / Getty Images
So, Stanford is a standout. For taking what we could all see was broken, fixing it at pace, boldly. And yet, Stanford is not the leadership solution. Nor is anyone else.
Recent talk of dropping Luxon – even if the speculation is for the medium-, not short-term – is premature. Changing the leader often costs more confidence than it shores up.
Actually, what every other minister, including Luxon, should do is take a leaf out of Stanford’s book: get a plan and execute it.
That’s the secret to her success.
She spent Opposition researching and reading. By the time the Government was elected, and she was the Education Minister, she already knew what she thought was wrong with education, she’d looked into structured literacy, the reading wars, explicit teaching. She formed a six-point plan. She has spent the past 18 months working her way through that plan.
Compare that to the finance portfolio. It is not obvious that there is a plan for making NZ prosperous again. There is talk of cutting government spending. But Nicola Willis has spent more than Grant Robertson in her last two budgets.
David Seymour spoke of cutting 15,000 public servants. Fewer than 1000 have been cut.
There is no big idea. No clear direction. The best we’ve had is a tax incentive in May’s Budget, which is helpful but not nearly the kind of game-changer that ditching NCEA is for education.
It would be fair to argue that Finance is not comparable to Education. It’s far bigger, more complex, and there are externalities Willis cannot control, like Trump’s tariffs.
But it is still possible to have a clear plan, to execute it and to get results.
Javier Milei lifts a chainsaw during a 2023 rally in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photo / Getty Images
Javier Milei, the President of Argentina, is proving that. Before his election in 2023, he stood on stage with a chainsaw to illustrate that he planned to cut government spending. He won the election, cut 48,000 public servants and shut more than 13 ministries. Some are calling what he’s done to the country an economic miracle.
You will get bored with this comparison between NZ and Argentina in the coming years, but it is valid and important. Because it shows that a clear plan executed at pace can turn a country’s fortunes around. And it shows that we don’t have one.
Except, it would appear, in education, thanks to Erica Stanford.
