National before Luxon

Radio NZ reports:

“I’ve seen media comments. I’ve had those right from day one. The reality is, I came into politics four or five years ago on our second-worst election result.

“The National Party was in a state of civil war, we’d had five leaders in five years. The media was used to a daily soap opera from the National Party and there’s been a bit of an overhang around that.

“So I’ve had that right from the get-go in all the time that I’ve been involved in politics but I know what it took to rebuild a National Party from 20 percent to 37 percent and find a pathway to win an election after being in quite a dysfunctional state, and then to be able to form a coalition government.”

I think people do tend to forget how bad things were for National before Luxon became leader.

Luxon has headed up the country’s first three-way coalition for more than two years now, defying the naysayers who suggested the government might fall apart.

He was “proud” of how the coalition partners had found a way to work together.

“It’s been very important to me from the beginning that people have space to differentiate and when you think about the six parties that are in the New Zealand Parliament, that they all have different brand positionings, different policies, different constituencies, and you have to allow space for that to happen.

“I think what you’ve seen is massive alignment at the centre and on the core, important stuff, but on the margins yes, there will be differences and as we go through the course of next year parties will be looking to differentiate.

It is NZ’s first three way coalition, and also the first three way arrangement with two sizeable minor parties. And despite that, there has been transformational policies in education, housing, RMA and transport.

Looking ahead to next year’s election, Luxon said his primary focus would be the economy, with an eye on structural challenges in welfare, health and superannuation.

Structural changes to those structural challenges would be great.