Simon Wilson: What we’re getting wrong about Christopher Luxon

National Party leader Christopher Luxon. Photo / Mark Mitchell

As we say goodbye to 2022 and welcome in 2023, it’s a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views our audience loved the most. Today it’s the top five from Simon Wilson.

What we’re getting wrong about Christopher Luxon - May 3

[National Party leader] Luxon makes a lot of what people are calling “gaffes”. In recent weeks he’s said public transport shouldn’t be subsidised. His party is not interested in “bottom feeders”, which is a reference to the very poor.

He suggested we cancel the Labour Day holiday. In the name of defending the “squeezed middle”, he will introduce massive tax cuts for the rich. He sneered that the PM wouldn’t know how to wear a pair of gumboots.

Are they gaffes? He’s done it so often, it feels like compulsive behaviour. Perhaps he floundered around like this at Air New Zealand, blurting out whatever weird and wonderful idea was on his mind and then trying not to seem too humiliated when colleagues gently found ways to walk him back to reality.

The thing about Luxon’s “gaffes” is that they all come from the same place. Unfortunately, it’s a place of disdain for ordinary people and disinterest in how the ordinary world works.

It’s common to think of him as Key-lite. That’s a reference to former National PM John Key’s relative agnosticism about ideology: policies that kept people confident were good, and that was that.

Key presented himself as “ordinary”. Luxon behaves more like an entitled bloke with a messiah complex.

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Why do landlords leave shops empty on Queen St? - May 24

There are 38 empty shops on Queen St.

That’s my count of just the shops down from the Wellesley St intersection, in what used to be the premier shopping precinct in the city. It’s a catastrophe.

Why haven’t the landlords kept those shops open? They and no one else have the power to do that.

True, it’s complicated. Covid, the CRL and Queen St reconstruction have all been enormously disruptive. Some retailers have fled to Commercial Bay or Britomart. Some companies have fled the offices above the shops, for Wynyard Quarter or elsewhere.

The council’s plans to revitalise the central city have been confused and confusing, lack a compelling creative and commercial vision, are underfunded and have themselves been disrupted by Covid.

But the council has also been disrupted by a widespread view among retailers, landlords and their business association, Heart of the City, that things would be fine if we could only revert to the way it used to be.

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The wind and the rain of Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown - November 1

I do love a good inauguration. Music, costumes, jokes, the beautiful town hall filled with a cheering crowd and a slightly chaotic sense of pomp and ceremony. The mayor, with a big grin on his face and a korowai around his shoulders, gets up and talks about his “clear and compelling vision for the direction of this city”, which he’s proud to call “one of the best places to live in the world”.

Just days earlier, though, he’s been in less generous mode, launching a public attack on one of the council-controlled organisations. The attack was so fierce, the chief executive decided it would be prudent to find another job.

No, this is not 2022 and the mayor is not Wayne Brown. All of that happened in 2016, with the inauguration of Brown’s predecessor Phil Goff and his councillors.

Plus ça change. Goff began his time as mayor determined to look tough. He was, I wrote then, “projecting to Aucklanders and council officers alike that he’s not going to put up with any sh**”.

The similarities with our current new mayor, Wayne Brown, are striking. So are some of the differences.

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David Seymour stoking the fires of a culture war - July 12

Act leader David Seymour told his party conference over the weekend that New Zealand is becoming an “ethno-state”. He’s said this before. His argument is largely based on the proposed Three Waters reforms and the creation of Te Aka Whai Ora, the new Māori Health Authority.

In my view, this is straight-out racism. He may say that’s not his intention, but he is stirring up racial hatred and he cannot be unaware of that.

Three Waters will introduce co-governance arrangements with iwi for a resource that will still be owned by councils, albeit through four new agencies. Te Aka Whai Ora will work in partnership with Te Whata Ora, the new Health New Zealand, and with Manatū Hauroa, the Ministry of Health. But it won’t control the Crown’s work.

No matter. Seymour’s complaint is not a dog whistle. It’s an unmistakable clarion call to everyone who thinks Māori are getting too much.

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Fourteen reasons to love Auckland’s road cones - October 25

People get really upset about road cones. When I said I thought they were a good thing in an interview on RNZ last week, there was a flood of frustrated and angry responses.

Our wonderful new mayor, who says he has listened to the people at over 300 election campaign meetings, promises to rid the city of them.

At least, that’s what he kept saying before the election. Since then, he’s added the word “unnecessary”.

But even if some cones are “unnecessary”, why does it matter?

Me, I love a good road cone. For all these reasons …

• They’re our scapegoats
• They save workers’ lives
• They save your life
• They save your car
• They mean something is being fixed
• They mean we’re a real city
• They’re only road cones

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