It’s 208 days until Kiwis hit the polls and vote for the next Government.
And despite campaigning not officially starting yet, the Prime Minister’s performance has been called into question, time and time again.
Accusations range from Christopher Luxon leaning too much into corporate speak and acting like a CEO to evading questions and even dodging entire press conferences during a global fuel crisis to open a stadium.
His image hadn’t been helped by two viral moments courtesy of TVNZ Breakfast’s Tova O’Brien – one where he referred to his job as CEO, and the other where he seemed to forget Tama Potaka was the only Māori MP in his Cabinet.
Despite recent fumbles, though, his full suite of Monday morning media appearances seemed to go off without any clickbait-style blunders.
The beginning of Luxon’s week now begins with facing the interviewing skills of some of the country’s top broadcasters between 7am and 8am. O’Brien or Chris Chang on Breakfast, Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB, and John Campbell or Ingrid Hipkins on RNZ’s Morning Report. He’s likely to get the occasional grilling from Ryan Bridge on Herald NOW too.
The Herald’s Media Insider Shayne Currie reviewed the engagements, which he told The Front Page were “sort of lacklustre” and “slightly dull”, which the Prime Minister “probably will be slightly relieved about”.
“There is still a big audience for all three broadcasters at that time of the morning. In fact, I added them up, and it’s almost a million New Zealanders tuning into one of those shows at some stage during the morning.
“Now we know that a lot of politicians are obviously talking directly to audiences through social media or through events. But, mainstream media still plays a vital role, and we see through the audience numbers that those certainly increase as we get closer to the election,” Currie said.
A major theme that Currie attributes to Luxon’s clean sweep of an acceptable, albeit lacklustre, set of Monday interviews is Rachel Smalley’s new adviser role.
The former Newstalk ZB and TV3 broadcaster is said to be focused on Auckland-based MPs, including Luxon, Mark Mitchell, Erica Stanford and Simeon Brown.
“She’s got great experience in terms of not just broadcasting and TV, which is vital, but she knows each of those three interviewers [O’Brien, Campbell and Hosking] that he is up against every Monday morning.
“She’s worked alongside them and obviously observed them at close distance, so she will know what each of those broadcasters brings to the desk ...
“But, more than that, she’s got experience as a foreign correspondent. She’s got experience in global affairs and so can offer not just Luxon but some of the other National MPs in Auckland some advice around how to communicate different aspects of their strategy – whether it’s the fuel crisis or cost of living,” he said.
Luxon’s had the misfortune of following a line of leaders in recent memory who are classed as good communicators and particularly media-savvy.
“I think we were very lucky to have, for a long stint, Helen Clark and John Key across five or six election cycles.
“They were both highly effective communicators, different in lots of ways, but they both were able to talk to the media. They visited editors regularly. They spoke to journalists, on and off the record, on background, and both were pretty natural in front of the camera.
“It took a little while for Helen Clark, but John Key came in and actually was quite goofy at times in front of the camera, owned his errors, and his mistakes. I get the sense that what we were hearing from Key was actually how he was feeling.
“Whereas there seems to be a bit of a barrier, or has been a barrier, with Christopher Luxon in the past. I think that might be the sort of barrier that Rachel Smalley and others will try to lower as we get closer to the election,” he said.
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The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5pm. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
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