Hooton has destroyed Chris Luxon in his Friday NZ Herald column and it’s just glorious…
Christopher Luxon is completely out of his depth – Matthew Hooton
The Prime Minister is too arrogant to resign, at least before the election, but those who argued the former corporate bureaucrat lacks the attributes required for successful national leadership have been proven right.
His lack of understanding of the National Party means he fails to appreciate that everything he says about another MP soon gets back to them.
Like Ricky Gervais’ David Brent, Christopher Luxon has an unfounded sense of his own personal charm, while also running down his colleagues behind their backs.
However, Luxon’s lack of understanding of New Zealand, partly but not solely because he lived abroad from 1995 to 2011, is more serious.
When he left, the economy was booming under Prime Minister Jim Bolger, there was a structural surplus and corporate welfare had been tamed.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall but before 9/11, our international relations were less complicated, despite the anti-nuclear policy. A free-trade agreement (FTA) with China was unimaginable, and something like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) nearly so.
Back home, just one iwi had completed a Treaty settlement and the first MMP election hadn’t happened, nor the lessons of coalition management.
When Luxon returned, National was back in Government, under Prime Minister John Key, supported by Act, United Future and the Māori Party.
Despite Key resuming borrowing, debt was still low after the Bolger-Shipley and Clark Governments had paid it all back. After 20 years of turmoil, health was out of the headlines. On the downside, corporate welfare had been re-established by Helen Clark’s Government and worsened by Key’s.
China had become our most important market after the FTA, and the TPP was under negotiation, including with the United States.
In parallel, Winston Peters had begun restoring the defence relationship with the US, having forged an excellent relationship with George W. Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
While away, Luxon also missed the racial division sowed by Clark’s mishandling of the foreshore and seabed issue and Don Brash’s Ōrewa speech, but also the healing that followed.
When Luxon returned, over 40 treaty settlements had been completed and nearly 20 were in the pipeline, helping make Māori major players in the economy.
The principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, which had been clearly defined by the Court of Appeal and Privy Council a quarter-century earlier, were deeply embodied in the law and practice.
There was a rough bipartisan consensus over climate change policy.
Across all these policy areas, Luxon seems to have no appreciation of how difficult progress had been, nor how fragile, especially for a small, isolated, agrarian economy.
That may not have mattered, except Luxon appeared to demonstrate little if any curiosity about the country he wanted to lead. The casual observer might conclude that he considered that if he didn’t already know something, it wasn’t worth bothering with.
His record at Air New Zealand was mixed. He failed to forge a strong network even in the Auckland business community, let alone more broadly.
Bereft of a deep understanding of the New Zealand economy and its recent development, Luxon had nothing to offer but some modest yet unaffordable tax cuts and a belief his mere election might motivate an economic boom.
After a year in office, it would be okay to still be blaming the previous Government for most of New Zealand’s economic ills, were Luxon able to articulate a programme to address them.
But, as Professor Robert MacCulloch, the University of Auckland’s right-wing chair of macroeconomics explained in the Herald yesterday, there is none.
Tinkering around the edges will do nothing to address New Zealand’s productivity and growth crises.
Luxon’s language is often derided as business-speak, but no genuine businessperson uses so much corporate twaddle.
His language more resembles a cheap self-help book.
Extraordinarily, he communicates even less substantively in the media and in person than the lamentable Dame Jacinda Ardern.
Worse, if Luxon genuinely believes New Zealand’s long-term fiscal and health crises can be resolved through much-needed cost-cutting in Wellington alone, then he is as innumerate as he seems illiterate.
Arguably, Clark and Key had the knowledge, intelligence and personal attributes to chart a middle path between China and the US, but Luxon shows no sign of it.
Neither Xi Jinping nor Donald Trump is likely to be remotely influenced by a clutch of the shoulder, a Luxon grin and trite sloganeering, except negatively.
Yet the Treaty of Waitangi and race relations are the areas where Luxon’s lack of history, understanding and foresight threaten the greatest harm.
Luxon can’t say he wasn’t warned, including by every living National Party Prime Minister and more broadly, that his handling of Act’s Treaty Principles Bill was wrong-headed, and could benefit only Act and Te Pāti Māori, while severely damaging both New Zealand’s social cohesion and National’s electoral interests.
As party leader, he had two options when negotiating with Act: to accept their policy or reject it. If he wanted to be an effective Prime Minister, he had only the latter.
Act insists it did not declare the bill a bottom line in coalition negotiations, but only an important priority.
If so, it isn’t true Luxon had to accept the compromise.
Nevertheless, despite claiming without evidence to have extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, Luxon opted for the worst possible option, enraging Māori while bitterly dividing his own party.
Belatedly, he has settled on the obvious point that it is not the role of a single Parliament to redefine the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi after 184 years of debate, but that is no more than he was advised at the outset, had he listened to his own advisors and senior MPs.
