Luxon Takes A Beating

Written By: - Date published: 10:14 am, December 4th, 2024 - 19 comments
Categories: act, Christopher Luxon, david seymour, Economy, health, jobs, maori party, national/act government, polls - Tags: ,

Partial excerpt from Mountain Tui Substack post: Luxon Takes A Beating

The latest polls are in.

And who could have guessed that a government that destroys the economy (‘economic vandalism on steroids’), tears up our public health system (‘National is BAD for health’), de-stabilises Crown-Māori relations (‘largest protest in modern history’), eviscerates environmental progress and protections (‘short sighted & costly’) and is led by a wet puppet who will be gone by the time the next election rolls around (‘dead man walking’) is starting to lose its shine…..

Chris Bishop must be ironing his suit in preparation for the interview soon.

But things are not rosy:

27,000 more to be unemployed by Christmas time and 30,000 more on job seekers within a year – 8000 just in the last 3 months – all with a master-stroke that only the Luxon led Coalition government could achieve.

The government forecasts the total number on jobseekers to rise to 214,000 in 2025 – well above Luxon’s 50,000 net reduction to 140,000 KPI for 2030.

And unemployment continues to trend up –

If only someone had warned them….

Never fear.

70,000 on jobseekers will receive individualised job plans and attention, and that includes expectations to move to another region if it’s deemed reasonable by the case manager.

Beneficiary bashing started early under National/ACT.

“The free ride is over” said Luxon last month, echoing the catch call he and Louise Upton started in 2022.

But nothing like demoralising speech and uninspiring choices in an evaporating job market to force Kiwis to leave.

Add on top of that, trying to game and tear down the public health system, and creating an insecure and unstable job market with declining / zero workers’ protection and rights (“Fire at will is back!” ) – who wouldn’t consider a better country?

Year to date, the equivalent of the entire city of Palmerston North has left for better pastures.

That’s 220 Kiwis a day who are leaving NZ permanently – and the numbers continue to rise.

All this is laying the seeds of our waste:

According to Treasury, in the 1960s, for every person aged 65 and over, we had 7 people aged 15 to 64 to support us.

Presently, there are 4.

In 50 years there will be 2.

This means that we are working on borrowed time, and the future is no longer sustainable – nor is our tax take or future commitments.

Keeping and retaining our young, mobile, professional, experienced and motivated, and building for the future, should be this government’s work.

Instead, it is too busy pandering to vested interests1 including those who don’t like how Māori rights under Te Tiriti hinder their development and acquisition plans.

Back on track is more like on a horse pile…

And the voters are starting to sense it.

The latest Roy Morgan poll shows Te Pati Maori on par with ACT at 9%, and the left wing bloc forming a government over the National-NZ First-ACT coalition.

It is the highest polling result for TPM – clearly Seymour’s cunning plan is working wonders.

ACT and NZ First’s seat wins are steady, but National are hemorrhaging support – a 12 seat loss if an election was held today.

Roy Morgan reports:

Older men are now the only gender and age group supporting the governing coalition.

60% of men aged 50+ support National/ ACT/ NZ First, over 20% points ahead of Labour/ Greens/ Maori Party on 36%.

Support for NZ First (14.5%) is stronger amongst this demographic than any other age or gender group analysed.

And in terms of the gender divide:

On an overall basis women are heavily behind the opposition Labour/ Greens/ Maori on 54.5% – well ahead of the governing National/ ACT/ NZ First on 40.5% – a gap of 14% points.

In contrast, on an overall basis men narrowly favour the National/ ACT/ NZ First coalition government on 48.5% with a small lead over the opposition Labour/ Greens/ Maori Party on 46% – a gap of 2.5% points

It’s not all bad news for National though:

Roy Morgan Government Confidence increased 18 points to 104 – the first time more New Zealanders say the country is ‘going in the right direction’ instead of the ‘wrong direction’ since January 2022 nearly three years ago

That just didn’t translate into votes…so maybe it is bad news.

BTW the graph below shows the recent polling results (bar yesterday’s November’s Roy Morgan bump).

All but the questionable Curia Market Research shows the opposition is gaining ground and even ahead.

