National will reap rich dividends with Luxon’s bipartisan approach

He has asked each of his MPs to identify areas in their portfolios where there is an opportunity to collaborate with ministers.

Luxon said that vaccine mandates, rapid antigen testing and mental health are at least three areas where the Opposition and the government could easily work together.

“I don’t care if our ideas get stolen, we should not be precious about that,’’ he told Newsroom.

Leadership with a difference

It is a very different style of leadership to what the National Party has had in recent years, and Luxon says that is deliberate because he is not a politician and did not come to the job with years of Parliament under his belt.

“I would love mental health to be a collaborative space, I genuinely mean it,” he said.

He said that finding the right end for vaccine mandates is another example, especially now that both he and the Prime Minister are on record saying that the time will come to scrap them.

“It would be great if we could work that out together and be smart about it. Honestly, I have not felt that this government has an appetite for bipartisanship. I appreciate the tone sometimes from the Prime Minister, I want to talk and listen, but the reality is different,” he said.

This was not the first time that Luxon has spoken of wanting to take a more bipartisan approach, but now he has clear ideas of where that could actually happen.

In December 2021, he told us that he wanted to work with the government when the situation allowed for it.

Luxon was hand-picked by Ardern to chair her Business Advisory Council when he was chief executive of Air New Zealand. But he said that he has not spoken to her either by phone or in person this year but is not averse to doing so.

“Covid and Rapid Antigen Tests are among such issues.

Luxon said that it might “seem odd’’ to have his MPs thinking about where National could work with the government but according to him, it makes sense if you want policies that last beyond an election cycle.

Changing the tune

Successive National leaders since the departure of Sir Bill English in 2018 have tried and failed, to focus and unite the Party on getting back into a position to be in government. The culture of the Party, the infighting and the leaking have dominated, and Luxon told Newsroom that it was clear to him when he came to Parliament in 2020 that before any work could be done, the Caucus had to find common ground again.

He said that his priority in the last ten weeks has been making Caucus expectations clear and modelling the type of behaviour he expects from his MPs.

“I know that I have been saying for the past 10 weeks that we have reset and turned the page, but I think you are seeing an acceptance that the conversation in a political sense is now moving to National and Labour. My philosophy is different on pulling teams together. I am from outside politics and there is a bunch of things that I bring to the leadership and we are getting a different outcome from the same team,” he said.

Convincing voters

His next job is to introduce himself to voters and convince them to vote for him.

“This job for the next 18 months is a big job interview because ultimately, people are going to decide who they want to be the next Prime Minister of New Zealand. That will be partly about the respective qualities of the leaders of individual parties, and partly about the strength of that team and whether they have the right policies, plans and proposals,’’ Luxon said.

It is also about voters knowing what Luxon’s leadership of the country would look like.

He says that is the job ahead.

The other job is explaining to voters during next year’s election campaign what the National Party stands for, something that has been lost in recent years, he admitted.

“In my head, it is there, but I am not ready to talk too much about it at this point. I think that we have got a good sense of what that will look like,” he said.

Introspection and State of the Nation

Luxon draws from 80 years of National Party’s existence and when it was at its best.

“For me, it is just making sure that we rediscover, express it again and make sure that it right for the times in which we live,” he said.

Some of that will become clearer when he delivers his ‘State of the Nation’ speech later this month. It was set down for the beginning of the year but the event had to be significantly scaled back due to the new Omicron Red Light Settings.

Luxon said that he is concentrating on being a part of the daily conversation and making sure that he is across all the issues.

“I am answering as a person who is new to politics, so I do not always have the political answer per se, but I am going to say it as it is and how I think about it,” Luxon said.

Jo Moir is Political Editor at Newsroom based in Wellington. The above article has been published under a Special Arrangement.