The real reason Luxon dramatically reshuffled Cabinet

ByMartyn Bradbury

There is a far more dangerous explanation to what we are seeing with Luxon’s dramatic Cabinet reshuffle.

The irony of cutting Dr Shane Reti after all the cutting he has done to public health is as hilarious as believing Simeon Brown is qualified to run the Ministry of Health, a Minister who is currently raising speed limits around schools to lift productivity FFS!

A Minister of Health who was once the President of a Christian ProLife anti-abortion lobby group is like making Sean Plunkett the CEO of Radio NZ.

The reason Luxon is making this dramatic reshuffle is because National are in deep, deep, deep trouble economically.

This reshuffle is a political stunt to keep you distracted from some enormous economic change on the way.

Bernard Hickey is devastating in his economic critique…

    1. PM Christopher Luxon presented his new Cabinet this week as refreshed and refocused on hustling for economic growth, but again did so without any new strategies or policies beyond doubling down on extracting and selling resources and assets to prop up a housing market with bits tacked on;
    2. However, nearly half all professionals and managers surveyed for recruiter Robert Walters’ 2025 salary guide don’t buy it, and are either throwing in the towel and planning to migrate themselves to Australia in the next year (42% of the 3,000 New Zealanders surveyed), or expect their employees to leave in 2025 (40% of managers surveyed);
    3. The economy also isn’t cooperating with the Government’s bet that lower interest rates will solve everything, with most metrics indicating per-capita GDP is still contracting faster and further than at any time since the National-alone Government of 1990-96 unleashed a series of crash-or-crash-through government spending and welfare cuts;
    4. The interest rate cuts being relied on by the Government to restart the housing market are also not working, as QV’s report today of flat prices and activity in December showed, with QV Operations Manager James Wilson saying: “It looks as though the economy is still in a dark place right now, and debt to income ratios should still keep a lid on things in the year ahead.”;
    5. The abrupt Government fee increases, funding cuts, capital freezes, spending reviews and repeals that have crashed back and forth across departmental budgets and the Cabinet in the last year have both undermined confidence in the civil construction and housebuilding sectors, and angered traditional National’s provincial supporters, let alone shocked council planners and consenters into a nationwide freeze; and,
    6. The most awful example of the desperation and frustration many feel about the funding cuts and limbo-like budgets is in disability funding, where parents of severely disabled children face yet more years without respite, as shown in this deeply reported feature yesterday by former DHB member Colleen Brown at The Listener (gift link)

…if there is only one news source you can afford to subscribe to, Bernard’s really is the one.

He makes the devastating point that the reshuffle means nothing if Luxon is still locked into:

“extracting and selling resources and assets to prop up a housing market with bits tacked on;”

Hooton has made the point for a very long time that National stopped having any philosophical political values linked to policy and instead had replaced all political values and all policy for donor talking points and that when elected, all National really had were a list of legislative deregulations that their donor interests wanted as policy.

This has resulted in weird policies that voters didn’t really expect come flooding out of National that has made the Party deeply unpopular with a bitter post Covid electorate who voted in anger against Labour.

That post Covid bitterness is becoming dulled by watching this Government help their donor mates while trampling the common good.

For all her faults, Jacinda’s kindness demanded more from the State than blunt instruments of privatisation and de-regulation for rich pricks.

Luxon’s weakness at getting played by Seymour and Winston over culture war grievances that turn off the middle voter won’t get better as the Economy really starts haemorrhaging after Trump’s Tariffs push the US dollar up so much so that petrol prices explode.

This is a Cabinet reshuffle put together out of desperation to create a sense of momentum that isn’t actually there.

Luxon could reshuffle the Cabinet another 50 times, but if the Austerity Agenda is still the same, nothing will impact the economic meltdown we will suffer.

National are going to increasingly own this pain and voters are going to be very vengeful.

What was the point of a borrowed $12 tax cut if the Government are hitting you with a plethora of user pays costs that are far in excess of what they gave you?

They’ve given you crumbs while stealing your toast.

You’ve been manipulated by the Right.

Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.

Similar Posts

- Advertisement -

39 Comments

  1. Certainly replacing Dr Reti with Brown is as incomprehensible as why a clown like Luxon was put in as leader of the National Party pack.

    1. It’s going to get ugly …very ugly…Ayesha Verrall will expose and slaughter that little twerp Brown for his naivety…but..

      …will some of the media chose to be selective in their reporting to protect Brown.

      If they do, then we are in a very dark place.

