Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s reshuffle of Melissa Lee, Penny Simmonds should keep all ministers on their toes: Claire Trevett

OPINION

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s rapid-fire reshuffle punting Melissa Lee out of Cabinet and stripping her of the media portfolio sends a stark warning to all ministers: if you’re not up to the job, you won’t keep the job.

It is, he said, “how I roll” before making it clear that rolling underperforming ministers may well become a regular event.

It will certainly feel cut-throat to those ministers facing it - Lee and Penny Simmonds, who has had Disability Issues taken from her.

Both are still ministers and have kept their other portfolios, and Luxon went to some lengths to insist he still had confidence in them and understood any disappointment.

That will not lessen the humiliation he handed out just five months after they were sworn into office - especially for Lee, who has also lost her space at the Cabinet table.

Rarely have we seen such early demotions in a new Government.

Luxon has set a bar for other ministers, who face a future of what Luxon called his “constant adjustments” approach.

That means if problems sprung up in a portfolio area and a minister is falling short in handling them, or if a minister is simply underperforming, he will not hesitate to replace them rather than let them become a distraction.

Too often, prime ministers let flailing ministers stay in their jobs too long, either to save face or to risk looking as if they are conceding they made the wrong choice.

The decision to take Lee out of the broadcasting portfolio was not a surprise.

Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee speaking to media earlier this month. Photo / Mark Mitchell

In Lee’s case, Luxon said “complexities” had arisen in the broadcasting portfolio which warranted giving it to a more senior minister.

What he meant by that was that it had become white-hot after the collapse of Newshub and cuts at TVNZ.

For weeks, Lee had battled to put up a competent front over the issues afflicting the media industry in the wake of those events.

It was doing little to instil confidence that the Government had a handle on the situation.

The “complexities” involved pre-dated the dramatic upheavals in the sector. Lee isn’t even the first broadcasting minister to come a cropper to those complexities.

Lee’s downfall was that they came to a head on her watch - and she did not have an answer to them by the time they took their toll. Nor had she come up with anything since.

Usually ministers are stripped of portfolios for a scandal, a breach of the Cabinet Manual, or telling a porky to the Prime Minister or the public.

In some cases, it is for incompetence that was turning into a distracting mess.

There were elements of the latter in Wednesday’s reshuffle. However - at least in Simmonds’ case - there was also an element of a minister being shifted aside for simply being a bit average.

There is a bit of risk to Luxon in this approach: if you end up moving too many ministers around for shonky performances, it starts to look a bit chaotic.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins was quick to claim that it already was chaotic, although it has not reached that bar yet. Hipkins was also, rightly, quick to point out that Luxon will find it hard to apply the same standard to his coalition partners’ ministers in NZ First and Act.

However, National’s ministers will be watching the way Luxon has rolled with a few nerves.

And given the struggles of recent broadcasting ministers, the newly crowned Media Minister Paul Goldsmith may well be hoping he hasn’t just been handed a poisoned chalice.

Claire Trevett is the 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.