National's new leader still has to prove he is up to being prime minister, but his first conference in charge was about pushing traditional conservative policy and making clear the need for unity, Sam Sachdeva writes
It would be hard to describe the National Party's conference in Christchurch as an overly exciting affair, at least to the neutral observer.
But when you've endured 'excitement' of the variety outlined in tell-all books like Andrea Vance's Blue Blood, a bit of boredom is far from the worst medicine.
Christopher Luxon ended his first conference as party leader with a solid rather than spectacular speech, but one which the crowd grew into after an initially muted response.
There were nods to the soft Labour voters National will need to peel off to have any chance of taking power, with Luxon’s vision for Aotearoa including “a country that meets its emission targets”.
“Don’t we all want to live in a New Zealand that embraces diversity and multiculturalism, recognises the Treaty, acknowledges Auckland as the biggest Pasifika city in the world, welcomes needed migrants, but that first and foremost serves the common cause of all New Zealanders?” he asked rhetorically at one point.
But louder applause came with his follow-up line, as he called for “a country that says absolutely, explicitly, that there is one standard of democracy, equal voting rights and no co-governance of public services”.
Those traditional conservative talking points (unsurprisingly) won greater favour than progressive politics, and Luxon stuck closely to many of the critiques made by his predecessors, with digs at Grant Robertson’s “addiction to spending” and the Government’s use of working groups.
The calculation presumably is that the message was not so much the problem as the messengers delivering it - and National’s rapid return to respectability in the polls suggests there may be some truth to it.
The party reached for an old staple with Luxon’s policy announcement, unveiling a crackdown on beneficiaries through a ‘job coach’ scheme for Kiwi under-25s on a Jobseeker benefit for more than three months.
“I will not be a Prime Minister who thinks that work is punishment and that it’s kinder to people to prioritise their entitlement to a benefit over their responsibility to work if they can,” he said to loud cheers.
The $122 million cost of the four-year scheme would apparently be funded by letting MSD job vacancies go unfilled. Left unstated was which jobs (if any) would be ring-fenced from disestablishment, as well as just how many vacancies it would take to reach that figure; notably, Luxon did not rule out redundancies.
Providing this support would not be the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), which Luxon suggested had failed in its role, but community providers contracted with performance-based incentives (an old favourite of the National Party).
There would be both a carrot, in the form of a $1000 payment to those who had been on a benefit for over a year but stayed in work for 12 months, and a stick in the form of benefit sanctions for those who didn’t follow the work plans set by their coaches.
The tough love approach appeals to National’s base, but exactly how effective such a policy would be is far from clear, given roughly 40 percent of those on a Jobseeker benefit in June this year had a health condition or disability impeding their ability to work.
National’s social development spokeswoman Louise Upston insisted such Kiwis would not be worse off, with individualised needs assessments to help address their underlying issues, and the prospect of part-time work as a pathway into full employment.
“We're actually not willing to just have them and leave them there without what they need,” Upston said.
The $122 million cost of the four-year scheme would apparently be funded by letting MSD job vacancies go unfilled.
Left unstated was which jobs (if any) would be ring-fenced from disestablishment, as well as just how many vacancies it would take to reach that figure; notably, Luxon did not rule out redundancies. It's also unclear how the proposal will deal with the current labour shortages he highlighted, given the relatively small number of people covered and the long-term, intense nature of such career coaching.
Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni accused Luxon and National of being out of touch with New Zealand, saying they had “oversimplified what can be a very complex issue”.
“It's the same old, same old really, with regards to turning these young people into the villains and acting like they don't want to work, when the reality is that the vast majority do - they just need some support to make that happen, and we've been giving them support.”
It could be the start of an election campaign fought on sharp ideological contrasts - and while there is no guarantee that will play out in Luxon’s favour, it is certainly a preferable contrast than that of Labour’s stability and National’s dysfunction in 2020.
National’s new president Sylvia Wood hammered home the need for unity in her first speech after being announced as Peter Goodfellow’s replacement (the vote to appoint her was unanimous, avoiding a repeat of last year’s protest resignation by Sir David Carter when Goodfellow was re-elected).
“We must give New Zealand every reason to party vote National in 2023. That will take hard work, discipline and grit - and you know I like grit,” Wood said, mentioning the need for “exceptional discipline, great messaging of good policy, good data, [and] candidate excellence”.
The latter was a particularly sore point last election, after dramas in relation to Jake Bezzant and the Auckland Central selection process, and Wood’s background in employment relations should in theory help her to avoid some of the pitfalls which seemed to strike Goodfellow.
But it was the new leader, rather than the president, who was the star of the show.
It seems unlikely Luxon will get the sort of post-conference bump which Simon Bridges benefited from in 2019. Then again, nor is the incumbent in as quite as dire a position as Bridges was, as the former Tauranga MP suffered from the Jami-lee Ross fallout and whispers around his leadership.
There are no such rumours attached to Luxon, much as some of his detractors would like to believe; reaching your fourth leader in barely two years does wonders for deterring further churn.
Much as the global and domestic conditions would seem to favour the Opposition, however, their new leader has a way to go if he is to prove a compelling prime ministerial alternative.
