Christopher Luxon needs to learn when to show up

Saturday, 15 November 2025

Police Commissioner Richard Chambers, Public Service Minister Judith Collins and Police Minister Mark Mitchell speak to a damning IPCA report that revealed major failings in the handling of sexual accusations against former deputy police commissioner Jevon McSkimming. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should have been there, Luke Malpass writes.

Luke Malpass is politics, business and economics editor.

OPINION: When Judith Collins, Mark Mitchell and Richard Chambers turned up to give a press conference about the extraordinary Independent Police Conduct Authority report into Police handling of complaints against Jevon McSkimming, one person was notably missing: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

This was a report that detailed arse-covering, credulous behaviour, non-investigation and cover-ups in the police executive. The exec looked like it was a rats’ nest and the report found the former commissioner - the man in charge of the organisation legally allowed to use force in New Zealand to enforce the law - tried to influence the timing and extent of an investigation.

This is a very big deal. The Public Service Commissioner may be the technical employer of the police commissioner, and their minister is the police minister. But they are appointed to the job by prime ministers.

Remarkably, former commissioner Andrew Coster appears to have united the entire political crime spectrum against his handling of the situation.

When asked about why he wasn’t there, Luxon said that it was decided that the other ministers would front it, that they “were all over it” and that “I’ve been working with them to make sure we have a very comprehensive response to that report”.

And he was right, his ministers were all over it. Both Collins and Mitchell struck the right tone, understood the gravity and acted appropriately.

There’s nothing wrong with the PM deciding that his ministers have got it in hand. It was well handled. He didn’t have to be there.

But he should have been.

This follows the police’s independent watchdog releasing its report into the handling of serious complaints made against now disgraced top cop Jevon McSkimming, that had found there were “serious failings” by “very senior officers”.

And the fact that he wasn’t underlined a couple of things: that he struggles to identify political situations where he can demonstrate leadership and authority; and the suspicion that these sorts of situations probably go better without him.

Ministers always want to be the ones fronting big important things in their portfolios, rather than the prime minister. It is precisely what gives them currency and authority and the ability to shine. Politicians are there, in part, because they like the attention of doing the big things.

And this was a perfect one. Here was a big problem of massive importance, that touches everyone in the country - which the Government was moving to decisively sort out - and which wasn’t its fault in the first place.

This is key political judgment stuff. Think about Jacinda Ardern apologising on behalf of New Zealanders over the murder of Grace Millane. Or John Key knowing it was important enough to head straight down to the Pike River disaster. Leadership in the moment matters.

It isn’t the first time this has happened. Luxon could have stamped his authority on the Government by travelling to the UN and giving New Zealand’s decision on Palestine instead of letting Foreign Minister Winston Peters do it. He could have stepped in earlier to head off the Treaty Principles Bill. He did neither.

He did not publicly front the day economic growth tanked by 0.9% in the second quarter.

There are explanations for all of these decisions - often reasonable ones. And the fact that Luxon gives his ministers a lot of rope after the centralising tendencies of previous regimes is actually a very healthy thing for Cabinet government. But the lack of political antennae on opportunities for the PM to demonstrate real leadership continues to confuse.

Consider earlier in the week the concerted pitch rolling around the idea of asset recycling. Pitch rolling is where you get out and try to prepare ground with the public a bit for a policy you are thinking about - like rolling a cricket pitch ahead of a match.

National may well have decided, tactically, that having the debate on economic management rather than other issues was worthwhile just to keep economic management in the news.

The problem is, there is clearly going to be no asset recycling in this term.

And the PM has chosen an odd way to do it, calling for a mature conversation - not a political one - about managing the Crown’s balance sheet. This is flawed on both strategic and practical grounds.

As a strategic matter, the issue is inherently political. It goes to the heart of difference between political parties and what the Government should fundamentally do. It is something that a strong case has to be made for, not some flim-flam about it being above politics.

Secondly, practically, if the Government wants to do some worthwhile asset recycling it basically only means selling up its 51% share in energy gentailers: energy companies Genesis, Mercury and Meridian.

There are lots of other things the Government could (and in some cases probably should) sell off: Landcorp, Kordia, QV, TVNZ among many others. A full list can be found here.

But most of them are pretty small and wouldn’t raise any decent amount of money for investing in new stuff for the Crown - and certainly not at the political cost it would bring.

NZ Post would be too complicated, while Air New Zealand’s market cap is $2 billion and the Government doesn’t gain much by selling its half.

The big ones are Meridian, Mercury and Genesis, which at the time of writing had a combined market capitalisation of more than $27 billion, of which 51% of is nearly $14b.

Sale of Transpower is the other option.

Were those all to be privatised there might be a decent chunk of cash to get some user-pays infrastructure going, which could then be sold to an infrastructure operator a few years down the track and the money extracted to use on something else: Recycled if you will.

The PM continually points to Singapore as doing it - he’s studied the country deeply for the past 30 years, he says - but the better close example is NSW.

In 2014 then Premier Mike Baird took a sale of Ausgrid (NSW’s Transpower equivalent) to an election. He won.

The NSW government sold its stake for A$16b to some Australian Super Funds. meaning millions of Aussies owned a stake in it. That cash has since washed through different infrastructure projects with the government financing stages of a huge new motorways system, selling it off to a private operator on a long-term lease and then using the cash to build the next bit.

It has worked well and any sensible government should look at emulating it (who knows, Labour’s vague future fund might end up doing something similar).

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in the House alongside his then deputy, Winston Peters, early this year. Luke Malpass says Peters’ opposition to proposed “asset recycling” means it would be daft for Luxon to campaign on that ahead of next year’s election.

In the meantime, Labour’s criticism of selling off the family silver may be lame, and I’m not the first one to note it, but it is also a bad metaphor. Family silver just sits around cluttering up the house, gathering dust. It is mostly kept for sentimental reasons or inertia, not unlike a lot of companies the state owns.

But consider the last privatisations - the ones that John Key took to the 2011 election. Key and co knew that it would probably cost them 2-3 percentage points come the election - quite a lot of potential National Party supporters aren’t keen on asset sales either. But Key did it from a position of strength. And was going to be able to do it after the election.

However, based on current polling, never mind “asset recycling” not happening in this term of Government, it seems almost certain not to happen in the next term either. Campaigning on it would be daft because NZ First and Winston Peters will never agree to it.

It’s a good idea, New Zealand should be exploring it and kudos to the PM for getting into it, but as with so many things under the current Government, there seems little real planning in how it has been approached.

All this of this came as the latest Anacta Talbot Mills corporate poll came out, showing Labour on 38% against National on 33%. It also recorded a sharp drop for NZ First. Those numbers feel like an anomaly, but we will see as other polls come out. If it is not that would obviously be a real blow to the coalition parties. What was more interesting is that it suggests - and again it is early days - that the capital gains tax issue may not be that poisonous for Labour this time around.

There is one month to go in the political year. Parliament sits again next week and then returns properly again for two weeks on December 10. Then we will be into an election year.

Elections are about parties and policies and all that, but campaigns - especially in an MMP world - are about who people want to be prime minister: Chris vs Chris at this stage.

Christopher Luxon is going to have to have some things to campaign on, sufficient skill to turn those things into a compelling story for voters and convince them that he is the one to do it.

A vote for Labour is a vote for Te Pāti Māori and the Greens is the obvious starting point for the next election at this stage. But what else there will be is very unclear at this point.