Despite this delayed realisation, Luxon has proven too personally and politically weak to exercise his authority as Prime Minister to decide that killing the bill before introduction was in the best interests of country and party.
As in the country at large, he is now rightly regarded as impotent by both National’s liberals and conservatives, and as an easy-beat in negotiations by his coalition partners.
Luxon’s leadership of country and party will stumble on while achieving little and meaning less. He will remain Prime Minister only because he lacks the self-awareness to know it would be better for New Zealand and his own reputation to accept he is completely out of his depth.
In the meantime, he could at least appreciate his Cabinet ministers are not some kind of Ilford Second XI captained by Sir Donald Bradman, but that at least half of them would be doing his job much better than he is.
I love Hooton and I love it when he goes for the throat and he has mashed together some Psychology 101 into justifying his assault on the Prime Minister, but I made these points when Luxon won and now it’s suddenly spun gold because Hooton says it?
To be honest, it’s far worse than Hooton has concluded.
Luxon became leader of the National Party, not because he was the best, but because Judith Collins threw her support behind him after she smeared Simon Bridges in the last National Party Leadership spill.
Luxon appeals to those who listen to ZB for aspiration, the vain who enjoy the beauty of their own reflection, the intellectually shallow and philosophically callous.
Luxon is the weakest Prime Minister in NZ history who is played weekly by Seymour and Winston. He had to sack Melissa Lee to look butch!
His skill set as a CEO has given him no tools to deal with politicians as strategic and wily as Seymour and Winston, he’s so weak he had to sack Melissa Lee to butch up!
His brand of evangelical religion is Prosperity Theory where Gods blessings mark you as a special child of Christ and to deny those blessings is a sin, so when he gets caught out benefiting from his privilege, he always responds aggressively because those privileges have been given to him by God.
“I’m entitled”.
“I’m rich and I’m sorted”.
“Bottomfeeders”.
Luxon is an unlikable Prime Minister because he is an unlikable person, his sense of privilege and wealth mark him as simply another shallow suit with all the charm of a road accident.
His total lack of self awareness is God given because owning 7 properties makes Jesus love him more. That false confidence is what he shares with born again Simeon Brown.
Unimaginative without any creative sensibilities, Luxon would buy art from the Warehouse and endlessly boast what a good deal he got for $29.95.
Sending his kids to American Education so they don’t have to suffer the gaucheness of his own broad accent in a never ending sweaty clamber of social climbing that is as ugly as it is primal.
Policy is a mere detail for the geeks and engineers to work on and you sense he believed hanging out with the Pilots at AirNZ was him mingling with the working classes.
The vanity of shaving his head daily and his smug self certainty while getting bitchy when Media challenge him marks him as a hollow man that Kiwis would not want to have a beer with because you know he would endlessly remind you how much better his BBQ was than yours.
The National Party have no actual values beyond what their donor class want and the venal self interest of that is so extreme it turns voters off.
The latest Talbot internal Poll has National at 34 and Labour at 33, so National should be shitting themselves.
You know how bad things have become when Hooton is sharpening the knives to start a coup against Luxon, and that’s what his column represents.
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Well Matt is clearly seeing the light of day now .Wow what a straight up attack on one of Baileys losers .
Luxon needs to join one of the gangs and tattoo a very large L on his fore head
That’s funny…very good..
Yes Hooton made every word count in that article…It was well put together…Clearly just having completed his PHD has sharpened his writing skills.
All is his points were succinct and salient. Luxon should never have made Prime Minister…neither should Key or English for that matter, but that’s another story.
However, one has to question Hooton’s motivations.He is an ACT sycophant after all.
If he thinks Seymour is the answer, then he is yet another one of the sadly seriously deluded.
It also only serves to highlight what poor judgement Fran O’ Sullivan has….she was the one constantly putting it out there, at every opportunity, that Luxon was the next best thing since sliced bread….
…Well..she got that wrong!!… big time!!!
She’s yet another one who gets herself in front of the media with little to no credibility.
‘The Jokerman’…a great song that sums it up beautifully.
Actually I don’t see him as a Seymour or Act sycophant.
Right wing yes.
Grant. So Luxon and Key were both brought back from overseas to head the National Party and become PM’s. By whom and for what purpose ? English, frankly, wouldn’t be worth wasting brain cells on if he wasn’t still slithering around in the shadows.
Well, I know John Slater (yes Slater) and Jenny Shipley headhunted Key, and I guess the reason was to win an election and let the unblinking iguana slither in an agenda without anyone noticing.
God knows who dredged up Luxon or why.
But in my mind, the two of them are the same. Both duplicitous liars, both sociopaths (which Martyn misreads as a religious bent in Luxon’s case), and both playing the game that these boys like to play. That’s what rocks their boat. Which is why John Key bet Obama USD1m on the golf course at Kauri Cliffs that he could wangle a new flag for NZ.
