Christopher Luxon struggles in Parliament. There is the need to think on your feet, be precise, and make incisive comments on important issues.
Luxon has none of these skills. He has spent too long being the king pin where underlings have to decipher the crap that came out of his mouth and dress them up as pearls of wisdom.
But in Parliament the interactions are raw and pointed. There is no room for extended pontification.
Clearly Luxon and National thought yesterday that they would ambush Carmel Sepuloni.
Normally Chris Hipkins dances around Luxon’s questions. Luxon lacks the ability to listen to the question and adjust. All he can do is look at National’s prepared list of questions. Hipkins is really good at seeing in which direction National wants to go to and completely avoiding their wish.
National clearly thought that with Carmel they would have a greater chance of causing mayhem. They did not worry about the optics of beating up on a Pasifeka woman.
The first question was the most general of general questions.
For the uninitiated the first question sets the parameters, Subsequent questions have to relate to the primary question. If you ask “[d]oes she stand by all of her Government’s statements and actions?” then everything is at stake.
Staff prepare the Prime Minister and Ministers every day with likely question topics and possible answers but I am not sure that they would have predicted National engaging in a general knowledge quiz.
Carmel has great strengths and abilities but she is not normally involved in economic issues.
So she struggled with some of the questions such as “[w]hat is the current account deficit, and why does it matter so much to the credit agencies?”
But she neatly skewered Luxon near the end in this passage:
Christopher Luxon: Isn’t it embarrassing that, having set out to do things so differently, she’s got the same failed approach to the economy, the same failed Minister of Finance, and the same failing results?
Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: No; what’s embarrassing is when someone says they supported the Crusaders since they were a child when they were 26 years old when the Crusaders were actually formed.
Throughout the event National’s MPs howled with derision. Except Nicola Willis who was remarkably quiet. I wonder why?
Audrey Young concluded from the interchange that one of them failed, and it was not Carmel.
Here is the video. Judge for yourselves.
The next time National tries on this sort of stunt can I suggest that Carmel uses the response of Australian Green Politician Adam Bandt.
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