Hipkins to target truant students; Luxon’s speech gets rained off
After weeks focusing on the change in PM, Christopher Luxon was on track to try to regain the initiative from Chris Hipkins in Auckland today.
The National leader was scheduled to give his State of the Nation speech in Auckland this morning that had to be postponed – quite sensibly – thanks to the impending cyclone Gabrielle. It will be rescheduled for some time in the coming weeks.
When a new date is named, he will be laying out his vision for the nation and for the National Party in the year ahead.
But since Chris Hipkins has become PM, Luxon has not been able to catch a break. Giving the speech today and then launching into the Parliamentary year on Tuesday would have given National a running start into the political year.
At the same time as Luxon is seeking to stamp his mark on the political year, Labour continues to hew back to basics under Hipkins.
The Hipkins reset won’t just be about tossing out unpopular or dumb policies, it will also be about proposing new things.
Hipkins – who has been Education Minister since late 2017 – will be coming back to school attendance this week and Stuff understands that he will today announce the Government will be bringing back truancy officers (in the old money, they are apparently called attendance officers nowadays), which were phased out in the early 2010s.
It shows two sides of Hipkins: first his political antenna, which is finely attuned to issues that could stop Labour winning the election. Second it is another matter that reveals more old Labour tendencies: children should be going to school, they should face sanctions if they don’t.
Now that he’s in charge, the Government is going to get more serious about making that happen. After all, there’s nothing progressive about letting kids from a poor or disrupted background simply not turn up to school.
The content of Luxon’s speech, whenever it ends up happening , will be closely watched by Labour, whose strategists and leadership think that National’s plan so far has basically been to not promise very much at all by way of policy and just drift into Government off the back of high inflation and a public suffering from Jacinda fatigue.
Now that the leadership has changed, Labour is determined to put a blow torch on Luxon and his intentions for the country.
To be fair to Luxon – who has not really responded much at all to the Hipkins ascendancy, save to say that Chippy is part of the problem – Jacinda Ardern’s resignation did take place in a political vacuum: the period when much of the country is still on holiday.
The political year proper hasn’t really started yet, in fact Parliament returns on Tuesday with the first face-off in question time between the Chrises: Luxon and Hipkins. In the ordinary course of events after the set pieces of caucus retreats, Ratana and Waitangi, this would be about when a big speech would be expected.
On Tuesday, Hipkins will table his annual Statement to the House, which outlines what he plans to do for the year.
Then all eyes will be on Luxon and how he squares up in the House against the new PM.