Bugger the pollsters. Bugger the Remuneration Authority. Bugger the media. Bugger the voters.
If these weren’t the exact thoughts of our Prime Minister, the down-to-earth multimillionaire Christopher “Luxe” Luxon, this week, then I know bugger all about politics.
We have just witnessed a textbook example of how a government keen to talk about its latest policy agenda — in this instance, major changes to education priorities — completely lost control of the narrative for days.
It called to mind the famous observation by one British prime minister, Harold Macmillan. Asked what he thought were the most likely things to blow his government off course, he replied, “Events, dear boy, events.”
In the event, the events that blew the Luxe off-course this week were rather trivial in the scheme of things. The main trouble was that this particular trivia was of the sort governments of all stripes prefer never to talk about but which the media inevitably fizzes at the bunghole over: polls going down and MPs’ pay going up.
On Monday, the 1News Verian Poll showed a drop in coalition support, meaning — as the media always likes to put it — “that if an election were held today” the coalition would be out of office and Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori would be in power.
But, of course, an election isn’t going to be held today or tomorrow or next week. It’s going to be held sometime late in 2026, which makes the poll about as consequential as a loud fart in an empty room. What actually turned out to be this poll’s most significant result was that all parties, including the media, looked like a bunch of losers in their response to it.
The coalition’s various constituent parts did themselves no favours by sounding, by turns, defensive, dismissive or petulant about the result, which is quite clearly a terrible one for a government that’s been in office barely six months.
The Luxe’s initial response was pretty much that it had nothing to do with him. It reflected that New Zealanders were doing it hard right now while the government was “making tough choices” to fix the economy. This was framing the coalition’s drop in polling as the fault — like everything else that’s gone wrong since last October — of the last Labour government.
Meanwhile, his National Party deputy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis, called the poll “fruitcake business” — which, frankly, sounds delicious — while Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said he didn’t give “a rat’s derrière”, which frankly doesn’t sound so delicious.
No less cheap was Labour’s response. Leader Chris “Sausage Roll” Hipkins, who’s been harder to spot than a kākāpō all year, crowed to the media that the poll reflected that “what we’ve seen from this government is just the day-to-day litany of chaos”.
If he’d been talking about Labour’s last year in government under his leadership, he’d have been bang on. As it was, it was a glib overstatement of the coalition’s ups and downs in its first six months. Hipkins also maintained the poll was a “reflection that New Zealanders are dissatisfied by this government”. Well, maybe.
Another reading of the result is that the best way for Labour to have a shot at winning the next election is for it to do what it’s being doing for the last six months: sweet FA. Apparently the less we see of Hipkins and co, the more popular they become. Perhaps, like Marvel’s Doctor Strange, invisibility is Labour’s superpower.
However, the biggest loser from this poll might be the media, specifically TVNZ. It reported its poll with the sort of giddy hyperbole you expect when the All Blacks win a Rugby World Cup and the sort of schadenfreude you’d expect if their opponent in the final was the Wallabies. It smacked of desperation for relevance and ratings, and played straight into another narrative — that the media has got it in for the coalition.
Here’s a suggestion: before TVNZ — or anyone else — does another one of these pointlessly, backfiring exercises in attracting eyeballs, perhaps it should do a survey asking how many people really give a rat’s derrière about fruitcake political polls outside an election year?
This is going to hurt
Should the Remuneration Authority change its name to the Ruination of the PM’s Day Authority? To have a hike in parliamentary salaries announced the day after the TVNZ poll was also a textbook example, this time of Sod’s Law. To Luxon, it must have felt like his doctor telling him that, actually, the renal catheter needs to go back in.
Then, just two days later, former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr announced he would sue Foreign Minister Winston Peters for comments Peters made about Carr, AUKUS and China in a radio interview on Thursday, a potentially serious turn of events which has the potential to threatened the coalition.
If the Luxe was in anyway self-reflective — and all indications are that he isn’t — he must be wondering what he’s done to deserve this week. Mind you, a few things come to mind …
Almost by definition there is no good time for the public to learn that their politicians are getting a pay rise, but it doesn’t get much worse than when the public have faced a stubborn two-year cost-of-living crisis, followed by months of this government preaching fiscal austerity.
The Luxe — no doubt with his recent accommodation allowance gaff top of mind — immediately announced he would be giving the extra $50,000 he’ll get by 2026 to charity, though he didn’t say which charity. Perhaps it should be divided up among the thousands of civil servants whose lives have been turned upside down by forced redundancy.
Other government politicians — including the alleged taxpayers’ friend, Act leader David Seymour — have been rather more reticent. But then, what is there to say? Well, apart from telling voters they will have to suck it up and accept it because MPs’ pay hikes are a necessary evil.
Bring back the strap!
What’s Julie Anne Genter going to do next? Give someone a dead leg? Or maybe a wedgie?
It has been observed more than once that sitting days in Parliament seem to turn some MPs into badly-behaved school children, but Genter’s standover tactics on Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey on Wednesday night had more in common with a barney at Mongrel Mob headquarters.
Stalking across the House to shout, waving your arms about and shoving a report in someone’s face is the sort of thing one expects in one or two Eastern European parliaments, where punch ups aren’t unheard of.
It isn’t something one imagines a holier-than-thou New Zealand Green MP would be capable of. Also surprising was that Genter was not immediately kicked out of the House — MPs have been ejected for far less. Instead, after Speaker Gerry Brownlee was recalled, she gave a sorry-not-sorry apology.
As every parent knows, children need boundaries. They also need to learn there are consequences to one’s actions. Another Kind of Politics sentences Genter to spend the rest of the year in Parliament’s crèche with the other kids.
