The three questions remaining for Christopher Luxon after staring down his critics
Wednesday, 22 April 2026
Henry Cooke is deputy political editor at The Post. He writes a column every Wednesday.
OPINION: Christopher Luxon made the best of a bad hand on Tuesday morning.
With clear signs that the media speculation surrounding his leadership was not going to subside and a two-week sitting block ahead of him he decided to move the story on - calling a confidence vote in himself.
The history of such votes is mixed. Australian PM Julia Gillard called a confidence vote in herself three times over 2012 and 2013. She won the first two and lost the third. Another Australian PM, Malcolm Turnbull, narrowly won a self-called confidence vote in August 2018, only to be rolled three days later.
Closer to home, Labour leader David Shearer called a caucus meeting in 2012 to end speculation about his leadership, and received the unanimous backing of his MPs. He did end up rolled - but not for another year.
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This history suggests that as Luxon intended the vote will put the matter to rest at least to some level. One can no longer simply ask Luxon if he still has the confidence of his colleagues - he just proved he did!
But answering one big question does not mean all the others go away.
Luxon, unlike almost all of his senior colleagues, refused to answer questions from the media on Tuesday. He read us a small statement about winning the vote and then suggested that he would no longer engage with us if we kept pushing on the leadership issue.
One can assume, however, that Luxon spent time answering questions from his colleagues in the room. And that these questions might not be a trillion miles away from the ones journalists would ask too - and the hundreds of thousands of National supporters who aren’t in caucus but have an abiding interest in the party’s success.
What’s the go with Stuart Smith?
The first question is tactical. What on earth was going on with chief whip Stuart Smith? The NZ Herald first reported last Friday that Smith had been essentially “ghosted” by Luxon when Smith had some bad news to share ahead of Easter - news so bad it might even have caused a confidence vote in caucus.
Luxon’s original line in response to the story - that he was always available to his MPs and had spent time with Smith in a different week - did not put the fire out, as it did not directly counter the reporting. Smith went to ground, not talking to the media until Monday night, when he told The Post he would neither confirm nor deny the story. But then all of a sudden on Tuesday the Prime Minister’s office released a statement from him seemingly denying the story more fully - saying he wanted to “confirm that I did not contact the Prime Minister or his office seeking a meeting”.
If the Prime Minister had a statement like that in his back pocket, why not use it to douse the fire on Friday? Indeed, why not give it to the Herald on Thursday when the story was being reported out? It might have never seen the light of day.
Why is Mike Hosking naming names?
Luxon gave the caucus discontent story a boost of life on Monday morning when he told his favourite interlocutor, Mike Hosking, there were five “moaning and disgruntled” people in his caucus, the suggestion being that they were behind the negative stories.
Hosking on Tuesday read out the names of five MPs on air who he said “impeccable” sources assured him were the troublemakers. Hosking assured listeners the MPs were all spurned also-rans whose opinion should not be given much attention, something Luxon-aligned accounts on social media soon picked up and ran with.
Now, Luxon and his office might not have anything to do with those names coming out of Hosking’s mouth. But it was his decision to suggest there were five people causing trouble on Monday morning. This gave the story oxygen. Sure, it may have been useful in putting down the idea that his whole caucus was against him, but it hardly added to caucus unity.
What’s the turnaround plan?
These two tactical questions pale in importance to the big one: How are you getting us out of here? The TVNZ/Verian poll on Sunday - traditionally the most friendly pollster to National - only got the party to 30% support through rounding. The National Party was created to win elections against the Labour Party, and right now its leader’s path to doing that seems incredibly shaky.
Luxon has been a lot more polished in his recent media appearances. His line about not being everyone’s ideal barbecue or beer partner is a useful corrective to the sunny optimism that grinds so many people’s gears. But one expects his caucus needed a bit more of a plan than “continue my new media training” to get their blood flowing.
National has stepped up its negativity on Labour in recent weeks, with new campaign chair Simeon Brown going after the party on social media almost daily. Luxon should leave this negativity to Brown where he can, and not underestimate Labour’s allure. His worst line this week came when talking to Tova O’Brien on Breakfast on Monday, when he flat out told her he couldn’t believe the poll because he couldn’t believe voters really backed Labour over him. It might feel good to beat up on the media’s polling and its approach to your leadership, and it might help you rally the troops. But the moment you take middle voters’ support for granted can easily be the moment you lose ‘em.