Todd Muller’s ‘howler’ first day in the House
Labour nerves over threat from Nats’ new leader looking less justified after yesterday
The Labour Party has been so concerned about the potential threat of National’s new leader, Todd Muller, it sent out an SOS to members reminding them of how dangerous a new leader with momentum can be.
That was before Todd Muller had had a chance to have a howler of a first day at Parliament as leader.
Somehow he doesn’t appear to be quite the threat he did on day one, two and three.
The desperate-sounding note to Labour members was sent out on Monday, drafted perhaps by someone not familiar with the unwritten rule never to admit that one’s opponent might be a threat.
“With National’s leadership change on Friday, building and growing Labour’s campaign is now more important than ever,” it said.
“Back in 2017, we all saw how much momentum the right leader can give an election campaign and there’s a chance this leadership change could be a moment for National to rally their supporters and leverage funds from their backers.”
It sought donations to help stop any momentum Muller might have. He managed to do that on his own. Muller’s bad day began the night before on his first serious television interview since deposing Simon Bridges on Friday.
It was on TVNZ’s Q + A with host Jack Tame in the Auckland studio and Muller listening in through an earpiece from the echoing panelled Legislative Council Chamber.
It became a shouty interview, with Muller gesticulating to distraction, and unable to say if National would spend more or less money than the $62 billion planned by the current Government over the four-year forecast period.
There was one good moment. He had a good interview with Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB yesterday morning. Muller appeared relaxed,
articulate, easy to listen to and gave a good account of himself and why his caucus had put its faith in him.
Two hours later it was the “caucus run”, the procession of MPs to their weekly caucus meetings.
Muller emerged with deputy Nikki Kaye to his first full caucus as leader with a media standup on the way.
It’s a time when the leader tries to set the agenda but unless they have something worthy of setting the agenda, it is the media that sets the agenda, which yesterday was the issue of National’s front bench.
As it happened, Kaye set the agenda by leaping to Muller’s defence (he had no need of defending) and saying Paul Goldsmith with his Nga¯ti Porou heritage was a Ma¯ori on National’s front bench.
It was an error Muller happily repeated — and just as most people were thinking “I never knew Paul Goldsmith was Ma¯ori,” Goldsmith said it and blurred the focus on National’s alternative plan for the economy.
It was perhaps an easy error to have made if Kaye had previously heard Goldsmith talk about his Ma¯ori relatives among Nga¯ti Porou and their shared great-great grandfather but apparently the old man had many wives, Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯.
Muller also revealed his first backtrack — his intention to keep his Donald Trump Make America Great Again hat in the packaging box.
Anyway, Muller had his first Question Time to look forward to and an apparent aim of doing things differently to the more abrasive style of Bridges.
“You’ll see a slightly different style,” he said at the caucus run. “I intend to be asking directly the questions I believe New Zealanders want answers to as opposed to perhaps other styles you’ve seen in the past.”
Instead of asking if Ardern stood by all her statements and then ambushing her with a more focused supplementary question, as Bridges used to, Muller was more direct from the start.
He asked for Treasury’s most recent forecasts for unemployment in the third quarter of the year and the Government’s specific plan to stop the job losses that had occurred over the past two weeks.
The trouble is that Ardern simply answered them directly, and at length, and even summed up the point that Muller was trying to make — that National supports direct cash to small business owners and the Government has preferred a wage subsidy — wages being one of the major costs of business.
It may have been slightly different from Bridges — but it elicited no more information than he would have, it did not challenge Ardern’s lengthy monologues, there were no sparks, and it was a little bit dull. Not terrible, but not great.
The only sparks were the lighter moments over Paul Goldsmith’s contribution, now dubbed Nga¯ti Epsom. There was a general atmosphere of mockery in the air.
It was not exactly aimed at Muller, but the fact he had precipitated it against Goldsmith was an early lesson in leadership being a little bit harder than it looks from the backbench.
The Labour fundraisers can perhaps relax for a few days until Muller regains his focus.