David Cormack
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Who framed Christopher Luxon?
🕑 Added 2022-04-25 04:41:53 +0000 UTCIt's been a charmed run. The media has been gagging for National to be actually competitive. Since Covid they've not been. Then when Collins tried to knife Bridges in the dark of night and found herself cast adrift, National went to the chosen one, Christopher (not Chris) Luxon.
His opening few days were super rough. There was a Newshub headline "Christopher Luxon believes abortion is tantamount to murder", another Newshub headline was "Luxon unaware his $7m Remuera home increased in value by $2.3m over one year", yet another Newshub headline: "Luxon's opening gambit as would-be-PM: Hiring a black Merc to drop him across the road", the Herald got in on it too with "Luxon wants property prices to drop but not too much - he owns seven". But since then he hasn't really had the torch applied.
And National has gone up in the polls by heaps. Most of it at the expense of ACT but enough has come from Labour that National is now ahead of Labour by about 1% in nearly every poll. A great performance from the freshman MP who has only been an MP 18 months!
Lots of Labour-aligned folk online have been fretting about the National resurgence. And I'll admit, I was a bit worried. But man, he's actually super shit. And look it's probably because he's only been an MP for such a short period of time, but wow.
And now I think the media has decided it's given him enough of a go and it's rightly applying scrutiny to a man who could very well end up Prime Minister next year.
The first signs that things were taking a turn was Luxon's use of "bottom-feeders" in an interview with Kerre Woodham. Usually nobody would pay much attention to a throwaway comment made on NewstalkZB but people pounced.
But things got worse.
He said that public transport shouldn't be subsidised and should stand on its own. This despite the fact that he was CEO of a major form of public transport that fails to stand on its own regularly. To be fair, Luxo has probably not seen the inside of a train or bus since he was in Moscow fighting the communists, but the whole point of publicly owned transport is because it's not profitable. It's a public good. And not every public good needs to make money Luxo. It may come as a surprise but good can exist outside of profitability.
So he had to walk that comment back.
Then he said that if the Government was going to make Matariki (matarangi) a public holiday, it should take one away; and it should be Labour Day.
I'm pretty sure this started as a bit, but then it got out of hand and Luxo kept running with it. He told Morning Report that he would remove Labour Day. And that played pretty terribly.
And not only was it covered negatively, but lines were now being drawn from that fuck-up to the public transport one. The media was now starting to draw patterns for people to see for themselves.
This week just past was manna from heaven for him. The inflation rate came out and it was pretty shit. He also was getting a lot of media. He had the main interview lined up on Q&A. I don't usually watch political media, but I thought I'd give this a hoon to see how he was holding. I'd heard he'd received media training earlier that week and wanted to know if he was able to put it into practice.
Spoiler: he was not.
As far as interviews go, it wasn't the worst I've ever seen, but it wasn't flash. Jack Tame is an absolute beast of an interviewer, I think his sexy appearance masks this. Tame got him on where Luxon wanted to cut spending, Tame got him on the fact that his proposed tax cuts would be inflationary at a time when Luxo is calling on the Government to rein in spending to try and lower inflation. Tame got him on the fact that the proposed tax cuts would give Luxo an annual income boost of $18,000, while the vast majority of the country would get nowhere near that.
Most interestingly to me, Tame got him on his inability to communicate ideas. And that's the pattern that's starting to emerge. A bumbling Mr McGoo type who, in the fact of being asked a question he doesn't know the answer to, just falls back on corporate buzz words that aren't super understandable.
This opens up a very clear line of attack for Labour given that in Jacinda Ardern they have one of the most gifted political communicators we've seen in a long time.
I also think the National caucus - which has been remarkably well disciplined until now - sniffs this. Already I've been told by National MPs that they think Luxo got the role too early. That there's too much time until the election and he's going to be found out.
"John Key Home Brand" is how one Nat MP described him. Others in caucus have suggested he's smart enough to pass an exam but has no general knowledge of anything.
The reverse of this is of course true, he could spend the next 18 months improving and come the election he's a well-oiled machine. The other thing is it also may not matter how shit he is, because if inflation gets out of hand and Labour don't give off a vibe of at least trying to do something about it then National will likely hose in anyway.
Either way, National winning the election won't be because of Luxon. But he might be the reason they lose it.
