When you hear the people sing

Comment: Christopher Luxon and his Government have made a virtue of not listening to “the noise”, of not bending to every political, media or community criticism of their policies.

From Treaty issues to smoking, from guns to global fishing conservation deals, they have refused to be shamed. They have collectively held their line, acknowledging but dismissing complaints, frowning on the pleas from the squeakiest wheels, their eyes fixed ahead, ‘on track’.

Indeed, members of the Government appear to have adopted shamelessness as a political tactic.

By refusing to react, to worry, to show indecision or, worst of all, back down, they are repudiating a political culture that they believe could be afraid of its own shadow. One that could be shamed into changing course even when no shame was justified.

In the Ardern and Hipkins years, and to a degree in the Key era as well, if the political and media heat rose too high, some kind of concession or delay seemed inevitable to quell the controversy.

National and others used and benefited from that blowtorch, forcing backdown after apology after resignation by intensifying criticisms within the news cycle.

Conversely, Luxon and his politically stroppier and more experienced partners Winston Peters and David Seymour have spent almost all of their first 100 days ignoring or over-talking their critics. We won, you lost, get over it.

They’ve bet that all the Labour, Green, Te Pāti Māori, iwi, health, environmental and even diplomatic criticism could be overcome by not engaging with it.

They’ve backed themselves to win the public’s support on any controversy aired from those groups. The 1News-Verian poll published on February 19 shows the coalition has held its support solidly from election time.

Luxon weathered the storm over Act’s proposed Treaty of Waitangi principles bill at Waitangi, by publicly ignoring it altogether in his speech.

His ministers, when quizzed over watering down what was to be the next phase in anti-smoking health measures, ignored taunts that they were doing that to raise more tax revenue. They simply said they are doing it because they are doing it. The fact it’s in their coalition agreement and 100-day plan is all anyone needs to know.

Ditto, reviewing the availability of military style semi-automatic weapons.

Fisheries Minister Shane Jones turns political convention inside out by openly talking up changes sought by the fishing industry – some of whom donated to him and, in the past, his party – and withdrawing New Zealand’s support for a Kiwi-initiated Pacific-wide conservation agreement.

Walk towards the critics, don’t shy away or exhibit political timidity. Never back down.

It has allowed the coalition to push forward under urgency in Parliament, like the three monkeys of old: See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil.

In key debates last week, the Government largely deployed junior, no-name or tyro MPs to counter Opposition speeches on abolishing the Māori Health Authority, the smokefree repeal and other measures. They offered micro-speeches of under a minute to speed things up, largely talking past the concerns being raised across the floor.

More than once, they mimicked their Prime Minister and other senior ministers by using a line which sums up this political strategy: “I won’t be lectured by that Member on…”

As jarring as it might seem as a political strategy, it has arguably held up for the three-party Government. There has been one instance where the police minister’s mis-speaking on new recruit targets had to be walked back, but that was an internal coalition demand from NZ First, not a reaction to public pressure.

On Friday, we saw something else.

We saw Christopher Luxon blink.

A political bushfire broke out that he and his staff did not contain through two rounds of donning their political asbestos cladding.

When Newsroom’s senior political writer Marc Daalder first asked Luxon’s office on Wednesday afternoon whether the PM would take the $52,000-a-year accommodation allowance in Wellington (despite owning his own apartment outright), there was only a deflecting answer. No response either way would be made until MPs’ expenses had been published.

Then, on Thursday, those numbers were imminently to be made public, so the PM’s people did give an answer, and it was definitive.

Yes, he would take the money. It was an entitlement and he’d do what was within the rules. He wasn’t able to live in the dilapidated Premier House.

When we published our story on Friday morning, and it was copied or reused by almost all other media, those outlets got the same answer.

When Luxon that afternoon faced media questions in Queenstown, he gave the same answer, repeatedly, despite almost eight hours to contemplate his position. He was both frustrated at the journalists’ focus on his ‘entitlement’ and dismissive of the concern.

He might well have thought the tactic of refusing to ‘be lectured by’ outsiders that had got his Government to within one week of the fabled 100-days mark would prevail again.

But then, a sudden outbreak of political judgment. It could have been a prick of conscience from Luxon himself, some loss of nerve from the hardline advisers, a text from a pollster, a sage word of advice from the Taxpayers’ Union or one of those What Would John Key Do? moments.

The PM went on Newstalk ZB and told host Heather du Plessis Allan he’d heard the people sing on talkback radio and taken their views on board. He would no longer take the money, would pay back the $13,000 already in his account and would rid himself and New Zealand of this ‘distraction’.

Lectured by talkback radio callers. Now, there’s a thing.

In any case, the backdown after two waves of get-over-yourselves messaging, from his office and in his own press standup, represented a rare break with their reaction to critics.

To an outsider it’s not hard to see why. For a Prime Minister who is going to end the ‘wasteful spending’, stop taxpayers being used as a ‘bottomless ATM’ and end prescription subsidies for those who can afford to pay, the lack of judgment was manifest.

But what of the advisers who couldn’t see the risks? Both in private, weeks or months ago when the decision to claim the allowance was made, or as it became obvious it was about to break in the media.

Alerted to the issue becoming public, and presumably verifying all the way up the line to the Prime Minister and back, the chiefs of staff, political advisers, head of communications, chief press secretary seemed content to tell voters he would take the money because he could. Nothing to see here.

And in that 24-hour period or so, where was the kitchen cabinet in National’s caucus having a quiet word in the Leader’s ear? Chris, Nicola, Simeon?

In the wider coalition, did Seymour and Peters leave Luxon hanging out there all day by omission or commission?

This ‘distraction’ represents a short, sharp failure of judgment by Luxon, a personal decision by accident or design that made him look out-of-touch and oddly in-astute.

While it is one of those things that won’t be forgotten out there in the electorate, it will pass. He did belatedly take the pulse of talkback radio, after all, finding there the advice absent in his own playbook, from his staff who are paid the big bucks to anticipate and move quickly on these things, and from his political mates.

But it also represents the limitations of a political and communications strategy that assumes every controversy can be extinguished or ridden through by challenging its right to exist, declining to engage, and starving it of the oxygen of a reaction.

Engaging with criticism, then justifying or – perhaps – rethinking actions can improve political outcomes. It isn’t always best shunned.