Luxon on doing a ton and ‘chunking it down’
The Government’s first 100-day programme finishes today as the final run-in has seen the Luxon Government transition from unpicking Ardern/Hipkins era policies to rolling out some big ones of their own.
Yesterday, the Government announced its big fast-track consenting regime, which will funnel projects of national and regional significance through to three ministers who will directly reject or fully consent the projects across all relevant legislation.
The Government also announced changing foreign investment rules to foreign capital for its build-to-rent scheme.
It is understood the Government will put a capstone on the agenda with a health announcement today.
The 100-day programme has been derided by the Government’s political opponents, who have vacillated between calling it a pointless PR stunt, while also vociferously denouncing various changes and repeals as dangerous or retrograde.
The man who sits atop it all, Prime Minster Christopher Luxon, spoke to The Post on the eve of the Government’s first, big, selfimposed target date.
He now plans to continue the momentum he thinks the Government has, with quarterly targets for his Cabinet and the public servants underneath them.
“I always think in those sort of terms, and I just think, yes, I probably am running a CEO style and will be running the CEO style, which is how we manage government,” he said.
“But most importantly to me, that’s what we were elected to do. We were elected to get things done.”
He nominates as a key result, the early education changes made by the Government, namely banning mobiles phones in school and introducing a compulsory hour of reading, writing and maths in primary schools for the start of the school year.
“I’m actually quite proud of the education pieces,” he said.
“Initially the advice was ‘no, that’s going to take a year to sort and consult to do things and to to get things done. And you say ‘no, no, no you are misunderstanding what we are trying to do here’,” he said.
The National Party leader – who has been sharing his Government with the NZ First and ACT parties is obsessed with how to get Government delivering – arguably the Achilles heel of the Government he has succeeded. He likes to chunk it down.
After the changes to the RMA fast-track
legislation earlier in the day yesterday, Luxon explained the basic approach.
“We could carry on the same conversation we’ve had for the last 15 to 20 years – ‘we’re gunna gunna gunna do something one day’ – but the reality is we’ll just chunk that down into three big bits.
“So, you know, that even though it’s a big topic, and it’s a large topic, and you could start it anywhere and you can have lots of debate and lots of meetings and lots of discussion about it, and nothing’s getting changed, you can actually chunk it down and make it executable through the quarterly and through the 100-day plan.”
When talking about management, Luxon keeps coming back to the same themes. Even with big reform agendas “you still have to chunk it down and actually execute components on it”.
It order to get the public service focused on delivering these bite-sized chunks, Luxon explains how in February he called the 50 most senior public service agency chiefs in for a meeting.
He says that he wanted to explain the “why and the how of our government” but also “what we’re there to do, and also our expectations – or my expectations – of them.”
The new prime minister said he did not want the public sector leaders second-guessing what he wanted. “They were hearing it direct from the source ... and I wanted them to hear it straight,” he said. “That’s exactly how I would run a senior leadership team in my previous life.”
He also says he sent them away with management books each to read – The First 90 days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed; Faster and Smarter by Michael Watkins; The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni; and Good to Great by Jim Collins. “But the point is, that gives them a sense of the culture and the direction of travel,” he said.
However, Luxon is effusive in his praise of most of the public sector’s leadership, who he says are “very talented people. They run some of the largest enterprises in New Zealand”.
“Some have got on board really quickly, others are trying to get there and others really, I suspect, probably may not fully understand it and where we’re trying to get to and so they’re all on a journey for want of a better word.”
But he also is clear about his and his ministers’ roles.
“As I said to my ministers ... your job is to provide massive amounts of clarity, because if you’re not clear in the centre, how on earth are they supposed to partner with you, If you haven’t done your job in this partnership?”
Peppered through the interview are other familiar phrases: about New Zealand being a turnaround job, giving a “hard yes or hard no’’ to things and providing clarity.
But he finishes with a newer refrain, that he has favoured more recently.
“We said we’re going to do things; we’ve actually done them and now we’re telling you that we've done them. And now we move forward and keep going forward through the agenda and the programme that we have.”