WINNING THE COUNTRY
Looking rather headmasterly while peering over his heavy-set spectacles, Todd Muller announced a new era for the National Party. One which would be more positive, take the personality out of politics, and focus on the people’s economy.
Under his leadership, Muller said, the National Party would talk about communities, not what is wrong with the Government. Economic stewardship and aspiration would be at the heart of it.
As his first press conference progressed, he gained in confidence, lost the glasses (fortunately) and started to talk a bit about what motivated him: his Catholic faith, his family, his community in the Waikato and making New Zealand communities prosperous.
Yet watching the presser — which was solid and workmanlike, without being spectacular — it was difficult to shake one overriding thought. Is this man really going to beat Jacinda Ardern, an exceedingly popular but also deceptively ruthless PM? Or, given the circumstances, even come close?
If internet memes floating around are anything to go by — mistaking Muller with Christopher Luxon, or Steven Joyce getting a dildo thrown in his face — his work is clearly cut out for him.
By the time the National Party voted yesterday the writing was on the wall for Simon Bridges. After two disastrous polls and him calling on the leadership challenge, even if Bridges won he was going to be fatally wounded. That was on top of his unpopularity, which the caucus felt had simply become too much of an obstacle to re-election.
In truth, it is actually quite difficult to write too much about Muller: as a political leader he is a totally untested quantity. He has only been in Parliament since 2014, he hasn’t been a minister, and while he has been instrumental in dealing National into being a serious party on climate change, most of that work was within the agricultural sector. He was a bloke from rural New Zealand who had worked for agricultural companies talking to farmers.
The real question is whether he can connect out there in greater voterland. Can he speak to the aspirational outer suburbs of mortgage-belt New Zealand and convince them that he is fighting for them? That remains totally untested.
And while the fact that he could make a deal on the Zero Carbon Act with Greens leader James Shaw shows sophisticated political management, and won praise in Wellington, how many people out there really care about that? The brutal fact is that despite most people professing that they hate negative politics and love the idea of more bipartisanship, they actually do respond better to fear.
Most campaigns where oppositions wrest government off their opponents, they don’t win, the government loses. Ardern’s campaign was an exception: it was actually very positive. Yet buried within that positive tempo was a lot of criticism of New Zealand being left behind under Key/English National.
Quite how Muller plans to match the retail political nous of Ardern at this level is yet to be seen.
The most politically clever thing Muller has done in politics in this regard was work to help pass the Zero Carbon Act and then turn around and have a go at Te Papa for an exhibition that effectively blamed dairy farmers for grubby brown water. Pro-environment, but also pro-farmer.
Significantly, Muller was magnanimous in victory. He said Simon Bridges could serve in a senior capacity should he choose to do so. He also retained Paul Goldsmith as finance spokesperson. This was very clever, both for reasons of continuity and to appeal to the economic dries within the National party that he is rock solid on market economics. He also had Judith Collins in his line-up during a speech — perhaps suggesting a significant shadow portfolio awaits her.
Yet there was one question that he did not have a sufficient response prepared for: would National go into coalition with Winston Peters and NZ First? He equivocated, stumbled and kept repeating that while the Simon Bridges ‘no-NZ First’ decision stood, it was a matter for caucus which could be revisited. Besides, he said, everything had changed in a post-Covid world.
In doing so, he could have breathed new life into Peters’ party, which in the past two polls has not broken through 3 per cent. While Bridges clearly made blunders, the strategic decision to rule out NZ First paid dividends: he did ensure a vote for NZ First could only be a vote for a Labour Government. It is unclear how Covid has changed that. Muller may well categorically rule out working with Peters in the future. But until he does it could just be the crack of light the wily old fox and his band of political journeymen have been looking for.
Yet the fresh start will be helpful for National if it can come out of the blocks strongly under this new regime, which of course includes Nikki Kaye, the member for Auckland Central and from the
Can he speak to the aspirational outer suburbs of mortgagebelt New Zealand and convince them that he is fighting for them?
urban liberal end of the party. Sucking some of the oxygen away from a Government which Muller himself says has handled the
Covid-19 pandemic well will be crucial to this. Failure to get traction early with the public could be fatal in September.
In order for National to really improve its prospects, it will have to sharpen its economic management credentials with the public, and quickly.
0Convincing Kiwis that it is going to be hard and that National is best-placed to handle it — while not sounding like negative merchants of doom or opportunists — will be just as tough a line to tread for Muller as it was for Bridges.
Goldsmith noted yesterday that the full gravity of the impending economic downturn had not yet hit New Zealanders. If that is so, it is unlikely that it will fully hit before October. That’s when six-month mortgage holidays will start to end and when the wage subsidy will have likely flushed right through the system.
It is also when many businesses will be looking ahead at their best money-making months and seeing a big step down on last year.
The Nats may be relieved to have this behind them, but the work only starts now. The next week will be crucial.