Having worked with people like Hooten, Key and Luxon all my life, I would warrant the biggest reason Hooton can’t stand Luxon is because Luxon is gen-x. So Key’s making a fool of himself sculling a beer with royalty and putting on a fake US accent on Letterman becomes Luxon making a fool of himself on tik tok and pretty much every social media.
That’s what gets up Hooten’s nose – boomers play games on the golf course, gen-x do it on a device.
tangi I thought that,Luxon was Key’s hand-picked boy, but it was Ardern who put the soap salesman in as head of Air NZ, and that other over-painted fanatical Nat woman( Michelle?) pushed for Key, who allegedly before he even got to head the Nats, was announcing himself as the next PM, and allegedly also paid to appear on Letterman the way that wannabe celebrities do.
There are numerous reasons not to like Luxon anyway. He’s not particularly likeable, boring as hell, glibber than Key, smug, self-satisfied, ill educated, smarmy, lacking in gravitas, prone to dumb publicity stunts, and sometimes silly as a wet hen, IMO.
Or the “Sinnerman” given Seymours atrocious policies. Nina Simone.
We didn’t need Hooton to tell us this. Luxon is thick he hasn’t got a working brain cell . The worst part is HE thinks he’s god’s gift to New Zealand and the world however the very worst thing is the MSM are promoting him as a genius to the gullible here in Aotearoa. The reason the coalition hasn’t fallen apart is because he is very afraid of Seymour and Peter’s. He did a a deal and sold his soul to the 2 devils and the bottom feeders et.al are suffering for it. He has capitulated to them and his sycophantic ministers every step of the way. It’s easy to look back on this disaster and contemplate what they have actually done and the answer is absolutely nothing just cut,cut,cut, redundancy after redundancy and they don’t care.
So you have a brain that puts you in line for 4 million a year job.
Well, you clearly don’t given you think Luxon’s doing a great job.
what $4 million a year job is that ,Luxon only get 600k tops after he claims all his entitlements .
Tik tok dickheads and brainless influencers can make millions on millions today Trevor. Stop associating wealth with the ability to govern. That’s half the f’ing problem.
Oh Trevor Trump is a billionaire I rest my case !!!!!
$4 mill woop de doo – the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Elon Musk is still a shit Dad and Luxflakes is still a shit PM
Your definition is that of a juvenile Trevor. 30 plus million for doing nothing and winning lotto. 4 Million for destroying a once world renowned Airline carrier.
Actually Matt has always loathed Luxon and said from the get go that he was dumb as pigshit or words to that effect, so hardly a ringing endorsement even before he became PM. As for spun gold, well that’s because Hoots is calling out from the right and is a bit of an operator within National according to his own words and the general feels. However never fear Martyn your pithy characterisations of Luxon the man and the PM are a riot, and I would be killing myself laughing if only they weren’t so true.
And he’s not even rich, the thing he prides himself on most. John Key was rich. Luxon owns a bach and a couple of flats. At best he will be able to buy a nice villa in a Summerset retirement village and have a week in Fiji every second year.
He is worth 19 million and that in my book is rich .
The Treaty and Luxon aside, what comes through clearly in Hooton’s little analysis is Hooton’s deep belief that Luxon’s brutal economy suffocating austerity programme is weak medicine.
Hooton wants a far stronger dose of neoliberal poison.
Sift any advice Hooton offers very carefully for hidden fish-hooks.
Spot on, Hooten wants to seize the opportunity and install a far right government.
He’s pissed the same way people were pissed at Jacinda for wasting an opportunity.
Hooten doesn’t want to denigrate bottom feeders, he wants them disappeared.
A good summation except for one important issue, Health went backwards under Key, we were starting to make inroads until Luxons introduction and now we are falling backwards under a National government AGAIN. Our Hospitals are over capacity, EDs are overflowing and this government has created a flow of nurses to Aussie never ever seen before. Clearly Hooten never investigated hard enough.
hooten’s a tedious little gas bag. But worse, he’s boring.
luxon as our pm is giving me migraines.
Thinking that seymour’s in there like a malevolent parasite gives me a feeling of dread as I reach for the toilet paper. Peters is slipping and sliding on his own petard that is the spectre of him and don brash going at it all bare chested is giving me a deep need for a power cleanse at a car wash.
Is this it? Is this now our politics? Is this what I must obey and adhere too? Is this where my tax money goes? To help maintain a level of balance where everyone and everything seems unhinged? We’ve been reduced to bitch-slappy snottiness as the otherwise useless get, then spend, our money while there are homeless people and poverty. It’s all like rocket propelled cake eating and I’m surprised we’re allowed to do even that.
