What goes up must come down, but in Christopher Luxon’s case, what didn’t go up very far needed to go further, and now it’s coming back down it won’t take long before it’s all over.
I think Luxon’s popularity, if you can call it that, has peaked – and if he had a honeymoon, I, like most of the country, must have missed it.
The Post/Freshwater Strategy poll released this week showed if an election was held now, it would be a hung Parliament – no one side would win – and crucially, Labour leader Chris Hipkins has nudged ahead of Luxon as preferred PM.
The poll shows National slipping four points since the October 2023 election to 34% and Labour gaining four points to 31%. It’s a poll that puts pressure on Luxon and asks: is National’s plan getting us anywhere and is he the right man to lead his party and the country?
Luxon says the poll is not what National’s internal polling shows and that people are better off under his leadership and the National-led government. To be fair, inflation has dived since December 2022 and interest rates are now falling.
But who is suddenly feeling better off? These people are hard to find and all economic forecasts now suggest growth will be weaker in the short term. More than 8000 people joined the dole queue in the three months to September and unemployment is set to rise further. The nationwide unemployment rate of 4.8% is the highest since December 2020 and it is forecast to rise to 5.2% next year. Others have had their hours scaled back.
If he had a honeymoon, I, like most of the country, must have missed it.
All this builds pressure on Luxon’s leadership and the coalition he leads because National had promised a strong recovery if it was voted in, not an extension of the cost-of-living and post-Covid pain that saw voters desert Labour.
Despite Luxon wanting voters to believe the current malaise is the lag effect from Labour, it’s not credible. Not when he takes credit for inflation and interest rates falling - which is actually the job of the Reserve Bank, as most people know.
So, rather than the change voters wanted, Luxon’s government has instead delivered more of the same and then some. The softening in interest rates is yet to properly flow through to households and may not begin to do so until March, when a big chunk of fixed-rate mortgages come up for renewal. Meanwhile, as ordinary Kiwis fret about mortgage costs – and whether they’ll have to sell their homes if they lose their jobs - Luxon is selling his surplus investment houses and properties, one by one by one, and seeing it roll out, headline after headline, in public.
Did anyone suggest he should leave it until after he leaves office? If they didn’t, they should have. If he was told, he didn’t listen and that means his political radar is simply way off. Why? Because all those tax-free gains are being thrown in front of us at a time of struggle for many and when a capital gains tax is once again being debated.
The headlines this government is attracting across the health sector also give no one any confidence. Why, when we are short of nurses in our hospitals, are we not hiring all the ones we have trained? It doesn’t make sense to let them head overseas to Australia after all our investment – especially when we were told the country was desperately short of nurses.
Rather than the change voters wanted, Luxon’s government has instead delivered more of the same and then some.
Health became former National PM Jim Bolger’s Achilles heel in the 1990s when Labour started to highlight people dying inside hospitals. Of course, that’s not unusual – happens all the time – but Labour succeeded in sheeting the blame home to National’s cost cutting, effectively holding them to account in Parliament.
Now bring in race relations, something Luxon and his advisors engineered by giving Act its wish to push its Treaty Principles Bill. At a personal level, a hīkoī to protest against this might be a distraction – a sideshow – when you’re desperately looking for work or needing more hours to make ends meet; when you can’t get seen in our hospitals; or if you lose your home after you lose your job. But at a societal level, with a prolonged cost-of-living crisis and more job losses to come, then it contributes to a picture of a governing party far from in control of the situation.
With all this going on, Luxon pumps out numerous social media videos telling us the economy is on track, things are turning a corner and everything else is set to boom! It’s starting to look deluded, out of touch, insincere and, frankly, almost unbecoming of someone holding the office of Prime Minister.
Questions of whether our PM is out of touch with the public sentiment and mood have long been raised, but they’re getting louder and it’s all converging to add to his polling woes.
Many are feeling so down about our fortunes and future they are heading to Australia – a vote of no confidence in New Zealand and, by association, Luxon’s government.
Luxon has never enjoyed a strong base of personal support in the polls. You could say this inability to set the polls alight is the reason National was forced to enter a three-way coalition. Nevertheless, the coalition should have been able to well outflank what had become a shabby and deeply unpopular Labour government now in opposition.
Now, he’s facing his worst nightmare – a poll that has Hipkins, who has barely been seen, in front as preferred PM. Voters are clearly questioning Luxon’s ability to oversee an economic recovery.
National insiders expected his popularity would strengthen while in office and as people got to know him. But he’s failed to win hearts and minds and the best thing some in business can say is they are just pleased it’s not Labour in charge.
