Luxon wields power, but now has to confront his limits
When Admiral John Byng failed to fortify the British garrison on the island of Minorca in 1756, heralding the beginning of the Seven Year War against the French, he was charged with “failing to do his utmost”.
French satirist Voltaire summed up Byng’s subsequent execution by firing squad in his opus Candide with the wry comment, “In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others”.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s sacking of Melissa Lee from the media and communications portfolio and Penny Simmonds from disability issues certainly will encourage others in his own caucus. You can almost smell the fear from here. However, Opposition leader Chris Hipkins’ contention that “the wheels were falling off” the coalition bus was 180 degrees away from the truth. For the first time in the five months since Luxon became Prime Minister, he looked like he was fitting the job description, even while doing his best David Brent impersonation with his “this is how I roll”.
In Luxon’s corporate worldview the shareholders – the centrist voting public – would see Lee and Simmonds as the weakest links in the National caucus, and firing both frighteningly fast in his tenure would only make him look strong to those shareholders.
But it also comes with caveats.
It’s not a power that extends across the three-party coalition, despite the PM’s assertion on Wednesday that it did.
Luxon should ask Dame Jenny Shipley what would happen if he tried to sack deputy prime minister Winston Peters or Shane Jones for not accepting Cabinet collective responsibility, as she did in 1998.
Shipley’s government lasted a year before voters promptly sacked them.
There’s no doubt that both Lee and Simmonds were struggling in their portfolios.
When the Ministry of Disabled People used a Facebook post to announce the curtailing of what the disabled community could spend their entitlements on, Simmonds initially defended the decision, alleging money had been spent on massages and trips abroad, before Finance Minister Nicola Willis stepped in, and Simmonds was forced to apologise.
Lee was caught in a spider’s web of internal politics. She wasn’t allowed to tell journalists how her media-fix policy was developing, to appease Winston, then proceeded to lose the plot with her external communications.
Despite being warned about Newshub’s closure she showed a lack of empathy when it was announced, then abandoned two interviews a fortnight later, declaring they’d be “boring”.
While her and Simmonds’ sackings may provoke fear in his caucus, it also has the potential to invoke loathing. Some backbenchers hold the view that Lee and Simmonds deserved more support and guidance rather than an outright sacking. Sympathy has been especially extended to Simmonds who is a popular MP.
Now, being forced to grapple with ongoing media decline and having executed his major power play, Luxon is left weakened, facing Winston.
He may have delegated Lee’s and Simmonds’ now-toxic portfolios to more senior ministers, such as Paul Goldsmith and Louise Upston, but while his party may have a media policy, it has never been made public, while NZ First’s has.
That policy reflects Peters’ lesslove-than-hateful relationship with the media. While recognising the need for the industry to flourish is “essential to democracy”, it also emphasises “the rise of clickbait journalism” and notes a “shift away from news neutrality”.
NZ First’s solution to these problems range from a royal commission of inquiry into media independence, establishing a media ombudsman to replace the Broadcasting Standards Authority, and providing 50% government-subsidised 2-year internships to the sector.
Without a known policy of his own, combined with Luxon’s past put-them-intheir-place attitude towards media, he’ll have no alternative but to adopt critical parts of NZ First’s policy.
One of those is a new Public Media Act to replace the 1989 Broadcasting Act, which Lee has already outlined.
To what degree that will change the regulatory regime we’re yet to discover, but if successive National governments have proven anything when it comes to media, it’s a strong hands-off policy.
Luxon shares Lee’s prevarication over the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, introduced by the last government, which aims to cut a deal between the giant social media firms and mainstream media. For good reason, because similar legislation in Canada and Australia has seen the likes of Meta go to war with media and refuse to run news stories.
The Prime Minister’s boast that he likes to “adapt very quickly and dynamically” will need to be harnessed alongside the new minister if National is to be seen to be helping provide for a beleaguered industry. If they don’t manage to do that, even in a nominal sense, then that will be seen as a failure.
Former Labour Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey once said it was the smallest of his several portfolios, but it gave him the most trouble.
It’s easy to see why.