National Party leader Christopher Luxon gets ready for a drive in his son's humble Mazda. Photo / Mike Scott
The NZ Herald starts its The Leaders election series today, showing a different side to the party leaders. National Party leader Christopher Luxon took political editor Claire Trevett for a drive to his childhood haunts and now his Botany electorate.
The pitch for a drive with National’s leader Christopher Luxon was a slightly fraught one.
The first obstacle was finding a car to take. The pitch awkwardly coincided with a bit of publicity around Luxon’s complicated relationships with Teslas.
The Tesla in the Luxon household is his wife Amanda’s and, no, he could not ask Amanda nicely if he could “borrow” it.
He tried to convince us the 50cc Piaggio Zip scooter he uses to go up to the local dairy would be the only option. He insisted we would fit, it would be safe and it might even eventually get us all the way out to Howick.
He was quite committed to this wee joke. When the NZ Herald turned up outside his house, there was the sound of the garage door opening and a scooter starting.
He revved it a few times, drove it out, offered up a spare helmet, and tried to goad me into it by calling me a chicken. “Not happening,” he is told.
He had come up with another option, borrowing his son William’s Mazda – a less politically fraught option with plenty of room for all and an ordinary family man vibe about it.
The jolly japes over, Mr Practical ran to get some rubbing alcohol to clean the dashboard so the camera adhesive would stick. “Boys’ Brigade,” he says proudly. “Sure and steadfast.”
Then we were off, for a journey in nostalgia through Luxon’s childhood in suburban Howick, which is now part of his Botany electorate.
The drive is happening the day after the election hoardings went up and so most of the sights he points to on the way feature his own face.
There are quite a lot of National hoardings and billboards around the streets of Auckland (and not yet time for people to vandalise them). He feels obliged to point to every single one. “Look at that sign!” he marvels, “Such a good message,” and “what a great sign that is!”
There are very few Labour signs at that stage – we spot only two.
Luxon clearly sees this as an early victory over his rival, Chris Hipkins.
Asked if he’s happy with himself, he laughs.
“I’m always happy with myself. I’m a pretty happy person. What kind of question is that?”
It’s a question you ask a first term MP who could well be Prime Minister in just over a month.
So is he confident? “Never complacent!”
But confident? “I’m always confident. Just very focused on what we’ve got to do.”
Is he nervous at all? “No.”
The reason for that, he says, is because he has a plan.
He won’t say what this plan is, just that it exists, stretching before him to be executed.
Plans have a tendency to go awry but he isn’t willing to entertain this. He won’t be drawn on NZ First leader Winston Peters, whose rising popularity is an ever-present threat to even the best plans. Peters is a hypothetical situation. He won’t talk about Act’s policies, just “that’s not our policy.”
Leaders themselves can sometimes cause plans to go awry and he has the campaign stretching before him. He’s learned from earlier mistakes: he opted out of going on the family holiday to Hawaii this year, reluctant to face another round of Te Puke jokes or be accused of holidaying instead of focusing on his goal.
He’s been prepping through public meetings and has done some prep work for the election debates, the first of which will be TVNZ on September 19. He’s avidly followed campaigns and debates both here and overseas.
His deputy Nicola Willis was a convincing substitute for Dame Jacinda Ardern and Helen Clark in debate prep for past leaders but is not involved this time. “We have some other people playing Chris Hipkins for us at the moment. Two other folks that do that job for us very well.” He won’t say who, other than that they are not current MPs or Sir John Key.
He’d also had four or five sessions with media trainer Mary Lambie, who is also coaching other National MPs. Asked if he needed much work, he says it’s more about how to contend with media questions than how he does on telly. “It’s a different environment for me, coming from outside.”
He also has money: the National Party coffers are filled to the brim.
At the top of Stockade Hill, Luxon talks about marching in the Anzac Day service. He waves an arm across beaches below and points to the bits that used to be farmland when he was a lad.
He claims he can’t remember who his first kiss was with, but notes he met wife Amanda when he was 15.
He tells us of learning to sail in a boat that his father bolted wheels onto: an early version of the amphibious Sealegs Luxon now owns but doesn’t have much time to use.
