Luxon a long way from joining legion of strong leaders

Opinion: Ever since the days of “King Dick” Richard John Seddon, New Zealanders have been used to strong leaders.
They have come in many forms. There have been authoritarian leaders, such as Peter Fraser, larger-than-life figures such as Norman Kirk and David Lange, internationally respected leaders such as Dame Jacinda Ardern, or downright demagogic and threatening ones such as Sir Robert Muldoon. Others – Sid Holland, Sir Keith Holyoake, Helen Clark and Sir John Key – have dominated because they were wily political operators, better than most of their contemporaries.
The common point was that they were all the dominant political figure of their time. The governments they led became personalised to them, often described by their name rather than their party. And frequently, their election campaigns were based around their leadership style, usually in comparison with what they argued would be weaker leadership from their opponents. Not surprisingly, such appeals to strong leadership (“what the country needs right now”) have frequently prevailed at election time.
Where does the current Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, fit? Though it is way too early in his term to make a definitive assessment, there are some early pointers.
Already there has been criticism that Luxon’s prime ministership risks being defined by issues such as Act’s Treaty Principles Bill and other policies, which were not part of National’s election policy, and which it does not support now, but is obliged to implement because of the Coalition Agreements. Moreover, by allowing the leaders of Act and New Zealand First to announce, and then make the running on these policies, Luxon is surrendering much of his leadership authority, his critics allege. And, they add, these policy concessions risk becoming the legacy of his government rather than National’s own policies which are being steadily implemented.
According to this line of argument, the tail wagging the dog situation critics long feared would be the case under multiparty, proportional representation government, is now coming to pass. They suggest that people voted for a National-led government and expected it to be the dominant player in any post-election governing arrangement. The government should therefore have a distinctly National look to it, with the coalition partners being respected, but otherwise kept firmly in their place. And Luxon is failing because he is not doing so.
The problem with this view is that it overlooks the current political reality. For the first time since the establishment of party government in New Zealand around the start of the 20th century, a genuine three-party coalition is in charge. Although there have been other multiparty governing arrangements since the advent of MMP, they have usually been based on looser confidence and supply arrangements. Formal coalitions have been a rarity, and there has never been a coalition between more than two parties before.
Inevitably, that arrangement changes the dynamic of leadership and the role of the Prime Minister in particular. Leaving aside the specific personalities involved in the current government, the old days of prime ministerial domination we have seen previously were therefore never going to apply to the current government. And when Winston Peters’ abiding fury at the way he was treated (and largely ignored, even though he was Deputy Prime Minister at the time) by the Ardern government during the Covid-19 emergency is added in, the chances of the current Government becoming branded as the Luxon government, in the way we have been used to, all but evaporated.
According to the Cabinet Manual, though there is no formal definition of the role, the Prime Minister is the executive head of government, responsible for the overall conduct of its business, alongside certain constitutional obligations. Classically, the role has been described as primus inter pares (first among equals), which is especially relevant in the current context.
Unlike his National Party predecessor Jim Bolger, who became affectionately nicknamed the Great Helmsman for his leadership during the early days of MMP, or other Prime Ministers, whose perception of their role has often bordered on magisterial, Luxon’s role is much more circumscribed. He is certainly first among equals, with his immediate equals being the leaders of the Act and NZ First parties. The rest of the Cabinet, let alone the National, Act and NZ First party caucuses come some distance behind.
Against that backdrop, the consensual style of leadership that has emerged over the last 10 months is not surprising. Luxon’s primary political imperative has been to weld the three parties of government into an effective working team. By and large, he has done so (with perhaps Casey Costello’s ongoing blunders the primary embarrassment). And voters seem to agree, with opinion polls showing the coalition Government consistently ahead of the Opposition.
Where the criticism that Luxon risks being defined by the extreme policies of his coalition partners has substance is that National has not successfully sold its own achievements since coming to office. Two recent examples stand out – despite much anticipatory fanfare, National’s Budget tax cuts, the first in over a decade, were largely a damp squib. And its substantial increase in funding for cancer drugs, going well beyond its pre-election commitment, was overshadowed by the bungled way it was put together, including being left out of the original Budget announcement altogether. This has left policies that should have been hallmark announcements for National looking ho-hum, which is a failure of leadership.
Luxon’s focus as Prime Minister should be more about ensuring his own party’s agenda is substantially implemented than worrying about the policies of his coalition partners. The ultimate assessment of his success as Prime Minister will depend more on the extent to which voters judge he has been able to achieve that, and their lives have consequently improved, than it will on whether Act’s or NZ First’s controversial policies survive.
Polls suggest voters so far are cautiously giving Luxon the benefit of the doubt, although the next election is still two years away.