By Chris Trotter*
What does it mean that Chris Bishop and Kieran McAnulty have been chosen to steer their respective party’s election campaigns? It means that Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins are both strong believers in the idea that the Devil finds work for idle hands. The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition seem equally determined to bury their chief rivals under an avalanche of responsibility.
Given the enormous load of portfolio responsibilities Bishop is already carrying, Luxon piling the job of Campaign Chair on top of them (for the second time) could be read as confirmation that the Prime Minister sees his Leader of the House, Minister of Housing, Minister of Infrastructure, Minister for RMA Reform, Minister of Transport, and Associate Finance Minister, as the man most likely to succeed (topple?) him.
Having been booed at last weekend’s netball champs, the question of succession is one with which Luxon must have struggled over the past week. Certainly, he could be forgiven for thinking that somebody ‘up there’ really, really, doesn’t like him. (If by ‘up there’ he means the White House, then such thoughts are right on the money!)
All Prime Ministers devise strategies for dealing with the public’s perceptions of them, most of which entail simply ignoring negative voter reactions to their own and their government’s performances. For a surprising length of time this hear-and-see-no-evil strategy can prove remarkably successful. Most leaders are relentlessly future-focused: they convince themselves that success is bound to come, and with it the long-awaited positive shift in public perceptions. The important thing is to keep moving forward – and to not look back.
This reliance on the power of positive thinking has more to do with dumb luck and happenstance than it does with human will. Not that relying on dumb luck and happenstance is an entirely misguided approach – not when the world appears to be driven by little else.
As the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes so poetically put it:
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Where would Jacinda Ardern have been without Brenton Tarrant, White Island and the Covid-19 Pandemic?
If good fortune and the relentless contingency of human existence has been flowing in your direction, then that could be an encouraging line of questioning. Less so, if your time as prime minister has been distinguished by a stuttering, if not downright tongue-tied, local and global economy, and a US president who delights in playing with the world as if it’s his little toy. (Hat-tip to Bob Dylan.)
If the tide of “events, dear boy, events” is running against a prime minister, then the ability to talk encouragingly, even inspirationally, to those caught up in the tidal currents is essential. Unfortunately, only the most generous of observers would say that this is an ability which Christopher Luxon manifests. Far from conveying the sense that he understands and empathises with the acute difficulties afflicting his fellow citizens, the Prime Minister’s speeches conjure up the image of a “sorted” individual leaning over the railing of a billionaire’s yacht and urging the near-exhausted swimmers to try a little harder.
It would certainly explain why he was booed at the netball.
Chris Bishop, by way of contrast, has the look and sound of the National politicians who, across the decades, have been chosen to lead their party. There’s a strong element of the hard-working, straight-talking, Kiwi battler about Bishop – a quality he shares with Kieran McAnulty.
No matter how ill-deserved (Bishop is the son of the late John Bishop, a well-respected Press Gallery journalist, and Rosemary Dixon, an environmental lawyer) Bishop’s man-of-the-people political persona: down-to-earth, blunt, but with an underlying and redeeming hint of humour; is one that, historically, has struck a positive chord with the median voter.
What’s more, Bishop has been smart enough to take on the hard asks of Luxon’s ideologically heterogeneous government. This has allowed him to present himself, metaphorically, as the grimy mechanic who emerges from the engine-room wiping his hands on an oily rag and whistling through his teeth when asked how things are looking.
The message conveyed by Bishop is that fixing the clapped-out old machine he’s been put in charge of is going to be bloody difficult. Not impossible – so, not to worry, he will get it working again. But, honestly, the whole damn thing needs replacing, and the sooner the better.
All of Bishop’s greatest ministerial hits: from resource management reform to fast-tracking developmental projects; from pushing for housing intensification to putting the boot into Local Government’s can’t-do attitude, have contributed to and reinforced this image of being National’s pragmatic and fiercely capable chief-engineer.
When Luxon was installed to play the role of game-changing CEO: the man with the plan to turn the failing enterprise known as NZ Inc. around; then Chief-Engineer was exactly the role for Bishop to make your own. Who else is the National Party going to turn to should the hot-shot CEO prove to be a busted flush, if not the man with a solid reputation for getting his hands dirty and making broken things work?
With every passing month, Luxon’s failure to grasp the essence of the Right’s challenge grows more apparent. New Zealand capitalism’s future can only be secured by moving New Zealand society on from its longstanding relationship with social-democratic bureaucracy, and towards a new era of entrepreneurialism. Not just the commercial entrepreneurialism that will allow New Zealand to abandon its current, unsustainable, relationship with butterfat, and embrace an economy driven by intelligent and imaginative technology; but also the social and political entrepreneurialism that will encourage all those Kiwis unafraid of ‘Yes’ to step forward and change their world.
Making that happen will require a political leader who revels in getting his hands dirty. Someone who isn’t afraid to rip-out all the old machinery that no longer works and instal something new and much more powerful. Unsentimental, determined, ruthless when required, but driven, as all great New Zealand prime ministers have been, by the idea that theirs is a country that can, and will, if its people can only be persuaded to get out of their own way, and give themselves a chance.
If, in 2026, Chris Bishop makes it possible for National to resume its dominant position on the Treasury Benches, then only one reward makes any sense. And, even if National loses, there will be only one sensible choice to replace the person most responsible for the loss.
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
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