Reshuffle needed at highest levels of Government – Matthew Hooton

Of the remaining top 20 issues, Labour dominates right down the list, except for the one at the very bottom of voters’ concerns, foreign affairs and defence.

On all the economic issues, including the cost of living, the most important by far, Labour is now favoured, just two years after being so decisively thrown out.

Across all six major polling companies, despite promising to extend the current capital gains tax regime, Labour leads National on the party vote, although the current coalition would squeak home 61-59, assuming Te Pāti Māori retains only four of the six seats it won in 2023.

Don’t expect to hear National surrogates repeating their 2017 line that the party with the most votes should always be allowed to lead the Government.

That was always nonsense. It’s the group of parties that can control a majority of Parliament that the Governor-General is constitutionally bound to invite to form a Government.

Perhaps most shocking is that the current Government is now rated the worst since the Ipsos series began in 2017, putting Luxon’s outfit behind not just Dame Jacinda Ardern’s failing regime when she decided to quit, but trailing Sir Bill English’s and Chris Hipkins’ short-lived interregnums.

If, as Luxon asserts, the most important determinant of a team’s success is its leader allocating individuals to the right roles, then either he has accepted failure or he must soon radically reshuffle his line-up.

Luxon’s problem is that his room for manoeuvre is severely restricted by National’s modest showing in the last election, by his conceding too much authority to his support partners during coalition negotiations, and by his own over-the-top rhetoric.

Even were foreign affairs not one bright spot among the top 20 issues, Luxon couldn’t move NZ First leader Peters from the job unilaterally.

Trade Minister Todd McClay – who Luxon flatters with the somewhat unimaginative nickname “Trade McClay” – can’t be removed either, being on the cusp of delivering Luxon’s reckless campaign promise of a free-trade agreement with India before the next election, requiring us to admit more Indian immigrants in exchange for India taking our milk powder.

NZ First deputy leader Shane Jones is surely as safe as Peters to remain in charge of regional development, plus minerals, seafood and other resources.

Likewise, Act leader David Seymour would not consent to losing his treasured deregulation portfolio, although he could perhaps accept handing over Pharmac or charter schools to another Act Party minister.

Luxon’s options are little better among his own party’s ministers.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis is unassailable.

“I don’t think there’s a single New Zealander that could do a better job than Nicola Willis,” Luxon enthused just two months ago.

In case anyone missed his point, Luxon made clear he wasn’t talking just about the current and former generations but all future ones too.

“Nicola Willis,” he said, “is the best Finance Minister New Zealand’s ever going to have.”

He can hardly now replace Willis, having already declared her superior to any successor, “ever”.

Further down the list, Willis’ close ally Chris Bishop might sensibly be removed from housing, since he has driven house prices down when Luxon says he wants them to go up.

But Bishop couldn’t be removed from any of his other portfolios, including infrastructure, resource-management reform and transport, without prompting the leadership challenge Luxon must know would come if he tried.

Nor can Luxon imply any failure by Simeon Brown or Erica Stanford in health, education or immigration.

It’s not obvious what Louise Upston has done in social welfare or tourism to warrant the sack.

One option would be for Luxon to take for himself Goldsmith’s Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations job, both to underline its importance to National after Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill antics and to draw on what he believes are his world-class negotiating skills.

That, though, might be to put those professed skills too clearly to the test.

This really leaves political rats and mice: Shane Reti’s science and universities role, Simon Watts in climate change and Matt Doocey in mental health. One would need to be sacked to make way for the highly regarded Chris Penk, who has made progress in building and construction even without the benefit of a Cabinet seat. A second would need to go to make way for the other rising star outside Cabinet, James Meager.

Whether or not Luxon himself would believe such limited changes would turn around the Government’s political fortunes is for him to say, but there is another option.

The very fact Luxon has so few ministers obviously deserving the boot suggests they aren’t really the problem.

To Luxon’s credit, most of them do appear to be in the right roles. The one exception seems to be Luxon himself.

Senior ministers complain the Government’s whole has turned out to be less than the sum of its parts.

They say a very bold and comprehensive reform programme is in fact under way across most portfolios that would rival the great reforming Governments of the past.

But they say this Government lacks a Prime Minister who can comprehend and pull it all together, communicate the vision that underpins it and build confidence among voters and the business community that he and his ministers know what they are doing.

That certainly seems consistent with Luxon’s disastrous ranking in the Herald’s Mood of the Boardroom survey and – even more important – with polls that show him languishing well below National’s support and even further behind the Government when NZ First and Act are added to the mix.

A first-term Government that replaced one whose previously popular leader quit because she knew she couldn’t win and whose replacement didn’t win but somehow remained leader – and which saw its vote nearly halve from 50% to 27% in just three years – should be a shoo-in for re-election.

If Luxon is honest with himself, surely even he can see that there is really only one important figure in his Government who is unequivocally in the wrong role.

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