For nearly 40 years, I have listened to prime ministers do morning radio interviews and press conferences, yet never have I witnessed a more pathetic performance than Luxon’s on Monday, especially on matters as fundamental as war and peace.
Other prime ministers have mangled their words. Some have misrepresented their government’s policy positions, albeit usually deliberately rather than accidentally as with Luxon. Nor has it been uncommon for the press gallery to sense injured prey and try to tear it to pieces as a pack. But no prime minister I can remember has so failed to maintain even the minimal sense of authority required to do their job as Luxon on Monday.
Asked simply whether he had meant to say that he would support literally any action against Iran, Luxon was reduced to utter incoherence: “Well, I mean, we obviously understand – we’re not saying that, what we’re saying is, we understand there’s – I don’t know how to be any clearer guys.”
If he really doesn’t know how to be any clearer than that – and there is now five years of evidence suggesting he doesn’t – there’s no hope for him or his party.
His display was enough for the Herald’s most experienced political analyst, Audrey Young, to compare our country’s leader – at a time of international crisis – to the hapless Clare Curran, a junior minister in the Ardern Government forced to resign for being unable to comprehensibly account for herself as Broadcasting Minister. Others compared Luxon to Homer Simpson. Labour strategists chortle that he is their number one asset.
Yet by far the more important issue is not whether Christopher Luxon can do his job. The answer to that has been obvious all along. The true scandal is no longer Luxon’s performance itself but the public silence of those around him who know perfectly well that the situation cannot continue, but who choose instead – all of them – to merely whisper their complaints to whomever will listen.
For months, National’s top ministers and other influential MPs have been caught in a conflict of ambition with which they have wrestled for too long. The problem is that any of Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Simeon Brown, Erica Stanford, Paul Goldsmith, Louise Upston, Mark Mitchell or Chris Penk would do a better job than Luxon – and that problem is worse since they all know it. Likewise, any of the others on the list would be no worse than Willis as Minister of Finance.
That reality prompts them all to ponder the oldest and most dangerous question in politics: “Why not me?” Their consequent inability to resolve matters among themselves is all that saved Luxon before Christmas. It should not save him now, although it seems it will.
All relevant players are meant to be loyal members of the National Party which was established in 1936 for the express purpose of keeping socialists and communists out of power. The party has not always succeeded in that noble objective, itself running the country in the late 1970s and early 1980s like a shipyard in communist Poland.
Yet with the alternative to the status quo a Labour-Green-Te Pati Māori (TPM) coalition, New Zealand has never needed National more in its 90-year history to competently fulfil its historic role. Instead, the contenders seem to have decided their own personal ambitions are better served by scrapping it out in opposition to decide who among them might become Prime Minister in 2029 or beyond. They owe their party and New Zealand much more.
Even worse is their apparent determination to stand idly by with a Prime Minister whose inability to lead and communicate is itself a threat to national security.
That is not hyperbole but draws on an observation by former Australian Cabinet minister Peter Garrett – also lead singer of Midnight Oil – that he had to back Julia Gillard for prime minister over the incumbent Kevin Rudd for that very reason. Rudd’s character, he decided, was such that should Australia face a serious security threat, his vanity and megalomania would lead to decisions that would worsen not mitigate the danger.
Luxon cannot be accused of the same vanity and megalomania, at least not any more. Based on this week’s performances, he seems more a man finally broken by realisation he is completely out of his depth.
Anyone who has been in a similar position can sympathise. But Luxon’s inability to articulate a position on Iran that had been carefully developed by Foreign Minister Winston Peters and senior officials from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade indicates how disastrous it would be for him to be in charge were New Zealand to face serious danger.
It is no good arguing that the agreed position on Iran, Israel and the US was highly nuanced and to some extent ambiguous. That is the very nature of issues which reach a prime minister’s desk, not least in foreign policy where the precision of words counts for so much.
I can’t recall a single prime minister in New Zealand’s history who would have so failed to articulate the agreed position competently. Peters himself, from South America, had no trouble with the delicate balance the agreed policy demanded. Nor would any of Willis, Bishop, Brown, Stanford, Goldsmith, Upston, Mitchell or Penk have struggled, let alone have been reduced to the gibberish Luxon spouted for two days.
Those senior MPs have obligations as members of the National Party to force Luxon to resign to keep the Labour-Green-TPM horror show out of power. They have even greater obligations as ministers to ensure New Zealand has a leader capable of responding competently to security threats. Any of them would do.
National MPs await the imminent release of the next poll for the Taxpayers’ Union, conducted by Curia, their own party’s long-term pollster, described by Sir John Key as New Zealand’s best. Speculation in Wellington is that it may reveal National’s weakest result in a Curia poll since Judith Collins was leader.
Perhaps one in five National MPs will lose their jobs this November, including some of the leadership contenders. If protecting their own jobs and those of their colleagues is not enough, National’s top MPs might at least ensure New Zealand has a leader with the basic competence to lead us through the worst global crisis since World War II and the economic trials, including stagflation, that war in the Middle East inevitably brings. They need to set up a conference call amongst themselves this weekend.
