The National Party leader spent a day touring the West Coast, talking up the tightness of the election and taking questions on public service cuts
As early voting begins, Christopher Luxon has taken to arguing that the election will be a close one.
According to the polls, he’s half right. On current numbers, reinforced by the 1News-Verian poll released on Wednesday evening, the left will be out of power after six years in government. The New Zealand Herald’s poll of polls, which is a data model that calculates the likelihood of different election results, gives Luxon a 99.7 percent chance of being prime minister after October 14.
Though there’s still more than a week to go until polling day and plenty of potential for the race to change, that’s the situation on the most recent surveys.
What actually is close, then, is New Zealand First – close to power.
The party is consistently polling above five percent and an increasing number of recent polls have put Luxon in the position of having to ring Winston Peters on October 15 in order to form a government.
Hence Luxon’s get-out-the-vote effort.
It was one of the central themes of a series of campaign stops on the West Coast on Wednesday.
"It's going to be really close. Do not think this thing's a done deal," he said in Greymouth.
“This will be a very close election and the power sits with the New Zealand people, not any political party, for them to actually step up to the plate and deliver and vote for the change that they want to see happen," he said in Hokitika.
"I would just say to you, this election will be very, very close," he said, a bit later, at a different event in Hokitika.
The day started off in Hokitika at Westland Milk Products, where Luxon toured the factory floor and poured some butter into a jar, before serving up scones to staff, aides and a few hungry journalists.
The visit emphasised the importance of agriculture to the West Coast, he said. The Westland factory employs 550 people in a town of 2860 and represents 15 percent of the region’s GDP.
Speaking to locals at a “rally” in Greymouth and a meet-and-greet in Hokitika, Luxon didn’t hear all that much about agriculture, however.
Instead, the big themes were what to do with the 84 percent of the West Coast that’s held in conservation estate (especially, "Can we please mine some of it?") and the desire for the Waitaha hydropower scheme to be approved, in order to boost the region’s energy security.
Though Luxon’s classic stump speeches were well-received, he had little to offer the West Coast in particular. He hinted that the region could be prioritised for a “regional partnership” if he was elected, in which the Crown and local government agree a long-term infrastructure pipeline and funding and financing mechanisms. Still, none of National’s Roads of National Significance are on the West Coast and Luxon said any decision on the Waitaha hydro station would have to go through proper processes.
The crowds were supportive but they weren’t particularly large or lively. In Greymouth, the supposed rally turned out about 20 people, though the Grey District Mayor Tania Gibson and deputy mayor Allan Gibson were among them. National’s candidate for the West Coast-Tasman electorate, MP Maureen Pugh, told Luxon the poor turnout was a result of the sunny weather – people were out whitebaiting.
In a media conference against the backdrop of the Monteith brewery in Greymouth, Luxon took questions on a wide range of subjects.
Winston Peters’ opposition to raising the pension age, which National has pledged to do in a phased manner from 2044, featured heavily. Luxon would only say raising the age was National’s policy, he couldn’t call it a bottom line.
He also batted away the ongoing questions about the viability of National’s tax scheme, this time in response to global investment bank Goldman Sachs saying the plan would be inflationary because it would drive up house prices.
Additionally, the bank said it would be hard for National to realise its proposed public sector cuts. On the flip side, Tāmaki MP Simon O’Connor had said the previous day that National might go further than its planned 6.5 percent cuts to “back office” staff.
Luxon rubbished both suggestions, saying National would trim exactly 6.5 percent – no more, no less.
Despite the lack of specifics for the West Coast, Pugh said it was good just to have National’s leader in the region for a full day. Luxon returned the compliment, saying the backbencher advocated forcefully for the West Coast in the party’s closed-door caucus meetings.
Then he was off again, flying back to Christchurch from Hokitika on what he called “the best scenic flight in the world”.
“I sort of thought, in my old mind at Air New Zealand, we should be charging more for that flight. Then I realised I’m not the CEO of Air New Zealand any more so it’s not my worry or concern," he said in Hokitika, to laughter from a group of supporters.
Of course, he didn’t mention that the reliability of that service has taken a hit because of the restructuring when he was CEO, alongside the axing of all Air New Zealand flights from Westport.
But Luxon is keen to bring that experience in corporate belt-tightening to the ninth floor. When pushed on the public sector cuts – particularly in light of National MP Chris Bishop saying he "hoped" people at Kāinga Ora would lose their jobs – he said doing more with less was a critical skill he learned as CEO.
"Government, and Chris Hipkins in particular, measures success by how much money is being spent. As a former CEO, where you actually have the same number of resources, even less money, you get different outcomes by virtue of how you use that money and how you deploy and manage those resources."
