Luxon’s Untenable Grasp

Written By: - Date published: 4:24 pm, March 7th, 2025 - 11 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, david seymour, erica stanford, john key, Judith Collins, labour, national, national/act government, winston peters - Tags:

Yesterday, after kids got “steam burns” from hot school lunches, came the news of a kid in Gisborne who suffered “second degree burns” after the contents school lunches accidentally splashed on their leg.

The student had to be rushed to A&E at the hospital, but it’s horrific and entirely unacceptable.

I’d always felt that Seymour was showing laziness and incompetence in managing this new, supposedly ‘better’ free market, private contract to ‘gain efficiencies and value for Kiwis with nutritionally comparable food’.

And it’s not even $3 as he claimed – it’s almost $4 per lunch even not accounting for all the extra costs he’s simply loaded onto schools.

And his promises all turned out to be a pile of unacceptable mistruths anyway.

Waste 6th March 2025

Luxon’s position in this is untenable.

His promise to David Seymour and Winston Peters early on that he would respect their leadership and not publicly criticise them, has hamstrung him in significant ways.

Again and again over his term, he has been openly disrespected, criticised, and undermined by his Coalition partners – especially Seymour.

And in defending Seymour on school lunches this week, Luxon has also inextricably tied his own fate to the 8% party leader.

And Peters took his own shot at a weak Luxon, proving no friendly handshakes and kind words will ever win the loyalty of a political maestro:

“I made him Prime Minister”1

Erica Stanford, one of the aspiring National Party leaders, is differentiating herself too, by unsuccessfully attempting to meet with Seymour over school lunches – and refusing to express confidence in the Associate Education Minister.

And in Parliament this week, Hipkins asked Luxon why Stanford was the one with the fortitude to do so, but not the Prime Minister (video below)

Judith Collins is also differentiating her leadership –

Luxon’s position is eroding farther.

In a way we could say maybe that this wasn’t all Luxon’s fault.

By all accounts, he is John Key’s protege.

Luxon was thrown in the deep end as a successor with the type of resume that National Party voters like. Supposedly his time as Air New Zealand CEO was enough to buy him credibility, and it partially worked. National won the election and was able to form government.

But Luxon’s political instincts are way off, his marketing background base, authentic leadership skills unwitnessed, and inexperience with political sharks unhoned.

Seymour and Winston have both run rings around an all too eager to please Coalition Prime Minister.

And over time, many on the right have started to tire of Luxon’s many unforced errors – while the alt-right want to take him down for refusing to accept Seymour’s push for a referendum on the Treaty Principles Bill.

Stuck between opposing sides, I can almost feel sorry for him.

However, no-one can excuse Luxon for being an extremely weak and ineffectual leader whose propensity for lying to the New Zealand public became alarming, and his re-trying of failed austerity measures reflective of his competency – or rather, lack of.

To Luxon, everything seems to be about the pitch and the narrative – not the reality.

And that made his government unserious and unbecoming.

Luxon’s lack of empathy and care for the weakest of us also belied his stated values of compassion, and has been difficult to watch. Ditto his prioritisation of personal power over harmony and evidence based policies.

And this includes for children – this time, who have now suffered burns because of Seymour’s gross incompetence.

As usual, this government was warned not to do it – but did it anyway.

Officials told the government Compass had a long history of quality issues – but Seymour went ahead – most likely because it was reported at the time that no local providers could meet his desired price point.

Labour have called for Seymour to be sacked.

Luxon’s not going to last a term anyway – he might as well try to show some integrity while he still has a chance.

The problem is, Luxon appears to pander to the wealthiest, and his social status might rely on toeing the line.

Related Videos:

11 comments on “Luxon’s Untenable Grasp ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Patricia Bremner 1
    7 March 2025 at 5:08 pm

    Sometimes one issue sums up the situation. Seymour's lunch debacle is it.

    It is an explainer of the ferries debacle, the sacking of thousands of Public servants, the loss of planning for employment of youth and skill with the flight of it to Australia, in Health Science and Construction.

    It demonstrates ideological thinking, unreasonable changes and poor outcomes.

    People relate to the debacle of the lunches as a general feeling of poor ideas poorly executed.

    So yes, some are less secure in their tenure, like Luxon, even Seymour, while Winston's grumpy old man act, will win him less friends as well.

  2. hereni kiwi 2
    7 March 2025 at 5:49 pm

    Back in 2016, I said that people wouldn't vote for Trump, because he had no prior political experience, but was running for the most powerful office in the world, and you couldn't trust anyone with such an obviously massive ego.

    Clearly, I was wrong. (i also seriously underestimated the number of racists, misogynists and people unable to distinguish between TV reality and the real world.)

    Same with Luxon. Tossing his hat in the ring for Party leader and PM, after barely 15 months of his first term, indicated an extremely good opinion of himself. So, as the old saying has it, pride goes before a fall.

  3. Ad 3
    7 March 2025 at 8:45 pm

    This scale of weakness is no mere National scrape.

    We are a weak country daily made weaker, and have a full 16 months of it left.

    The peril is not Luxon's. It is ours.

