Luxon: “I don’t need to do that Tova, we’re not going to play that game. What we’re really focusing on …”
O’Brien: “It’s not a game. How many Māori MPs do you have in the National Party portion of the Cabinet? Is it just one?”
Luxon: “James Meager. Yep.”
Meager is not in Cabinet.
O’Brien: “Is James Meager in the Cabinet now?”
Luxon: “No, he’s not in Cabinet, he’s one of our ministers.”
Tama Potaka is a Māori Cabinet Minister.
O’Brien: “Is Tama Potaka not in Cabinet?”
Luxon: “He is in Cabinet. Tama is there. Yep. He’s doing a great job.“
O’Brien: “Okay. Did you just forget about him?”
Luxon: “Uh, sorry, I might of Tama, Tova, Tama yes … Tama does a great job …”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on TVNZ Breakfast, with host Tova O’Brien. Photo / TVNZ
If that was bad in the reading, it’s worse in the watching. It felt similar to listening to the nearly three minutes on NewstalkZB where Luxon tried to avoid answering Mike Hosking’s question. It may even be slightly worse because of proximity to the election. The Hosking interview was last year, this one is seven months from us voting.
To be fair to the PM, the question sucked. Identity politics should be left in 2016 where it belongs. We’ve moved on. But Luxon can’t use that as an excuse for having an internal meltdown. PMs will encounter dumb questions. They have to be able to handle them.
The correct response for a National Party PM this decade is to say he doesn’t go around counting ethnicities in the office to make himself look virtuous. The wrong response is to start trying to count those people real time on national telly.
Between this, the Hosking interview, the “I don’t know how to be any clearer, guys” Iran mistake last month, the “I’m entitled to my entitlements” mistake two years ago, and a succession of other smaller incidents, you are forced to reach the conclusion Luxon is not good under media pressure. Worse, he’s not getting better.
Worse still, it’s about to become harder for him. For two and a half years, his weekly media round has only really included one formidable interviewer: Hosking. Shortly it will increase to three: Hosking, O’Brien and John Campbell on RNZ. O’Brien loves a gotcha question and Campbell has publicly admitted to voting left, so Luxon should not expect slack.
This is critical for him to nail. Good handling of media exchanges signals competence. Stuffing it up signals the opposite.
The entire National Party depends on the PM looking competent to help raise their polling from the sub-30s, where they’re languishing. Or if not help to raise it, at least not drag it down.
At the 29.8% this month’s Taxpayer’s Union Curia poll has the Nats, they would still be re-elected into government. But only because they would be saved by their coalition partners coming in oversized.
NZ First would be huge. Act would be pretty big. National will lose 11 MPs.
Breakfast host Tova O’Brien interviews Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Photo / TVNZ
That is an existential problem for the PM already. That’s why the backbenchers have started to talk about rolling him and, worse still, leak about rolling him. They’re worried about losing their jobs in November. That talk was enough of a concern for his more loyal Cabinet ministers to hold a private meeting with him two weeks ago urging him to do something.
So he did the reshuffle. But promoting the faithful and punishing the disloyal only buys time.
The solution lies much closer to home. Luxon must improve his performance.
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