His dad built a boat, an 18-footer they once sailed from Howick to Waiheke Island. “He’s a pretty resourceful guy when you can build a boat like that and follow a plan. It took him a long time to do it. We spent a lot of time on the water.”
At his childhood house, a split-level brick bungalow down a cul de sac, he talks about “hours and hours” of street cricket, building forts, and catching eels down at the creek.
“There were heaps of kids. It was really awesome. Good memories, it was a great way to grow up and I’m really grateful for it.”
There were no cellphones or social media. He learned the recorder (“a terrible instrument”) so he could learn the guitar. He ended up playing sport instead.
There were his various childhood revenue-raising measures: he was a businessman even then, washing shop windows, mowing lawns, delivering the local newspaper, and a roaring trade in Commando comics.
“I saved it up, and that’s what I used to buy my first car. A 1962 Riley Elf.” It got written off after somebody reversed into him. He wasn’t going too fast: “You can’t go fast in a 1000cc Riley Elf.”
We want to see him talking to a voter or two, so we stop at a cafe in Howick’s village for hot chocolate.
He does not get mobbed but has no hesitation in taking the initiative and bowling up to talk to the other customers in the cafe.
He talks to Tommy about the book Tommy is reading, Rich Dad Poor Dad, which Luxon pivots to his desire for more financial literacy lessons in schools.
He talks to a nearby group of customers who have just come from church.
He talks to a woman with a walker wandering up the hill, praising her efforts.
After Luxon has moved on, Tommy says he takes his hat off to him, that the life of a politician does not seem easy.
But will he vote for him? “He seems like a nice guy. But I haven’t decided yet.”
Luxon was also asked to take us to a secret guilty pleasure. The NZ Herald has been told Luxon is prone to getting his drivers to detour through a Macca’s drive-through.
He admits that is normally a guilty pleasure “when I’m in one of my least disciplined moments.”
He blames his parents for his ongoing love of the cuisine of the golden arches, saying as children the Luxon nippers were only allowed McDonald’s or Georgie Pie once a year on their birthdays.
Even then it was only a cheeseburger and small fries. He got to taste more of the menu when he worked at the Merivale McDonald’s as a student and now a Quarter Pounder with large fries and a chocolate shake is his choice.
However, at the moment he’s on a health kick.
He has trimmed down and he’s fit, turning himself into a lean, mean campaign machine.
I ask if he sees the campaign as akin to an Olympic event and has been training to peak at the right time.
He laughs and insists he has simply just managed to get himself into some kind of routine of eating and exercising.
“Move more, eat less. It’s pretty simple.”
Discipline is key.
The discipline also extends to his political messaging. He is the king of repetition.
The slogan on the signs is “get our country back on track.”
The first part of selling the slogan was to convince people that New Zealand had gone off the tracks – and that it was all Labour’s fault.
Luxon does this relentlessly, hitting the same talking points each time over and over.
He is relaxed when talking about his childhood or family.
But every time the conversation starts to veer towards the political, he is straight back to the talking points. Any political questions are answered with a salvo of bullet points of gloom.
Things are not just bad. They are “abysmal,” the cost of living is “out of control,” there is “huge pain and suffering for everybody.”
It can be exhausting listening for those who have to hear it over and over, such as journalists trapped in a Mazda for 2.5 hours.
It comes as a bit of relief to discover he can parody himself for this.
It is a Sunday, and the traffic between his home in Remuera and his electorate out east is not bad.
However, he insists it is bad and that is all, of course, Labour’s fault.
“Oh, the state of the roads under the Labour Government,” he says melodramatically. “The pain and suffering the ordinary New Zealander is going through, just trying to get to and from work!”
Whether it’s hyperbolic or not, the repetition clearly sinks in.
He is on the beach at Cockle Bay talking about boyhood adventures when a man walking past calls out to wish him luck. He says he has seen Luxon’s signs up and then adds: “bring the country back on track!”
Luxon is stoked. All that repetition and the kilometres of blue signs have done their work.
Claire Trevett is the NZ Herald’s political editor, based at Parliament in Wellington. She started at the NZ Herald in 2003 and joined the Press Gallery team in 2007. She is a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
Luxon's international meetings included French President Macron and EU President von der Leyen.