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2:19 pm, August 7th, 2026 - 3 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, david seymour, Minister for International Embarrassment, national, same old national, uncategorized, winston peters -
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I wish Christopher Luxon would stop doing this, so I could write posts on more important matters.
Bue he has made such a meal of things that I feel compelled to write a third post about him in four days detailing his s*(t week from hell.
On Tuesday I wrote about Luxon’s word salad of a way of speaking and how he managed to upset Rotorua businesses by accusing them of having a negative view, how they should radically disrupt their businesses and how asking the Government to do its job showed a parent-child mentality.
He then said that he was disappointed with the media reporting, presumably because it was accurate, and then later in the same day gave an abject grovelling apology.
As I said before Luxon’s basic problem is that he is wealthy and he is sorted and he has no idea how tough most of us are finding things.
And at the same time he was having to explain how Winston Peters’ racist rant did not result in him being removed as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Then on Wednesday it got worse.
It emerged that Luxon had used an Air Force flight to fly him from a National Party fundraiser in Whanganui back to Auckland. And he tried to defend it on the basis that the cost came out of a fixed budget. Using his logic much of the State could be used to support National Party activity because there will be no further cost, just the diversion of the use of state assets from more deserving activity.
Then yesterday Luxon decided to muse about holding yet another referendum on MMP and in doing so said that he wanted change so he could avoid having to work with some yahoo and numpty in Cabinet.
National’s legendary discipline folded. Emma Ricketts put it very politely when she said that there was no cohesive position within the party.
The musing managed to completely overshadow the announcement of an opening day for Auckland’s City Rail Link.
Chris Bishop must have been seething on the inside. The media should have totally focussed on the opening of the CRL. Instead they were talking about yet another messy day for the Prime Minister.
National will want to milk the CRL opening to the hilt even though it initially said that the project was crazy, and even though it put conditions in the way that it thought would stymie the project. The project only happened because of outstanding work by then Auckland Mayor Len Brown. But expect National to claim credit for it.
And coverage of Erica Stanford’s carefully stage managed announcement of business friendly school subjects at Mākara Windfarm was also completely obliterated.
Winston Peters was not amused, saying about the proposal that it was inexplicable. He also said this:
MMP broke the stranglehold of two parties running roughshod over our economy without social licence.
Now that the two old parties are losing their grip on power, they want to change the electoral system to favour their falling fortunes. The public voted for MMP in 1993. The public voted for MMP in 2011.”
Well done Christopher Luxon. Like it or not you are well on the way to uniting all of Parliament into believing that you are not up to the job.
I'm glad somebody gets it.
Consider all the Luxon headlines, over 11 days. In each case it was not only about the stories themselves, but the opportunity cost (no pun intended).
The PM's post-Cabinet press conference is always supposed to be about proclaiming government achievements. Instead it was a boost for the Opportunity Party.
The questions and debates in Parliament are another platform for proclaiming government achievements. Instead it was hi-jacked by Winston's racism.
The meetings arranged by National around the country (like in Rotorua) are another platform, with soft Qs from a friendly audience. Instead, Luxon made headlines to anger business ("parent-child" etc).
The next post-Cab … another platform, and … a belated apology for those comments.
And finally a nice soft chat with Kerre Woodham on Newstalk ZB, easy points on offer … and instead dear old Luxy starts blathering on about MMP.
But this is only scratching the surface. An election campaign is all of those media opportunities, but multiplied.
And it hasn't even started yet.
One gets the impression that Luxon experienced some air turbulence and is feeling a little rattled. But he’ll straighten his drone and fly straight into Mt Oblivion.
And as he begins his descent to the election, he'll start handing out lollies.