      Clearly, with 90,000 people coming into the country a year …every year…the pressure on the system is only going to ramp up…rapidly.

      Brown, with his stupid know nothing reckons, will be swamped in a sea of
      discontent.

      It would be laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that many people will suffer, unnecessarily, or die, as a result.

      We are witnessing the rapid decline of N.Z. right before our eyes.
      It was once a great country…not any more.

    2. He took a Party that was losing it’s way and got it back into shape enough to convince the voters it could lead the country out of the mess it was in.
      It has been a hard slog after 6 years of mismanagement but the tide is turning and the economy will improve by mid year and in 18 months will be able to go to the nation brining with success.

      1. There was no years of mismanagement…that is utter bullshit..
        What there was,was a 1 in 100 year deadly pandemic thay shut down the world economies and 8×1 in 100year weather events …all in the space of 5 years.

        Luxon can’t even cope now .. ..he certainly wouldn’t have coped with that kind of complexity and pressure..

        Ardern and Bloomfield were singled out by WHO as one of the best responding countries on the planet.

      2. The business cycle cycles. So far all they’ve done is exacerbate the bottom making an extra 1% unemployed and most kiwis poorer. But Rich&Sorted he’s sweet.

      3. Trevor that’s bollocks quite frankly, with exception of “he convinced voters.” Conned my might be a more accurate word given the performance to date. How the f can you say he’s getting the economy in shape?

  2. Brown was worse than hopeless in both portfolios.
    You clearly haven’t driven our pot holed roads lately and our highways are like judger bars. He is beholden to the trucking companies for their donations as clearly demonstrated years earlier when Steven Joyce allowed trucking tonnage on our roads to increase 10 fold. Add to that, Brown is clueless on road death correlation to speed, so he will always be known as the grim reaper of transport.

  3. My humble reckons are that Simeon Brown was dropped into Health because their overall plan is to privatise as much of the Health department as possible.

    This need to privatise will be blamed on current mismanagement, incompetence and inability to stay within their meagre starvation budgets.

    Just as they always justify.

    1. Ximon. Of course. It’s been underway, aping the UK’s NHS, in their usual underhand way, for years.

  4. “What was the point of a borrowed $12 tax cut”

    Dismally the country is run so that $12 is a significant amount of money for some.

    When the tide turns. Labour as a policy should make the first $35k tax free for people on less than $35k. It would only reduce the income tax take by 5%. Easily recouped at the top end.

    1. 100% – rebates for low earners – not a blanket 0% for those that don’t need it.

  5. pdm “ …he told Mike Hosking he was HELPING Shane Reti with the portfolio.” Early onset dementia ?
    A soap salesman helping a qualified medical professional is mind boggling and Reti has taken one for the team, but if Luxon starts ‘helping’ Brown the banker with health, the health system is stuffed IMO.

    1. Many excellent builders go bankrupt because they are not good managers of money or staff.The same could be said about Reti who was a good medical man but seemed to find it hard to counter the public servants who were protecting their patch .

      1. Public servants protecting the health of their clients ant patients Trev. Your view of public servants is askew.

  6. What was the ‘excellent job he was doing?

    Removing EV support?

    Increasing speed limits?

    Increasing the road toll?

    Accelerating global warming?

    Great job alright.

    Health will become a very sad joke under the little twat with most Kiwi’s shut our of our health system – more great work from the pathetic little yes man.

  7. Dr Ciggaretti was dumped because he is Maori and likewise Lee because she is Asian .We now have a white colonist white supremist government in power .Winston ,the ego maniac ,has been handed the poison challace of rail and ferries which will be under funded and eventually sold for a dollar to some parasite or shut down completely .Brown is an idiot who found how hard it is to build a road in NZ because of the terrain and the asociated cost per KM .I traveled over the Brenderwyn hill last week and am impressed with the work that was done under urgently by the last government .It is a massive improvement and even the locals we stayed with are now saying it is no rush to build a new 4 lane road there as it mat well not be economic .
    I fear for the health system with Brown in charge along side Levy .
    As for Mitchell being in charge of ethnic afairs what a fucken sick joke that is .
    In general Luxon has shown what a fucken queer cunt he is .

  8. All the Australian s will be moving to NZ in the next 10 years anyway,as it will be to HOT to live in a land of sand. Meaning the economy will be fixed.

  10. Is our human political, that humour, jist deride withouthout care its knowing its care. Bomber, is this the fools, that play with your line.

Comments are closed.