In a Q+A interview with Jack Tame this morning, for the first time in a while, Luxon looked like the first-term MP that he is.
He found out it is not enough to say you will make something happen and stick relentlessly to your lines, come what may.
On both National’s policy to kick unruly tenants out of state houses and then his tax cuts policy, Luxon did not have the political agility to get himself out of it or the background knowledge to argue the pros and cons.
It will go down as the interview of no answers.
There were parts that were not so gruesome. Luxon had to admit National had not done any modelling on the impact of its policies on house prices, but did manage to pivot his answer away from housing affordability to rental prices and point out National had plans for more greenfields developments to boost housing stock in areas where densification did not happen.
However, National will be hoping the Sunday morning slot meant not many people saw the interview - and that the same doesn’t happen in debates, when a lot more will be watching. Read more >
David Parker and Grant Robertson might just be feeling a little bit smug right now – the Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll out on Thursday suggests Chris Hipkins’ captain’s call to scrap a plan for a wealth tax has done wonders … for the Green Party.
The poll has Labour plummeting – down a whopping four points and back into the 20s, at 27 per cent. That is well below that critical psychological 30 per cent mark – the mark above which Labour’s team can still try to hold together the shreds of morale.
It seems to have been prompted by a large exodus of voters to the Green Party, which picked up 3.1 per cent. The only thing that’s happened lately to send Labour voters straight to the arms of the Greens instead is that call to scrap the wealth tax.
Labour will soon try to salvage what remains of its dignity on tax. That seems certain to be a plan to remove GST from fruit and vegetables. If that is indeed the centrepiece, it has been spoiled by National’s premature announcement of it. That will both reduce its impact – and has allowed plenty of time for the critics to pan the move.
Hipkins is left facing ‘what might have been’ questions. What would the response be had he forged ahead with that initial tax switch: the tax-free income threshold, paid for by a wealth tax? Read more >
It would have come as a great relief to the dwellers of the Beehive that on Thursday the dominant story on news websites and television news bulletins was PM Chris Hipkins’ announcement of the options for a second Waitematā Harbour crossing in Auckland.
What that indicated – and what Labour’s monitoring of online and social media told them – was that the wider public interest in the twists and turns of the Stuart Nash saga had subsided.
And what that meant was that the political damage of Nash’s email to donors – and the shambles around the handling of that email when it was requested under the Official Information Act – was contained, at least for now.
It would be very hard to argue that Hipkins has had a good week on any metric. It was the worst he’s had (and he hasn’t had many so far). He will be hoping it remains the worst he has.
But by the end of it, there were signs Hipkins himself had been kept relatively safe from the fallout. Read more >
Tomorrow, Labour leader Chris Hipkins will tiptoe into his election campaign when he unveils Labour’s billboard and election slogan in Auckland.
Thus far, the spirit of Hipkins has been the reverse of former Labour leader Jacinda Ardern’s 2017 slogan, “Let’s do this”.
Hipkins has proceeded along the “let’s not do this” line – starting with his wee bonfire of distracting and superfluous reforms, through to this week when he ruled out a wealth tax or capital gains tax in Labour’s 2023 campaign manifesto.
That latter move has puzzled some, including Labourites who see a wealth tax as a good way to fund modest tax cuts for the rest.
Hipkins was quite right to scotch the initial plan of introducing the “tax switch” in this year’s Budget. He did that on the grounds that Labour did not have a mandate to make such a move. It had not campaigned on it: if anything, it had signalled it would not bring in a wealth tax.
Labour would have been crucified if it had suddenly sprung it on voters with no advance warning or sales job. That is not a surprise gift, it is an ambush.
The concern is not that Hipkins identified that, but that Finance Minister Grant Robertson did not. Robertson would have found some comfort in scrapping the idea from Treasury warnings about its impact on the books and inflation.
The question is whether Hipkins was right to rule it out for the foreseeable future, or as long as he is leader. Read more >
If former Police Minister Stuart Nash thought asking the Police Commissioner if he would appeal against a court decision was okay because they were “mates”, then he has quickly found out otherwise.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ decision that it was a resignation-worthy offence was as much because of Nash’s apparent obliviousness to that on Tuesday as for the original sin two years ago.
Nash got himself into this situation after an interview with Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB while talking about whether the courts were handing down sentences that matched the crime. He revealed he had once phoned Police Commissioner Andrew Coster to say “surely you’re going to appeal this?” after a court gave an offender home detention instead of jail. He then went on to question whether the courts were applying tough enough sentences in general.
The trouble Nash got himself in was that a question can easily be seen as an instruction when it comes to conversations between ministers and public servants. That is problematic when there are strict rules about not interfering in decisions undertaken by police – or commenting on the decisions of the courts, for that matter.
Nash is no rookie to either the police role or being a minister. He should know better than to make such a call in the first place - or to boast about it afterwards.
While he had assured Hipkins that it was the only conversation he had with Coster of such a nature, it was not enough to set at ease the question of his lack of judgment.
Nash’s attempt to defend it to the media this morning - rather than recognising he had erred - sealed his fate. Read more >
Claire Trevett is the NZ Herald’s political editor, based at Parliament in Wellington. She started at the Herald in 2003 and joined the Press Gallery team in 2007. She is a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
