Comment: Simeon Brown’s anonymised trolling of Act and New Zealand First at the National Party conference – infantilising them as kids behaving badly in the family home – hinted at an altogether darker domestic situation.
And Christopher Luxon, as the father of the house in Brown’s metaphor, pulled back the curtains further for the public when he flatly declared a vote for any party other than National would put at risk the country’s economic recovery.
Any party. Not just the usual suspects of Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.
A literal reading of Luxon’s paternalistic view is that voting Act or NZ First in four and a half months threatens the economic gains the three-party coalition claims to have achieved.
It wasn’t a slip of the tongue from the National leader. He said it multiple times at a media stand-up at the party conference and he repeated it starkly on a Monday morning broadcast interview.
“The only way you can avoid putting everything at risk is to party vote National,” Luxon said on Sunday, when asked about Brown’s pokes at coalition partners.
“A party vote for any other political party is actually increasing the risk at a time when the economy is due to recover – is recovering; the recovery’s underway, which is fantastic.
“We don’t want to put that at risk. That’s why you should reasonably expect over the next five months we’ll be making that case incredibly strongly, as I tried to today.”
And again, later: “If you want to vote for any other party you are putting all of it at risk. It’s as simple as that.”
All of it.
And he emphasised that word “any” every time he used that line.
When asked about Brown’s line that voters can’t trust other parties, and whether there was trust within the coalition, Luxon doubled and tripled down. “Well, he’s just stating a fact. We’ve seen a New Zealand First party in the past opt to go with Labour, opt to go with National. You just don’t quite know for sure.”
Does he think the NZ First leader Winston Peters is trustworthy? “I’ve enjoyed working with him. I think you’ve seen strong and stable government for the last two and a half years from us working together.
“We are united on … we find the common ground between our respective parties on our policies as I do in all coalition partners. It doesn’t mean we agree on everything, and that’s okay.”
But, does he trust Peters? His response was a line Peters might have delivered. “I’ve trusted him in government, absolutely.”
When asked again about Brown’s portrayal of the smaller two coalition partners as bickering children, Luxon said, “There’s only one option, party vote National, if you want to avoid the risk to the recovery that’s underway.”
Act leader David Seymour in turn ticked off Brown for the insults. Peters pushed back on criticism of his party.
But when they stop and consider Luxon’s additional, far more negative allegation that a vote for either of them puts the whole shebang, the whole economic recovery they’ve worked away at for two and a half years, at risk, the superficial slights pale into insignificance.
Peters said National’s comments were because it was under pressure – implying the party’s marooned poll rating at 29-30 percent is making it lash out.
Luxon quadrupled down. “Look, we’re in June. We’ve got an election in November. We as a National Party believe fundamentally that the best answer for this country is a National-led government.
“We are going to make the case to every Kiwi that a party vote with any other political party is actually putting all of that at risk.
“We have come too far. We have put too much work in to have it all spoiled by other parties actually blowing it up.”
Blowing it up.
The rhetoric hadn’t faded outside the adrenalin buzzes of conference standing ovations.
On Monday morning Luxon chuckled when Newstalk ZB host Mike Hosking asked him what line National drew between “the jollies of an election campaign and knifing your coalition partners in the back like Simeon did yesterday”.
Luxon: “Well it’s not a surprise. We were at a National Party conference and we have a very simple view that a party vote for any other party than National puts the recovery at risk.
“We’re going to make the case, because I just fundamentally believe that, which is that a party vote for any other party than National puts the recovery at risk, and that’s not what we’re prepared to do.”
Hosking felt Brown calling the coalition partners children was insulting.
Luxon: “Well, he’s expressing it in a pretty compelling way to say ‘Look’, to our members ‘make sure when you’re talking out there to your friends and family that everyone understands what’s at risk’.”
At risk, if you vote Act or New Zealand First.
“We have an economic recovery underway as you’ve seen with the GDP numbers last week, we’ve seen a strong trade surplus through April in the middle of the crisis. You’re looking at a Budget we’ve come out of where we’ve got good growth coming into the economy. And I don’t want to put any of that at risk.
“Of course, in an MMP environment at the other end of the election the NZ public give us a result on election night, we have to go and make that work. I’m not prepared to lose great ministers like Mark Mitchell, or Erica Stanford or something and concede those positions around a ministerial table to someone from New Zealand First or Act, frankly.
“So, it’s not a surprise to you that we would be wanting to fire up our base and the public of New Zealand to understand ‘Do not put it at risk by voting for anyone other than National’.”
Of course no party leader is going to push voters explicitly to tick another party’s box.
And National is on 29 or 30 percent in the polls, 20 weeks from election day. It is in a poor position, even as the three-party coalition lies neck and neck with those of the left.
Luxon won’t want to stay where he is, proportionally to NZ First or Act, and yes, he won’t want to lose National ministerial seats to the kids playing up in the Cabinet room.
But there are degrees of electoral independence and there are degrees of electoral hostility. Even the most hide-scarred old political crocodiles like Peters take slights personally and Seymour, who believes Act is the real ingredient for the economic recovery Luxon claims to be protecting, will be irked.
Act and New Zealand First loyalists will be less inclined to offer more than faint praise to National as a coalition partner.
While Luxon has plainly lost political market share to New Zealand First, as well as Labour, his joining in the intra-household fighting of which he and Brown accuse NZ First and Act is hardly conducive to the centre-right parties reassuring voters of shared purpose.
And Brown teasing and trolling about the kids in a fractious household does raise another issue … about the judgment, discipline and example of the parents.
