Thomas Coughlan: Why Christopher Luxon should spend more time in Wellington

Christopher Luxon should spend more time in Wellington, writes Thomas Coughlan. Photo / Michaela Pointon

OPINION

National leader Christopher Luxon is fond of telling people how often he likes to get out of Wellington’s “beltway” to meet real New Zealanders, who apparently do not live here (they should - it’s lovely).

Luxon should consider spending more time in the city.

Not only would it disabuse him of the notion that New Zealand has been wet and whiny; the city has been lavished with generous helpings of warming sun this month, improving the already sunny disposition of its residents.

But additional time in the capital would come with another major benefit to Luxon: and that is to teach him the art of political communication.

Luxon is a hard worker, and a fast learner. No one has managed to become the leader of one of the major parties so soon after becoming an MP, but he is still a novice when it comes to political communication.

In the year and a bit he has been National leader, he has earned the unfortunate label “gaffe-prone”, for his triple sins of saying the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time with some regularity.

His comments about birth rates, and the country’s wet and whiny nature have landed him in trouble this week, as did the revelation he had asked Parliamentary Service to purchase a Tesla for his personal use last year (he cancelled the order when he was brought to his senses).

None of these things are particularly serious offences on their own, but collectively, they paint the picture of someone who just can’t quite strike the right chord when it comes to the difficult art of political communication.

The issue in some instances is Luxon appears to communicate as if the political battlefield lay as he would like it to, rather than adapting himself to conform to the environment in which he finds himself.

Christopher Luxon should spend more time in Wellington, writes Thomas Coughlan. Photo / Alex Burton

Luxon’s anti-abortion stance means he starts at a disadvantage when it comes to talking about any issues related to reproduction and women’s health more broadly. Luxon may wish to be able to opine freely on any subject he confronts on the campaign trail, but the reality is any remarks he makes in this area will be read against his anti-abortion stance.

Instead of leaping into the fray as he did at Christchurch’s Infrastructure conference last week with the remark, he should have paused and either said nothing, or phrased his remarks more carefully.

Luxon and National do not think the remark (“I encourage all of you to go out there, have more babies if you wish, that would be helpful”) was particularly offensive.

Indeed, it included the words “if you wish” sandwiched in the middle, which make it clear the remark was no edict.

But no politician can rely on people interpreting their remarks as they would like them interpreted.

That is why political communication is such an art. The people who are good at it - former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is a recent example - speak with such precision that they leave little room for misinterpretation and Luxon’s chaser “that would be helpful” implied the state really did have a view on whether or not private citizens chose to have children or not.

Luxon could, and arguably should, have chosen to say nothing. The topic of having babies should have flipped the warning switch inside his head, reminding him to say nothing or be very deliberate in what he chose to say.

If he insisted upon speaking, he might have done as deputy Nicola Willis or rival David Seymour did, and make it painfully clear people’s reproductive decisions are their own, and for their own benefit, not the benefit of the state’s population strategy - the only sensible response.

Seymour, another artful communicator, turned the spat against the Government, saying people were being forced to delay starting families because of high housing costs and other economic ills.

Likewise Luxon’s comments about New Zealand being a wet, whiny country.

Again, this relatively minor slip-up - which has dogged Luxon for three days - could have been easily avoided if Luxon had been a bit more precise about who he was referring to: the Labour Government.

It also shows an alarming tendency for Luxon to forget that whenever he speaks, he is speaking to a national audience - something more experienced frontline politicians never forget.

Backbenchers and low-profile MPs are often suckered into thinking when they’re in the field, away from the national media that lurk the halls of Parliament, they can speak more freely, tailoring their message to whomever might be listening.

Luxon forgets that as leader of the opposition, wherever he is, he will be speaking to a national audience and must therefore proceed with caution.

The Tesla gaffe speaks to itself. A senior politician once said the rule of thumb for MPs’ decision-making was to ask themselves how their actions would look if they read about them on the front page of The Dominion (the now twice-dead, twice-reborn Wellington daily).

Well, Luxon’s Tesla purchase did make it to the front page - of the New Zealand Herald.

The past few months Luxon has been busy telling New Zealanders what the Government cannot afford, like waiving $5 prescription charges. He cannot make this argument while also thinking the Government could afford to buy him a new Tesla (which would have been Luxon’s third car and second Tesla - although it would remain in Crown ownership).

Sanity prevailed and he cancelled the order last November - evidence perhaps that Luxon is on the road to improvement.

National should be miles ahead of Labour right now. Labour appears to want to lose the election, as ministers quiet-quit themselves into no end of trouble. Meanwhile, economic headwinds are blowing against the Government. New Zealand may today discover it has been in recession this year, polling suggests people are grumpy about inflation and crime (issues on which National has a strong lead on Labour) and a record net 33 per cent of people think the country is on the wrong track, in the recent Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll.

Everything is set for a change of Government. Alas for Luxon, it’s becoming increasingly clear the main obstacle to the job he craves is not Chris Hipkins and Labour, but himself.

Thomas Coughlan is deputy political editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.