The Annual Report: Christopher Luxon on one year in office
Monday, 25 November 2024
Welcome to The Post’s first Annual Report for the National-led coalition Government. We've ranked the Cabinet ministers, and analysed how the economy's fared. So how has it gone for the PM?
“I can be captain and first five, but I can't be prop and winger and fullback, you know,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says in an interview marking his first year in office.
The prime minister is energised. He loves talking. Especially about what he views as his Government’s achievements. His leg is tapping under the table, he’s got a Pepsi Max on the go and he looks like he’s ready to leap out of his seat, as he often looks during Parliamentary question time.
He rises about 4.30am each day, scans international and some national news sites, makes early calls and heads into the office “very early”. He says that as far as keeping a work-life balance, “a lot of those routines and discipline is really rooted in my immediate family”. A man of faith ‒ which he explained in a maiden speech three years ago and keeps private ‒ he says he hasn’t attended church in a number of years because, “faith is a personal thing and so I don't need to go to church to have a faith”.
The biggest surprise after a year in Government? The amount of reading.
“In government, there's a huge amount of reading … I'm constantly just reading in the car when I'm driving from airports to meetings or functions. You know, a briefcase arrives at 10.30 on a Friday night for my weekend reading. Sometimes it's two briefcases.”
And the reading will be required. Luxon has said his focus is now shifting from inflation and getting the books under control ‒ which is still a work in progress ‒ to economic growth.
“I'm consciously worried about the state of the economy and the decisions that we can take as a government to get growth in jobs. That's going to be my big focus as I go through the next 12 months,” he says.
Managing the team
The former Unilever Canada and Air New Zealand CEO takes pride in his leadership and management abilities. In March The Post reported that he got 50 public sector CEOs in the room and sent them home with three management self-help books to get them focused. In this vein, we are talking about managing ministers and how to get teamwork and results in Parliament.
He continues: “And so we've got to use the talents of the team that we've got and get the right people on the right assignments with the right clarity about what we're asking them to deliver and to achieve.”
He sees one of the the biggest dangers to Government as drift, something he says he used to see when he was Air New Zealand boss.
“And you go, well, what's actually happened? They're just boiling the ocean. They're throwing out the slogans and bumper stickers, but nothing's actually happening for the people of New Zealand, for the individuals out there.
“The organisation of government actually does really matter,” he says. In order to keep this Government ‒ which is undertaking quite a number of big reforms ‒ on track he says he gets alongside ministers who are struggling, to give them more support, and chairs a monthly strategy committee meeting of Cabinet.
Better comms needed
But sometimes, you just need more. Earlier in the year it was education, at the moment, he’s spending a lot more time on health.
“Formally, I think the strategy meeting is every four weeks. But then I will also bring in the CEs [chief executives] and the ministers for discussions, for example, on healthcare at the moment, and we have more regular meetings in health.”
Health is in a shambles after Covid-era policies all but stopped in the inflow of medical labour ‒ so that’s ongoing. A commissioner has been appointed to Health NZ.
But after a year in office, Luxon has nominated the Budget debacle around cancer drugs as his biggest mistake, and his communication skills as the biggest area for improvement.
“I think I always want to keep finding ways to communicate to New Zealanders what we're doing,” he says, noting that he prided himself on communicating when he was in business.
“You know, I just think the more that New Zealanders understand what we're trying to achieve and why, it gives them context for the decisions that we're making and the choices that we have to make.
No regrets
“And our big job at the moment is, the country was put into a big ditch. We're trying to get the car out of it, turn it up the right way, get it moving.”
While there is room for improvement, the prime minister doesn’t do regrets.
“Look, I don't really live with regrets, because I think if you are determined about what you're there to do, and then you've got a plan to deliver on that, I look back, and I wouldn't change too many of the big rocks.
“No doubt about it, there's always things I come away going, man, I wish I could have communicated that better.”
He points to a decision at the Budget to not fund drug buyer Pharmac to purchase a list of drugs promised during the election campaign as one of these instances. The Government was widely panned for not including the drugs in the Budget, only to turn around and provide funding and a big new list of drugs (paid for against future Budgets) a month later.
“We hit the Budget, and we were still wrestling with how we could deliver that with the financial constraints that we were facing. And I think I could have communicated ‒ we could have communicated that as a team ‒ in a much better way.
“Yes, it cost us $605 million but actually, I think we could have communicated it better as an example of what I'm talking about.”
Probably the fastest PM in history
But that seems regarded as a rare blip. In keeping with the general Luxon focus on what he considers the big picture ‒ it wasn’t a huge thing.
“But in terms of the big rocks of activity and the programme and what we're dealing with, I think, you know, I don't mean it to sound arrogantly at all, because I don't, you know that's not what I'm meaning, but it's just that I'm comfortable with where we've got to and how we've done it,” he says.
When asked about his low personal poll ratings he says that, as with managing Government, he looks at it differently.
“I guess I approach it slightly differently. I mean, I've come from outside politics. I'm probably the person in New Zealand's history that's got to be the prime minister in the fastest amount of time.”
“I'm not a career politician, as you know, and that doesn't mean I get all the language perfected at all times, but what I am here for is a big mission and purpose, which is that I think this is an outstanding country, and I think it has tremendous potential, and that's why I came to politics four years ago, because, because, man, damn it, I want New Zealand to realise that potential.”
Constructively dissatisfied
“So I come to do this job because I choose to do this job. I choose to do politics. I choose to do public service. I'm not a career politician where I need to do the job because it is my career. I choose to do it because I want to do this and so and because I believe that we have a great future, and we do.”
I asked the PM to give himself a score out of 10 for his performance as PM. He didn’t do that, but he did say that he wasn’t satisfied.
“Well, I am constructively dissatisfied with myself and and with performance everywhere. So that is just how I am wired. So as someone who is probably a reformed perfectionist, I am never satisfied with my own performance and that of what we're trying to achieve so, look, there's always room for improvement.”
The Government is officially one year old on Wednesday.