How did it all come to this? What God has forsaken us? All of them by the fucking looks of things.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/patients-referred-for-orthopaedic-surgery-not-even-making-waiting-lists/V4ZZJ23I2BFK5FQRNUR7Z532FE/
Health went backwards under Key as it is under Luxon.
National governments dont see health as a money making business so never invest the necessary money to keep health at a optimum level.
National are squeaky clean. 100%. Excellent point. These low-lifes have health insurance and work schemes and are too myopic, or socially irresponsible, or ethically and morally devoid, to address the importance of national health. We were once better than the Brit’s NHS, and we lead the world with our low infant mortality rates. Not so now. The poor are expendable, and easily replaceable with hopeful Asian imports.
I’ve always blamed Bill English for the downgrading of the free national public health service in New Zealand, but I gather that Jenny- let-the -young-booze Shipley played a part in this too, and struggle to comprehend how any normal mother could not want the best possible outcomes for all health- challenged families.
Beautifully put Gentle Annie.
The Nats need a real man leading them, like Henare O’Keefe, real life experience, business acumen, a doer, and not some self-satisfied capon like they got now. Chris’s parents being high school drop outs is no excuse for being a blithering idiot.
A fundamentalist Christian so committed he’s actually doing everything he can to hasten New Zealand’s Armageddon.
Joke Prime Minister + Joke Finance Minister + Joke Minister of Health = Worst Government ever in our history. And the bar was already set low!
Their only success is crashing the economy in a record 12 months.
Delivered nothing to the ‘squeezed middle’ they conned votes out of.
Nat voters are such chumps.
Jase. Joke this, joke that, is spot on. One of the most offensive things about Luxon is his seeming inability to take anything seriously and his treating Parliamentary proceedings as some sort of ping-pong match. He’s not a big picture person like eg Muldoon was, and too flippant. If he’s selling up his rental properties, he may be bolting like Ardern and Key did, but this still leaves middle New Zealand struggling.
Luxon’s not that bad after several glasses of cheap plonk. Could be even better on my dear old Dad’s strawberry wine, but we tipped it down the kitchen sink, and times I wish we hadn’t.
Hooten, quite brilliant. Except for his conclusion it will end the guy.
I’m not quite sure why he’s a Righty when climate change is coming over the horizon. His blind spot. So, useless.
Air nz is in deep shit due to Luxon buying planes that cant be flown .He fucked up his big takeover of Virgin AUS and they told him to go away ,so he came home and took it out on the then top notch maintance crew sacking heaps of engineers .
Of course Seymour would have gone into coalition without the Treaty Bill. It’s absolute crap to suggest otherwise. His donors and Atlas types would be horrified if he had stayed in opposition, and they would let him know it
Clusterfuxon is as clusterfuxon does.
One thing about Hooton and Bomber – they call out bullshit for what it is, irrespective of banner or colour.
I look upon the actions of this coalition as taking the Great Leap Backwards.
To date there has been a huge jump in unemployment in both the public and private sectors. Thousands of public servants have lost their jobs and also and additionally many private companies have closed due to the loss of business.
NZers are leaving this country droves especially heading to the better paying Australia.
For many young NZers there is No Future for them in this country that for many of them is where they were born.
Many NZers see a government that governs on pure childish pettiness and blame games whilst seeing that same government try to take NZ to the almost equivalent of Year Zero that the Khmer Rouge tried to do in Cambodia. Hence my reference to the Great Leap Backwards,
Luxon in his inadequate need and seek for adulation to massage his insecure ego seems to need to claim that He Alone has saved NZ and NZers eg NZ Workers. However this comes from a guy who hasn’t even needed to pay tax on the sale of Any of his properties and then boasts he is wealthy and sorted and doesn’t need to work???!!!! This coming from a guy that is hardly in NZ to be recognised as its prime minister(deliberate use of lower case here). And this coming from a guy who claimed on Acc/Supp because he was Entitled to do so on HIS OWN mortgage free(and probably now recently sold)Wellington apartment that he spent a couple nights a week in whilst in Wellington. He has now moved from that apartment into what he claimed as “Unliveable” Premier House after it probably cost the NZ taxpayers about the same amount of his Acc/Supp claim to ‘do up to his standards’.
Luxon had absolutely ZERO interest in NZ and NZers in the lead up to last years election and afterwards. What Luxon was MORE interested in was being addressed as prime minister along with the perks of the job and the pay packet. Luxon would have made a deal with the Devil because where Luxon is concerned it(being pm)has alot to do with Ego and Being the Centre of Attention eg staged photo opportunities.
He surrounds himself with sycophantic people especially in the media and in National itself. He depends upon those who remind me of those Toy Nodding Dogs who seem to think his words are Unquestioned Gospel according to St(National Party) Luxon and nod stupidly whilst he Waffles.
Hooten. Ah yes, the guy who thought glass-jaw Muller would make an excellent leader of the Nats.