    • Incognito 3.1
      7 March 2025 at 8:54 pm

      The peril is not Luxon’s. It is ours.

      Yup, I agree, Luxie is wealthy and sorted and will be buffered from most future shocks to this country, some of which will be self-inflicted upon us by the Coalition. And yet there are still people who’re defending ‘their team’ despite the score-board telling showing us the negative score. The partisan-tribal force is strong in Aotearoa – New Zealand.

  4. roblogic 4
    8 March 2025 at 10:17 am

    Luxon won't willingly resign. He will send NZ to hell in a handcart before doing that. As long as this shitty coalition holds, he is safe.

    I don't see him sacking anyone either, if he can convince enough stupid, selfish, racist NZers to keep supporting his regime of mayhem and PR spin.

    • AB 4.1
      8 March 2025 at 12:08 pm

      Luxon thinks he is exceptional – after all, what else could explain him being so much more 'sorted' than most of us? So, as you say, he won't go willingly. My guess is the thing that triggers any coup would be a sense that the tide is going out on the enormous funding advantage National had at the last election. If the donors make their wishes clear, the Party will listen. But if the funding advantage remains huge and the polling tanks no further, he's likely to be safe.

      • Kevin Welsh 4.1.1
        8 March 2025 at 12:30 pm

        I hope he fights it every step of the way. The longer it remains in the news media, the worse it is for this government.

        • georgecom 4.1.1.1
          9 March 2025 at 9:01 pm

          yes I support luxon as ongoing leader. I think I would only support Judith Collins being true to form being their party leader more

  5. observer 5
    8 March 2025 at 4:46 pm

    Sometimes we can over-think political analysis ("we" being commentators, whether in the media or us nobodies on the net).

    Luxon's case is really straightforward. Ministers want to stay in power, backbenchers want to become Ministers. The party (any party, it's not subject to any left/right distinction) will back a leader who they believe can win.

    Bishop, Stanford, Willis, other Nats … they're better at politics than Luxon. Again, "better" doesn't mean "I personally like them, would vote for them". I wouldn't. It's just observing the obvious. Seymour is a [expletive], and also, better at politics than Luxon. I don't think that's even in doubt, really.

    Every first-term PM under MMP had high polling (Clark, Key, Ardern). Luxon's is poor. So the only way he'll be National leader at the next election is if there is some external issue (pandemic, earthquakes, war) that makes people rally around. And even if that happens, Luxon's antennae are so bad he'll probably stuff it up.

    Of course the opposition can stuff it up too, but that can happen regardless of who is Nat PM. You want to win, you give yourselves the best chance. And nobody seriously thinks that's Luxon, do they?

  6. thinker 6
    9 March 2025 at 10:27 am

    All IMHO…

    I've met managers who were really stupid but thought they were God's gift to the organisations' success that they talked about themselves and their successes with complete confidence, such that they were able to fool those around them except those who were the kind of people who keep a level head and validate what they're being told.

    History is full of examples. It would be unfair to use Hitler in a comparison piece, but there were plenty around him who managed to convince 1930s German people they were the best chance to turn the country around. People like Goering, for example, were buffoons, but believed in themselves so convincingly they were able to pass their self-confidence to others. Of course, it helped that people in 1930s Germany weren't living too high off the hog and were searching for someone to promise them a way out.

    In 2023, I think we had something similar. Like with chemical reactions, we had three stable factors that together proved volatile.

    1. People had come through Covid and, in my opinion, well-served by the government but the longer the bailout happened the harder we would need to put our shoulders to the wheel to pay for it when times got better,
    2. (Following from 1) many people who took the covid bailout for granted and were grumpy to find they had to step up to pay the country back,
    3. A sad combination of an honest-dealer (in Hipkins) who didn't over-promise what was possible and a self-made man (in Luxon) who had seen everything around him, however inconsequential, as his own personal achievement and was not afraid to convincingly promise everything to everyone at a time when everyone was desperate for those promises. Karma should favour the honest-dealer in those situations, but seems not to, in my experience.

    Presently, the world's economies are bracing for a turbulent time because of Trump. In May, Seymour will take the DP role from Winston (who recently said he 'made' Luxon PM and despite agreeing to that won't be happy about the losing the title). May will also coincide with an unofficial kick-off to the electioneering of Seymour and Winston, who are competing with each other, not with Luxon.

    And yet, in Luxon's mind, all of the successful strategies he masterminded last year are about to give birth to a period of 'growth, growth, growth'. Yes, some of those strategies were painful and, yes, people are saying they can't see what they've achieved, but that's because it takes a sharp-minded leader like Luxon to make those bold decisions that are about to be realised in a period of 'growth, growth, growth'. The 'broad, sunlit uplands' that Churchill once spoke about. I'm not a psychologist, but I think, in an unusual way, the more people criticise Luxon's approach, the more filled with confidence he is that he's the only man for the job.

    We talk of Luxon making choices to stay or go, but we rarely think about the unseen National team, who make or at least ratify the choices of Luxon and others. They must have been convinced by Luxon at a time when many people saw through his hype. If Luxon did go, who would those people approve to replace Luxon and would their choice coincide with the 'people's choice'? That's what's on my mind at the moment.