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.
12 Comments
From a Systems perspective, Bishop is peddling the last moves of the growth phase. Growth was the dominant narrative this last 200 years, but on a finite planet, growth was always going to be temporary. It's minions will subsume all other Systems (note the eyeing-off of the Conservation Estate, from Luxon to Brownlee, touts for the same ideology).
The problem with exponential growth is that it needs doublings, not added bits; their time is up. And the forward overhang? One Quadrillion (current USD) in forward bets on growth - on said finite planet. Ain't going to happen - but that is why war(s) are and will increasingly happen, why the global financial system is doomed to collapse, etc etc.
Which actually leaves two political questions. One is whether post-collapse, we can retain the machinery of government? The other is how do we reorganise/adjust to a no-growth future?
I don't see Bishop - or current Labour - fitting in.
I've missed you too PDK...Good to have you back 😉
I was away campaigning in my chosen sport, representing NZ.
Was good fun.
"Which actually leaves two political questions. One is whether post-collapse, we can retain the machinery of government? The other is how do we reorganise/adjust to a no-growth future?"
Questions that the political class dont wish to touch with a barge pole.
Unfortunately PDK the person who you see fitting in will not 'fit in' with voters, so for now doesn't exist.
Politicians get elected by following voters, they do not lead them.
The son of an environmental lawyer might not be so bad for now..
National before Luxon was a mess. A series had unfolded of unsavoury incidents and identities and leaks abounding. To his credit that has, from the look of it, been sorted out. That demonstrates good managerial skills and control but that is backroom stuff, scarcely at the forefront of the public eye where any PM, more than anything else, has to be able to sell the message, be credible and convincing and in this respect Luxon falls short. However National cannot possibly think to change leaders before the next election as to the electorate, that would signal a return of much of the former disarray.
Well said Foxglove.
Chris Bishop gets on with getting stuff done. So defies the rights problem of not doing enough. Constructive, and is very kiwi bloke about. He goes up in my estimation every week.
Simeon Brown is another. Not so blokey, but is rebuilding Health New Zealand at pace. As a health specialist, I love it.
To me the jury is still out.
I tend to agree with PDK's limits to growth, but that doesn't deny us the opportunities to reallocate funds to develop our own resources, and restructure our tax and finance systems to build national resilience and support higher levels of employment and improvements in living standards.
Instead what I see is just more of the same old mantras.
Nitty-gritty - Improvements in living standards vs resource depletion/draw-down.
Oxymoron territory.
Cranial yes - we can cogitate forever. But material?
Rubbish. You've paradigmed into material consumption. Good living standards don't have to result in that (although that does seem the current measure).
But it will take time for people to move away from the levels of consumption that are currently happening. But here's a question; how much of that consumption is wasteful? A fair portion, no doubt that does not support living, and does harm to the individual and/or others and the environment. But a lot also supports living, learning and growing. So how do we achieve all that without destroying our environment and the planet?
Surplus can be devoted to material goods or support non productive activity but either way surplus is required.
What happens when all activity is insufficient to provide/maintain the necessities?
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