The Q+A host talks about the struggle to get the PM to appear \u2013 and how he is preparing to host the first big leaders\u2019 debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
December 2024. It was the month the Fast-Track Approvals Bill passed into law. Liam Lawson was named a member of the Red Bull Racing team. And it was the last time Christopher Luxon appeared on Q+A.<\/p>\n
Since then, he\u2019s declined every invitation to appear on the weekly TVNZ1 current affairs programme. \u201cWe have an open invitation,\u201d Jack Tame told The Spinoff for an episode of At Large with Toby Manhire. \u201cIf he or his team are listening right now, we would be delighted to have the prime minister on. We can do any time that suits you. We\u2019ll make it work\u201d<\/p>\n
The relationship with the prime minister\u2019s office was \u201cvery cordial and respectful\u201d, Tame said. \u201cWhen we ask if he\u2019s available, I think we\u2019re usually told something along the lines of, \u2018We\u2019re sorry, the prime minister is not available.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Why does Tame reckon he won\u2019t appear? \u201cI don\u2019t know. I mean, I can appreciate a couple of things. First of all, politicians and especially prime ministers have astronomical demands on their time and attention. I also think there is a material difference in coming on a political interview show where you might be interviewed for 25 or 30 minutes. Sometimes it can be quite a confrontational environment, and the level of preparation that might be required to come on a show like that far outweighs the level of preparation that might be required for weekly news hits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luxon can hardly be accused of avoiding questions. He might have quit his weekly engagement <\/a>on TVNZ Breakfast and ghosted Q+A, but he faces the media most Mondays for a post-cabinet press conference, keeps weekly appointments on RNZ and Newstalk ZB, and speaks to reporters on the parliamentary tiles and at standups around the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe prime minister does make himself regularly available for interviews with other shows,\u201d said Tame. \u201cI would argue that there is a distinct difference between being in a situation where you are taking a sustained line of questions from one interviewer relative to those other environments, so when you\u2019ve got the press gallery all shouting questions, absolutely that\u2019s scrutiny. There is, I would argue, more depth when an interviewer is able to kind of meticulously prosecute a case or follow a whole line of questions that perhaps isn\u2019t realised in a group setting.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the weekly sit-downs, \u201cevery politician, especially ones who reach cabinet or the ninth floor, is just just so embarrassingly media trained that they are very very capable of spinning and twisting and talking for seven or eight minutes or nine minutes, however long they need in order to soak up the time and get out.\u201d<\/p>\n That marked out the \u201creally strong communicators\u201d from the more ordinary, he suggested. \u201cIt\u2019s the difference between answering a question and not answering a question. Some politicians, I think, have got to a point where they are so media trained that they default to message and they default to not answering a question and trying to pivot onto a point they want to make, rather than simply engaging and acknowledging the trade-offs that are inherent in policymaking.\u201d<\/p>\n Luxon is not alone in snubbing Q+A. \u201cThere are some cabinet ministers whom we requested many times who didn\u2019t come on, or haven\u2019t been on in some time. We\u2019ve requested Louise Upston many times recently \u2013 many many times \u2013 and her team say they\u2019ve tried to make things work with her schedule, but they haven\u2019t been able to make it work. I recall we requested Casey Costello many times. Winston Peters hasn\u2019t been on this term, so he hasn\u2019t been on for three years now.\u201d<\/p>\n Next week, Tame will host the first leader debate of the campaign, for TVNZ1. He\u2019s moderated multi-party debates before, but this is his first with the top dogs. How is he approaching the task?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy sense is that the best debates have a little bit of surprise and delight,\u201d said Tame.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo you cover off the kind of key policy stuff, especially when you\u2019re producing a debate for a broad audience.\u201d But in the cause of steering the leaders \u201caway from their cue cards and all of the rehearsals that they\u2019ve done, away from their media minders\u201d, he said, \u201cI always think getting them to talk about values is good\u2026 getting them to talk about the things that matter to them in a way that they haven\u2019t rehearsed, and so that\u2019s what I\u2019m kind of thinking about at the moment. Not a grilling, necessarily, but an opportunity to compare and contrast their values.\u201d<\/p>\n As to whether he would take a leaf out of the book of Patrick Gower, he said: \u201cPaddy\u2019s a master\u2026 Paddy seemed to have a habit of demanding that they commit to significant policies on the spot. So maybe we\u2019ll try and do a bit of that.\u201d<\/p>\n For more episodes of At Large with Toby Manhire, \u00a0follow here for Spotify<\/a>, or\u00a0here for Apple<\/a>. For YouTube,\u00a0subscribe to the Spinoff here<\/a> and find\u00a0the full set here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Q+A host talks about the struggle to get the PM to appear \u2013 and how he is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[257142,138,112585,261780,111,139,69,135],"class_list":["post-614166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-at-large-with-toby-manhire","tag-business","tag-election-2026","tag-jack-tame","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614166","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=614166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}