Courtesy DoubleDEKA

This analysis from Freshwater Strategy on Monday highlights that all three Coalition partner leaders are losing significant ground in personal popularity, -16, -22, -24 for Luxon, Peters and Seymour respectively.

From here, a quick call out to the ongoing efforts by ACT and far right surrogates to continue sowing a culture of emotional anger, distrust of media, and cultural right wing talking points in NZ.

21% of Kiwis in the above poll have a favorable view of Donald Trump, which is fairly on par with David Seymour’s 23% positive rating.

19 comments on “Luxon Takes A Beating ”

  1. dv 1
    4 December 2024 at 10:55 am

    Luxon takes a BLEATING!!!!

    Reply
  2. Mike the Lefty 2
    4 December 2024 at 1:55 pm

    Luxon takes the credit for the post-COVID falling rates of inflation and interest rates although they were already falling in any case. Arguably the only thing National did differently was to take unemployment out of the things the Reserve Bank needed to consider when fixing the cash rates.

    Result – sharp increase in unemployment.

    Shows how unemployment numbers are not a concern to National, except when the unemployed apply for a benefit and then they are labelled as lazy when they can't find work to replace the job they lost at no fault of their own. Factory closures everywhere and where is Luxon, Seymour, Peters and Jones? Nowhere! The Beatles Song – "Nowhere Man" never had more relevance than it has today. They are a bunch of nowhere men sitting in their nowhere land making all their nowhere plans for nobody.

    They just talk, they don't do anything.

    Remember a few months ago when wholesale electricity prices were spiking, there were supply restraints and there was a threat that the lights would go off in some reasons?

    Jones ranted about it, and said the government were considering options including market intervention.

    I said at the time that they would do nothing and just bluff it out until the next big downpour of rain refilled the reservoirs, and that is exactly what happened. Wait until next winter, it will be the same.

    They will not rebuilt or fix the hospitals, protect the economic vulnerable, protect the environment or lower the cost of living, which they enthusiastically promised at the last election.

    They will do none of those things but instead they will promote racial division and class envy.

    The most useless NZ government in history, even worse than the Rogernome government of the 1980s and you have to be REAL bad to be worse than them!

    Reply
    • Drowsy M. Kram 2.2
      4 December 2024 at 5:26 pm

      The most useless NZ government in history…

      Certainly in my memory. But never mind, NAct MPs and their big donors are ‘sorted’.

      How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves
      [18 Aug 2007]
      Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all of which can be solved only by greater intervention on the part of the state. In confronting it, we must recognise that we will never be able to mobilise the resources its exponents have been given. But as the disasters they have caused unfold, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled.

      17 years on, "the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled" seems wishful thinking – billionaires have neoliberal democracy stitched up.

      Explaining the Proliferation of U.S. Billionaires During the
      Neoliberal Period       [2023]
      In the present decade, Financialization, Shareholder Culture, Crony Capitalism, Rentierism, Tax Policy, and Labor Exploitation all function in an interrelated, cohesive, and synergistic whole to create advantages for the wealthy to practice capital accumulation, which in turn continues to facilitate the processes that raise U.S. billionaire wealth to higher levels.

      This study has also highlighted the institutional nature of billionaire wealth that has been solidified over the last four decades of neoliberalism.

      Reply
  3. Kay 3
    4 December 2024 at 2:06 pm

    I like to pride myself on being an empathetic person, and don't like seeing anyone suffering.

    Unfortunately, I no longer possess this trait, and have zero sympathy for anyone who voted in the CoC and are now personally suffering the consequences. Ditto for those who chose not to vote. In fact, I find myself hoping like hell they're suffering, and that's not a nice headspace to be in.

    There is absolutely nothing surprising about the damage being done to the country by this mob; I think a lot of us saw it coming on election night. The only surprise I've had was the tobacco tax.

    This is self-inflicted by the majority of voters/non-voters. We cannot blame the government, because they're only doing what they always do, and can only do it because the voters let them.

    Reply
  4. AB 4
    4 December 2024 at 2:17 pm

    Good roundup – thanks. It's good if men are slowly drifting away from the right. It's as though they need to see some concrete evidence of the CoC's destructiveness and weren't able to see it foreshadowed from the start – mainly because of the CoC's masculinist appeal to a sort of hyper-commonsense characterised by impatience, over-confidence and the inclination to just tear stuff down. As Sam Raeburn said, "any jackass can kick down a barn". And there is no jackass bigger that Chris Luxon right now.
    But the government may be just getting the nasty stuff done early before it eases off later in 2025. This is a trend that needs to stick.

