Honeymoon crashed: Winston Peters outburst ensured the new government's first Cabinet meeting was a memorable one. Photo / Getty Images
Monday
Most new governments enjoy a media honeymoon: a period of generous coverage and flattering profiles before the scandals and blunders turn everything sour. Jacinda Ardern’s lasted about 18 months. Half-way through 2019, her famous “year of delivery”, it became obvious they weren’t delivering much. John Key’s lasted longer; arguably well into his second term.
Christopher Luxon’s government got a good 10 - 15 minutes. Shortly after being sworn in at Government House Winston Peters - Luxon’s new Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister - launched an attack on the media, accusing them of taking bribes in the form of the $55 million public interest journalism fund. Peters’ war with the media continued throughout the week, through the government’s first Cabinet meeting and on into its announcement of its agenda during the first 100 days which was overshadowed by Peters’ theory that the media prolonged the 2021 Auckland Covid lockdown.
The backstory here is that Peters has a decades-long grudge against “the principles of the treaty” as a legal doctrine. During the early stages of the Covid pandemic many businesses stopped spending on media advertising. Many media outlets were facing bankruptcy, so New Zealand on Air made $55 million available to support them. Instead of setting any criteria around objectivity, balance or any other traditional form of journalistic standards, New Zealand on Air required recipients to “actively promote the principles of partnership, participation and active protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.” Which was extremely triggering for Peters (and other conservatives) who feel the sinister mainstream media has been corrupted by taking this money and thus being captured by pro-Treaty principles ideology.
There are two problems with this narrative. The first is that it assumes that the predominantly Pākehā public service has a deeply nuanced understanding of Treaty jurisprudence. Generally speaking this isn’t the case: the principles of the Treaty - or Te Tiriti - are just an abstract Good Thing which they support because they want to be good people on the right side of history. So, commitments to it get cheerfully cut and pasted into everything regardless of context. The second problem is that for the last two years, most media coverage of the Ardern-Hipkins government was overwhelmingly negative. Every news bulletin was a screed of ram raids, cost of living crisis and rolling policy failures. It’s hard to see what the alleged bribe bought.
Peters’ core supporters love to see him stand up to the evil mainstream media. But his core supporters are only a few thousand people: most voters are either indifferent towards him or actively dislike him. So, it’s a problem for Luxon and the rest of his Ministers that Peters’ temper tantrums are dominating news coverage of their new government. It’s also concerning that there doesn’t seem to be any coherent strategy behind it - but it’s not a problem with any obvious solution.
Tuesday
Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis promised to deliver tax cuts next year. They also promised to get the government’s books back into surplus. Unfortunately, their main source of revenue for the cuts - the infamous foreign buyers’ tax - was vetoed by New Zealand First during the coalition negotiations. Their solution: roll back the smokefree legislation introduced late last year and book the additional revenue from the excise tax on cigarettes. This attracted widespread criticism from health experts, and international media interest because the smokefree plan to prohibit the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2008 was a world first, and many other governments have expressed interest in adopting it. National’s justification is that total prohibition creates a black market and enriches the gangs, which is probably true, but also the strongest case for legalising cannabis - which they’re firmly opposed to.
There are a number of other policy changes emerging from the negotiation: they’re freezing the abatement threshold for Working for Families - so that as a household’s income rises with inflation, they’ll lose the WFF transfer sooner. (Both Labour and National rely on this scam as their favourite stealth tax method.) And they’ve brought forward their interest deductions for residential landlords. The optics - as the comms advisors put it - are terrible: pro-smoking, pro-landlord policies offset by cuts to low-income families.
Wednesday