PM does what he said he would – in a way only he could
On Wednesday Christopher Luxon showed that he is what he said he would be. In an interview with The Post marking his second quarter targets at the start of April, the CEO PM made his expectations clear.
“We really want the ministers to deliver on this agenda, and, you know, there would have to be a pretty good reason as to why it hasn't been delivered,” he said.
As it turned out, the assessment was made that neither Melissa Lee nor Penny Simmonds had good enough reasons why they had not delivered.
Seemingly out of the blue (although in the case of Lee it had been coming for a while) Luxon announced that he was changing things up and that more senior ministers were needed in both broadcasting and disability.
In the case of Lee and the broadcasting and media sector, Luxon repeatedly said that the “innate complexity” of the areas had increased and that more experienced people were required. Paul Goldsmith is now the minister.
The problems in broadcasting and media are not any more complex than they were when National was elected. Warner Brothers Discovery is closing Newshub and a few more news outlets have closed or been bought by bigger ones. But while naturally shocking, it was not unexpected for anyone who had been paying attention.
What was less expected – although also pretty predictable – was that Lee didn’t have the political chops to deal with an issue that quickly became a first order one, which media companies themselves were interested in and keen to give plenty of column inches to.
Lee is a decent and diligent person. But finding someone in the National Party caucus (or anywhere else around Parliament) who thought she would make a good minister was tough when she was appointed and became impossible as time went on. Everyone could see where it was going. Yet Luxon appointed her anyway.
Simmonds is a bit different. She was considered to have been a good performer prior to the election and was rated by Luxon (she came to Parliament in the same intake as the PM). Both have kept other portfolios.
The manner in which the two of them were dispatched was a new thing. They were basically publicly axed, not for being grossly incompetent, misbehaving or causing mischief for the leader, but for being just a bit average.
And making that the bar is quite a different way for a prime minister to operate, should Luxon continue in this manner. Most governments roll along with a series of second-tier ministers who are a just a bit average but they often are factional players or senior enough that they just sort of hang around.
Luxon views managing his Cabinet almost entirely through the lens of managing talent: who is best at what, who is performing well, how to make that better. This isn’t a put-on either, he genuine believes this is the best way to do it and follows it through.
That said, the caucus room is also not exactly a deep labour market.
Jacinda Ardern was slow to get rid of non-performing ministers, or in many cases didn’t do it at all. John Key would get rid of people for cause, but general low performers usually were even able to see out years until a Cabinet reshuffle.
Luxon has clearly signalled that he isn’t keen on passengers.
Now that in itself is no bad thing. Sacking an underperforming minister or one who has become a liability is no problem and usually is a political plus. But politics isn’t a game of merely competence and it’s when a prime minister sacks the wrong person, or too many, that problems can start.
It could also become a problem when and if an NZ First or ACT minister is underperforming and Luxon wants to sack them, but runs into resistance from David Seymour or Winston Peters.
The other curious thing was that while Luxon called a press conference to effectively announce he was sacking two ministers, he refused to actually say that either of them had been doing a bad job, just that the fit had not been right. This is quite unusual.
He also turned up the corporate speak with just a bit of swagger: “This is how I roll.”
That corporate speak included synergies, innate complexity, aces and, crucially, the line that “I will make constant adjustments to my team to make sure I've got the right people on the right assignments at the right time”.
That last one is a clear line in the sand: Luxon will do this again.
But the problem with corporate speak – and something that it is worth keeping an eye on – is that its purpose can often be too obscure.
There is, of course, loads of ridiculous language employed in the public service, but that’s more understandable because often the aim of the activity being undertaken is unclear. Business is different – especially for publicly-listed companies – the world Luxon comes from.
In PLCs the aim is generally simple: profit. Yet corporates come up with all manner of ways to obscure or put results in the best light: instead of net profit after tax, a company’s preferred measure might be “underlying profit” or “earning before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA, which is usually used to measure comparative cashflow). Instead of a return on equity, some prefer ”return on capital deployed”.
The point is that very often the purpose of corporate speak, much like bureaucrat speak, seems to be to obscure the truth. So Lee and Simmonds weren’t sacked because they did a bad job, but because someone more experienced could do it better.
In fact, Luxon at times sounded like a CEO who had just delivered his half-year results on a phone hook-up with stock analysts. One who had had to change up his executive when things weren’t going as well as they should, but put it in far more glowing terms.
In Luxon’s old life this sort of thing would be par for the course. And there’s definitely nothing wrong with not publicly putting the boot into colleagues who are being shunted out anyway (as most leaders would do).
Nor is there anything wrong with changing up ministers to get the best performance.
But the way in which it was handled was a real insight into Christopher Luxon. During these press conferences he often says that he is doing things differently from the usual. Sometimes it seems an exaggeration, although he appears to genuinely believe it. And he gets rubbished for some of these claims.
But his managerial PM approach is actually more different than he is often given credit for. He is banking on the fact that, with the public, results will trump all else. While that’s a good theory of the case, and may well be true, especially after the last government, the public can also be fickle. Let’s see how it goes.