Luxon: \u201cJames Meager. Yep.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meager is not in Cabinet.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien: \u201cIs James Meager in the Cabinet now?\u201d<\/p>\n
Luxon: \u201cNo, he\u2019s not in Cabinet, he\u2019s one of our ministers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tama Potaka is a M\u0101ori Cabinet Minister.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien: \u201cIs Tama Potaka not in Cabinet?\u201d<\/p>\n
Luxon: \u201cHe is in Cabinet. Tama is there. Yep. He\u2019s doing a great job.\u201c<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien: \u201cOkay. Did you just forget about him?\u201d<\/p>\n
Luxon: \u201cUh, sorry, I might of Tama, Tova, Tama yes \u2026 Tama does a great job \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on TVNZ Breakfast, with host Tova O’Brien. Photo \/ TVNZ<\/p>\n
If that was bad in the reading, it\u2019s worse in the watching. It felt similar to listening to the nearly three minutes on NewstalkZB where Luxon tried to avoid answering Mike Hosking\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
To be fair to the PM, the question sucked. Identity politics should be left in 2016 where it belongs. We\u2019ve moved on. But Luxon can\u2019t use that as an excuse for having an internal meltdown. PMs will encounter dumb questions. They have to be able to handle them.<\/p>\n
The correct response for a National Party PM<\/a> this decade is to say he doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n Between this, the Hosking interview, the \u201cI don\u2019t know how to be any clearer, guys\u201d Iran mistake last month, the \u201cI\u2019m entitled to my entitlements\u201d 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\u2019s not getting better.<\/p>\n Worse still, it\u2019s 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\u2019Brien and John Campbell on RNZ. O\u2019Brien loves a gotcha question and Campbell has publicly admitted to voting left, so Luxon should not expect slack.<\/p>\n This is critical for him to nail. Good handling of media exchanges signals competence. Stuffing it up signals the opposite.<\/p>\n The entire National Party depends on the PM looking competent to help raise their polling from the sub-30s, where they\u2019re languishing. Or if not help to raise it, at least not drag it down.<\/p>\n At the 29.8% this month\u2019s Taxpayer\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n NZ First would be huge. Act would be pretty big. National will lose 11 MPs.<\/p>\n That is an existential problem for the PM already. That\u2019s why the backbenchers have started to talk about rolling him and, worse still, leak about rolling him. They\u2019re 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.<\/p>\nBreakfast host Tova O’Brien interviews Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Photo \/ TVNZ<\/p>\n