A strategic reboot seeks to put Luxon above the fray and the party on the front foot.<\/p>\n
Something, the thinking must have been, had to change. A drip-feed of disatisfaction from National MPs and staffers together with a pair of energetic coalition tails wagging the National dog had created a corrosive effect, agonisingly chronicled in the media.<\/p>\n
It culminated in the indignity of a 100-hour gauntlet<\/a> in which Christopher Luxon found it necessary to staunch speculation around his leadership by calling a confidence vote in himself.<\/p>\n That was followed by a burst of mischief-making by Winston Peters<\/a>, who couldn\u2019t help but remark when asked that Luxon had cocked it up in calling the vote. He should have consulted Peters first. And in making a rod for his own back, Luxon had destabilised the coalition, Peters said, without, naturally, any hint of destabilisation.<\/p>\n If that, and National firing back, seemed severe, it was nothing compared with the bombshell just days later, when Peters\u2019 office released emails suggesting<\/a> Luxon had sought to shift New Zealand\u2019s position on the war in Iran to one of \u201csupport\u201d.<\/p>\n Through the mists of all of this, a discernibly new National strategy has taken shape. Perhaps it started with the appointment of Simeon Brown to the role of campaign chair, in place of Chris Bishop. Perhaps it was settled upon in that epic caucus meeting \u2013 the one, recall, that chief whip Stuart Smith was sadly unable to attend \u2013 at which Luxon put his leadership to the vote. But a reboot, a new assertiveness, is clear enough to see.<\/p>\n As we discuss in a new episode of Gone By Lunchtime<\/a>, the Spinoff\u2019s politics podcast, a number of ingredients in what looks like a fresh communications approach can be identified. They are:<\/p>\n 1) Stand up to the coalition partners<\/p>\n Luxon has done well to keep a novel form of coalition, with one seasoned politician and one very, very seasoned politician to contend with. But it\u2019s no more \u2013 or, rather, a lot less \u2013 Mr Nice Guy.<\/p>\n This may not have been top of the list, but it moved there swiftly enough, thanks to the interventions of NZ First\u2019s leader. National\u2019s top ministers have been quick to alert voters to something that may have Winston Peters rubbing his achilles\u2019 heel: he was the one who put Jacinda Ardern\u2019s government into power. Who\u2019s to say he won\u2019t install Labour again? Nicola Willis upped the ante on that a few days later, suggesting that if Peters was confused about how those emails were released, he might get confused in choosing a coalition partner after the election, too.<\/p>\n A similar assertiveness is visible in pushing back to New Zealand First on its opposition to the India FTA. \u201cShame on you, Shane Jones,\u201d said Willis in the house in response to her cabinet colleague\u2019s \u201crace-based rhetoric\u201d. Erica Stanford, meanwhile, was fairly emphatic<\/a> in her criticisms of Act\u2019s new immigration policy.<\/p>\n 2) Blame the media<\/p>\n In a two-minute statement upon emerging from that caucus meeting, Luxon devoted a good part of it to a homily about the mainstream media, and their feeble obsession with political soap opera. It\u2019s a time-honoured tactic to shift attention from the question of insecure leadership to one of the fourth estate, superpowered in the modern age by the ability, via social media, to bypass the scoundrels altogether.<\/p>\n It also provided the opportunity for Luxon to say he would no longer be engaging in such pantomime speculation, and offered a foundation for some words that Simeon Brown has embraced in recent interviews, reminiscent of the days of Helen Clark: \u201cWe\u2019re moving on.\u201d<\/p>\n 3) Do less media, better<\/p>\n You have to work with what you\u2019ve got, and what Luxon is not is a versatile, polished media performer.<\/p>\n He has quit the weekly appearance on Breakfast, where he seemed to be in a painful personal war with his own gravitas.\u00a0 Did it look like he was \u201crunning for the hills\u201d, as someone once said<\/a> of Ardern doing similar? Maybe. But the risk assessment was straightforward enough: any damage suffered from the decision paled in comparison with the damage that might be suffered from carrying on.<\/p>\n In the media interviews he has done since that decision, Luxon has looked better prepared, prompting some speculation that advice from former broadcaster Rachel Smalley has helped. In any case, the mantra appears to be: do fewer media spots, so that you can be better drilled for the ones you do do.<\/p>\n Q+A\u2019s Jack Tame seized on<\/a> Luxon\u2019s post-caucus statements about media focusing on speculation rather than policy to re-up his invitation to the PM to come on the long-form interview programme. It seems unlikely that the response (\u201cThe PM is unavailable\u201d) will change any time soon.<\/p>\n 4) Keep Luxon above the fray<\/p>\n In keeping with the above, best to locate the party leader and prime minister somewhere above the bear pit, hoping that a bit of statesman-like scent wafts up. Nicola Willis and Simeon Brown, meanwhile, are given licence to roll their sleeves up and take the fight to adversaries on the benches opposite as well as the benches adjacent.<\/p>\n Oh, and it can probably, go without saying, and it can hardly be called a new directive, but \u2026<\/p>\n 5) Don\u2019t moan to the media<\/p>\n Unfortunately, as events of the last week<\/a> make plain, these tactical positions cannot be dictated to New Zealand First.<\/p>\n On today\u2019s new episode of Gone By Lunchtime, where I\u2019m joined as ever by Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas, we also got into all of that. Just how damaging were the release of those m<\/a>essages<\/a> suggesting the prime minister sought to support the US-Israel attacks on Iran, both to his authority in talking about the war and its impacts and to the vows of confidence upon which the coalition relies?<\/p>\n Plus: <\/p>\n Despite all of that, Luxon can boast at least two victories on the world stage, in securing a free-trade deal with India in spite of the scoffers, and in signing an agreement with Singapore that offers greater security on fuel supply.\u00a0\u00a0
\nA new, grumpy-parent-style ultimatum has been issued to local councils: sort out your amalgamation or we\u2019ll do it for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A strategic reboot seeks to put Luxon above the fray and the party on the front foot. Something,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11508,112585,111,43,139,69,135,69397],"class_list":["post-414782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-christopher-luxon","tag-election-2026","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics","tag-simeon-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}