The Bewildering World of Christopher Luxon - Back on Track...

... to Opposition.

Jun 12, 2025

The latest two out of three polls for National are - to put it mildly - troubling.

Fresh on the heels of Minister Nicola ‘NoBoats' Willis' austerity budget and the scrapping of thirtythree pay equity agreements to fund tax cuts for the already-rich, the public's appetite for this rightwing coalition government continues to wear thin.

The latest poll from Curia is yet more bad news for this hapless government:

Labour: 34.8% (+1.6 percentage points - 44 seats)
National: 33.5% (-1.1 - 42 seats)
ACT: 9.1% (-0.4 - 12 seats)
Greens: 8.2% (-0.9 - 10 seats)
NZ First: 6.1% (-1.3 - 8 seats)
Te Pāti Māori: 3.3% (-0.6 - 6 seats)

The unattributed RNZ story claims:

The centre-right would have a combined 62 seats, down one seat from the previous poll. The centre-left is up two seats to 60.

Yet again, media reporting fails to factor in Special Votes which always favours the Left.

In which case the Parliamentary seating allocation (after re-distribution from counting of ‘Specials’) would be:

Centre-right: 60

Centre-left: 62

This would make the current National-led government a one-term government - the first since the 1972-75 Labour government.

The implications of National being turfed out after only one term would be considerable:

Luxon's political career will be dead. Either “encouraged to spend more time with family” or rolled, his Prime Ministership will end ignominiously. (Perhaps he'll learn to fly aeroplanes?)
Nicola ‘NoBoats' Willis' tenure as Finance Minister will end at the same time. Seen as the architect of disastrous decisions to cut taxes for the rich; dump levies for Heated Tobacco Products; scrap 33 pay equity agreements for the country's lowest paid women (and men); abandon the Hyundai ferries contract, costing hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in break-fees; underfunding healthcare, housing, education, DoC, etc (whilst finding $12 billion for the military) and other unpalatable policies - her legacy will be toxic.
National's mismanagement of the economy will severely damage their reputation as “prudent fiscal managers”.
Luxon and Willis' replacement will be a Bishop-Stanford or Stanford-Bishop team. Willis will be relegated to the backbenches, shortly thereafter to retire to “spend more time with family".

National’s hierarchy and strategists will engage in a thorough repudiation of former Finance Minister Willis’s Truss-like policies, engaging in revisionism and scape-goating to distance the Party from austerity and hard-line neo-liberal policies.

Nikki NoBoats attempted a similar stunt in July 2020, when she made a half-hearted ‘mea culpa’ that the previous National government had sold more State houses than it had built.

It will have dawned on National's leadership that being pulled to the right, away from the centre, alienates more ‘ordinary’ voters than garners their support. It will be a hard lesson to learn, but one that desperation to become electable again in 2029 will be forced on them.

It took nine years in the political wilderness and thorough repudiation of Rogernomics for the Labour Party to be trusted again by voters.

This leaves National in a difficult position, coalition-wise.

Coalescing with NZ First will be seen as relatively ‘safe’. Peters may be mercurial in his policies to chase votes and stay above the 5% threshold but not directly threatening to middle-class concerns. His willingness to call out Israeli extremism in Palestine endears him to some - but his populist, transphobic vindictiveness would be off-putting to others.

More of a problem would be the Act Party. It has been David Seymour's deeply unpopular and offensive Treaty Principles Bill that has tarred National with the same brush. His Regulatory Standards Bill is also building popular antipathy as it becomes clearly apparent it is designed to benefit corporate interests.

Seymour's handling of the school lunches programme has been a very public fiasco.

The scrapping of 33 pay equity agreements was revealed by Act's David Seymour to be a purely fiscal decision to balance Nikki Noboats' benighted Budget:

“I actually think that Brooke van Velden has saved the taxpayer billions. She’s saved the budget for the government.” - David Seymour, 13 May 2025

National has been drawn further to the Right than it has dared to go since the days of former Finance Minister Ruth Richardson. Her tenure lasted only two years after her notorious “Mother of All Budgets" in 1991.

At the 1993 General Election, National was badly punished by voters. Their support fell by 12.77%, losing 13 seats. It was only because of the vaguaries of First Past the Post that they were able to cling to power with a shaky one-seat majority.

National's strategists will be keenly aware of not-so-distant history and how voters turned on a government widely seen as out-of-touch.

Any future potential coalition deal with Act would be fraught. Being pulled to the Right again would only serve to cement voters' reservations about National being a reliable, true “centrist” Party.

This will be up to a new Leadership and strategists to resolve. I have one idea how they may side-step Act - but why give them free advice?

For a Labour-Green-Te Pāti Māori coalition it will be a busy First 100 Days in office. It will call for an immediate mini-Budget; implementation of a Capital Gains Tax; reversing landlords tax breaks; reintroducing levies on Heated Tobacco Products; and scrapping other damaging measures introduced by a current Finance Minister who is clearly out of her depth.

All of it done under the anti-democratic shroud of Urgency.

National, of course, will have no reason to object to laws passed under Urgency. It has been their favourite tactic since Day One of this shabby government.

References

RNZ: Labour leapfrog National, but coalition keeps power in Taxpayers' Union poll

Wikipedia: Third Labour Government of New Zealand

Stuff: National Party admits it sold too many state houses

The Spinoff: Nobody is cutting through government spin like the Act Party

Wikipedia: 1993 New Zealand general election

Newsroom: Govt on record-breaking urgency streak amid flurry of Budget laws

Previous Related Blogposts

The Votes That Media Dare Not Speak Its Name

Special Votes - the Media's Blindspot

The Bewildering World of Chris Luxon - Broken Promises, An Angry Country, and a Govt on Life Support

*THOSE* polls! And *NOT* a hung Parliament!