Chris Hipkins lays down gauntlet to Christopher Luxon as Parliament gets cracking

ANALYSIS: The Hipkins rebrand continued apace with the new Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament.

Jacinda Ardern’s “Let’s do this” has given way to “let’s get cracking.” It’s unclear how cracking is better than doing, but there it is.

In a strong speech, Hipkins dedicated significant time to the cyclone and floods and what that will mean over the coming year: billions of dollars, hard decisions, some big calls ahead and most tellingly, apart for rebuilding some things other infrastructure will have to be built quite differently as climate change looms over us all. Building back better was the theme.

But as is the sad reality of tragedies, the rest of the country will grow weary of the grim situation west and north of the Tararua’s and so the second half of Hipkins speech about the cost of living will likely have more resonance than the disasters.

READ MORE:
* Chris Hipkins commits to ‘build back better’, anticipating billions needed for cyclone recovery
* How to pay for ‘Gabrielle’ damage will be the major question this election
* Cyclone Gabrielle: $50m for businesses, workers, $250m for roads
* The election has just changed (again) and Luxon must look through the noise

But the managements of the disasters will set the mood music for everything.

Christopher Luxon’s reply was low energy. It had nothing new beyond the talking points Luxon used last year to great effect along with a mish-mash of metaphors to describe Labour. Some of his own MPs appeared to grimace at times.

Luxon is capable of delivering very good speeches, but his performances are inconsistent. Having to give a climate change-denying then climate-endorsing backbencher Maureen Pugh earlier in the day a reading list and sending her out to apologise didn’t help.

It wasn’t all bad in content, he did make a case for remembering the people at the centre of the cyclone and he delivered a funny line about how outcomes had worsened under Labour despite more money being spent before saying: “The Ministers who are responsible for those outcomes end up getting promoted. I mean, that’s the only organisation that you get to fail upwards in!”

But overall it wasn’t great. Labour has a re-energised front bench and the tone is rather different under new Prime Minister Hipkins. Whether what is inside the tin lives up to the new label is so far unknown.

While Luxon is sensible to look through the short-term noise of events, National still seems a little thrown by the transition. Performance in the House matters as much for caucus morale as anything else.

On Wednesday, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is widely tipped to raise interest rates by another 50 basis points, making the cost of borrowing more expensive and further crimping economic activity and reducing discretionary consumer spending.

This is precisely what his rates hikes are supposed to do, to squeeze excess cash out of the system and reduce inflation in the process, which is still running hot.

And herein lies the big political question of 2023. To what degree will Luxon be able to be simply carried by events into Premier House at the end of the year?

Political junkies love a bit of charisma, but most often, that isn’t really what’s at the front of voters’ minds. What is, who can help me and my family get ahead and deal with the issues that I care about – that could be as diverse as taxes or climate change.

It may be that Luxon continues to hit the issues important to voters, or it may be that he has to pivot to confront the Hipkins challenge head on.

He has been denied the chance to make a proper scene-setting speech by the weather so far this year, making the prudent and decision to not try to wade into politics, while people in the Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne were wading through water.

Hipkins speech further signalled a move away from the rhetoric of the Ardern Government. In his statement there was no mention of three waters, instead talking about better pipes and water quality and not leaving councils to bear the burden of it.

It is a primary rule in politics: if you want to stop talking about something, stop talking about it.

“Three waters” was always a weird bureaucratic term that branded up the changes to water infrastructure without saying anything about them. In the end it simply became a byword for Labour arrogance, co-governance and an attack on local democracy.

The content of the reforms will probably change somewhat, but it is unclear exactly how much.

The extent to which moving away from the term will help Labour, will probably come down to how successfully National and ACT can keep it in the public’s mind. But it is much easier to argued against three waters, than fixing pipes and cleaning up water.

Wednesday will mark the first question time since Chris Hipkins took the job on. Watching the leaders circle each other will give a better sense of how they will shape up over the year to come.