    Reply
    • Obtrectator 4.1
      4 December 2024 at 4:15 pm

      Yep, that's the male mindset – more eager to tear stuff down than to build up. I always think of that scene in Educating Rita where the useless lummox of a husband bashes a hole in the wall between kitchen and dining room, but then isn't sure what to do next.

      Reply
  5. thinker 5
    4 December 2024 at 2:43 pm

    Luxon would be concerned if this were true. It's not.

    Luxon knows the real stats and they're a lot better than this.

    The majority of voters support what this government is doing.

    What I will say is don't listen to polls unless they are in your favour.

    Reply
    • Dennis Frank 5.1
      4 December 2024 at 4:09 pm

      What I will say is don't listen to polls unless they are in your favour.

      Then how do you know which ones to listen to? Wait for someone to tell you? What if they're lying? Nature hasn't mutated ears into ear-flaps yet, so can't close them.

      The majority of voters support what this government is doing.

      Where's your evidence for this assertion?? Are you irritated that the essayist takes RM seriously? Random shit like TMP at 9% has happened before in the RM poll, but it has never happened elsewhere. Nothing wrong with essayists being unrealistic – essays are often appreciated as flights of fancy.

      Luxon would be concerned if this were true. It's not.

      The essayist does seem to have missed the key issue that Lux would be seriously concerned about: the commonality between all the recent polls. National dropping from the upper 30s to parity with Labour. That's a significant shift.

      Reply
    • observer 5.2
      4 December 2024 at 4:21 pm

      I'm guessing this is tongue-in-cheek, channeling Luxon language. Quite funny if so.

      Reply
      • thinker 5.2.1
        4 December 2024 at 5:59 pm

        Actually, yes and no.

        I can't provide the link. It would be rnz, one news or newsroom, but I do think I heard him say that he had the real polls and they were much better.

        Now, I'm looking at the red & blue column chart and thinking he must have meant the curia poll which seems from this article to be a spurious outcome…

        Reply
        • observer 5.2.1.1
          4 December 2024 at 7:29 pm

          Sure, everyone spins the polls and obviously the Standard is not a reflection of overall public opinion.

          But as I pointed out below (with link) this really is brand new. Never happened before under MMP, which is 30 years next election.

          The PM is unpopular with voters even when they are Nat-leaning. Voters who generally prefer the government to the opposition. They might prefer National to Labour. But they just don't like him.

          That is a huge obstacle to re-election, and it's getting worse for Luxon, not better.

          Reply
  6. Ad 6
    4 December 2024 at 3:45 pm

    Have they set a date for the Submission hearings on the Treaty of Waitangi Bill?

    With Seymour as Deputy PM in 2025, when these submissions hit there's going to be a proper visible rift in the government that no one will be able to finesse.

    Luxon and his Office don't have the managerial chops to game this out properly.

    Reply
  7. observer 7
    4 December 2024 at 4:40 pm

    It's disappointing (but not surprising) that NZ's political journos can't spend 2 minutes doing basic research, to report how terrible Luxon's ratings really are. And to correct him with the evidence, every time he lies about it.

    One year after taking office is the comparison point.

    Clark: high, double the leader of the opposition.

    Key: sky-high, opposition leader nowhere.

    Ardern: very high, and (because history is shamefully being rewritten already) this was before Covid.

    (All links are available from this Wikipedia page, easy to find and check)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2020_New_Zealand_general_election#Preferred_prime_minister

    Reply
  8. thinker 8
    4 December 2024 at 6:05 pm

    Peek-a-boo politics: Scrutiny in the dark https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/535650/peek-a-boo-politics-scrutiny-in-the-dark

    I know it isn't directly related to this article but when politicians behave so blatantly badly and the PM just keeps on endorsing them, how could anyone support this lot.

    People don't expect much integrity from politicians but they do hope for it and probably expect the PM to have higher standards of behaviour than the also-rans.

    Reply

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