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Image: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller
Image: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller

OPINIONPoliticsFebruary 8, 2022

Can Luxon get the upper hand in the question time bear pit?

Image: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller
Image: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller

Parliament’s back for another year and with it, the only public forum outside an election debate where opposition leaders get to face off against prime ministers. Former Labour adviser Clint Smith explains the ins and outs of question time.

“Does she stand by all of her government’s statements and actions?” 

If history is any guide, that’s the first question National leader Christopher Luxon will ask prime minister Jacinda Ardern in the first question time of the year tomorrow.

It’s the exact same question he’s asked her every question time. It’s the question Collins, Muller and Bridges asked.

Usually, Ardern responds with a two-minute spiel on things she thinks her government has done well (it’ll be the Covid response tomorrow). If she’s in a hurry, she just says “yes”.

Then, Luxon will ask a set of supplementary questions on his attack line du jour, Ardern will respond with government messaging, each side talks past each other, and it’s over.

 

Jacinda Ardern during question time in May 2020 (Photo: Dom Thomas – Pool/Getty Images)

Starting with a general question doesn’t blindside Ardern. A PM worth their salt knows what the opposition will ask on a given day. She can always refer tricky details the questioner drops in supplementaries to the relevant portfolio minister.

Does it matter if Luxon keeps offering up easy hits to Ardern? Yes.

This is the only time outside election debates when opposition leaders get to face off in public against PMs. Done well, it gets big media coverage. Opposition leaders who win elections first beat the PM in question time before they do it in the campaign.

So, why the easy question?

The rules of parliament make asking the PM tough questions difficult, but not impossible. Primary questions have to be lodged in writing a few hours before question time. The government can transfer a primary question about a specific topic from the PM to the portfolio minister (when this happens, it’s very frustrating for the opposition leader and, so, fun for the government). The only questions a PM will definitely answer are if they are asked to stand by something they personally said, if they have confidence in a minister, or questions about the government generally.

Hence, “Does she stand by all of her government’s statements and actions?” will never get transferred.

But, while it’s safe, it can’t lead anywhere. The rules of parliament mean you can’t expect detailed answers to supplementary questions if you ask a vague primary question. So, Luxon’s supplementary questions are either high level or fended off. The PM isn’t put on the spot. It’s all a damp squib.

That means Luxon is missing the chance to use question time to show his leadership style and his ability to foot it with Ardern, whose job he’s after.

Christopher Luxon during the final question time of 2021 (Photo: Parliament TV screenshot)

Question time isn’t about getting answers – the rules preclude that. It’s about showing who is on top and driving political narrative. An opposition leader can use question time to create a political moment that gets widespread coverage and becomes part of their political framing – the classic example being when Andrew Little told John Key to “cut the crap”.

To make a moment, you need to start off with a substantive question – eg “Does she stand by [quote from the PM saying everything is great] given [a fact that shows the government failing]”? With a detailed primary question, you can lead the PM down a set of detailed questions and answers you’ve gamed out. If you’re very good at predicting what the prime minister will say, you can lead them where you want them.

Little’s “cut the crap” came at the end of a set of detailed questions about the Jason Ede smear machine operated out of John Key’s office. Little knew Key would prevaricate and dodge his straight questions, so he was ready to flip that on him by suddenly changing from asking questions about the smear machine itself to making the issue Key and his refusal to be straight with New Zealanders. It garnered huge media coverage, including an editorial cartoon of Little as a giant threatening to crush tiny Key underfoot. It built Little’s brand and gave him a sense of momentum (that wasn’t to last).

Little had that planned out – not the exact words, but how he would entrap Key. He was aided by his staff, who knew Key, had his quotes noted, and could anticipate how he would answer questions.

Luxon and his predecessors lack this. They’ve lost experienced leader’s office staff from the Key years. Luxon is very new. That lack of institutional knowledge and experience is evident throughout National’s strategy, but most clearly at question time.

If Luxon wants to look like Ardern’s equal, he and his staff need to know her better. They need to be able to know how she will answer questions before they’re asked, and work out how to turn that against her. They need to put the effort into researching what she’s said, writing substantive primary questions, and planning cunning supplementaries. Most of the time, question time will still be a bore, but sometimes, it’ll be a win.

If Luxon can do this and show he is Ardern’s match in the question time bear pit, he’ll gain momentum and be a step closer to taking her job. If he spends two years failing to dent her armour, it’ll be that much harder to take her on in the election campaign.

Clint Smith worked for numerous Labour leaders of the opposition and Greens co-leaders, and was a ministerial adviser. He has worked on more question time preps that he cares to remember. He currently runs Victor Strategy and Communications.


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Photo: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller
Photo: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller

OPINIONPoliticsFebruary 3, 2022

RIP MIQ: An early obituary for a border system that’s run its course

Photo: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller
Photo: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller

It served its purpose – not without controversy – for close to two years. But MIQ in its current form clearly no longer makes sense, writes Andrew Geddis.

In her speech today on reopening New Zealand’s borders, Jacinda Ardern came both to praise MIQ and to bury it. Mandating stays in a tightly limited number of government-run facilities for all those coming into the country was, she adamantly held, the right policy for its time. And it will soon, she accepted, be an approach past its use-by date. Instead, by the end of this month there will be no numerical limit on citizens and permanent residents returning from Australia. By mid-March, number limits will go for citizens and permanent residents living anywhere in the world. And by October, we’ll be fully back to a sort-of pre-Covid travel normality.

Regarding Ardern’s claim that imposing MIQ requirements was the right thing to do, there is one number that can be undeniably pointed to with pride: 53. That is, of course, our total number of Covid deaths over the last couple of years. Flowing from the policies that underpinned it are a range of other social and economic statistics that look pretty good when compared internationally. In these terms, the choice of an elimination strategy worked, and tightly controlled borders were an essential part of that success.

However, saying that some sort of managed isolation and quarantine system was essential isn’t to say that the form of MIQ New Zealand adopted was perfect. Frankly, I don’t think many of us here in New Zealand had much of an idea of how it actually operated, beyond that it meant having to hunker down in a hotel for at least 14 days. The nuance of accessing the system simply wasn’t something we needed to worry about, given that most of us initially resigned ourselves to hunkering behind our borders while the storm raged beyond. There was something about having to hit refresh on your keyboard. And then something about a lottery. Unless you were pregnant and stuck overseas, which could mean you got an emergency spot depending on how good your lawyer and/or media game is. Or, if you were a member of a sports team that someone in government decided ought to be able to play in the country. All so much noise on top of our level changes, traffic lights, and assorted domestic dramas.

But as the after-Covid era progressed, tight border controls (shading at times into total closure) and the associated MIQ requirements have started to ascend the list of things that people notice. I wonder if this partly is because of the elimination strategy’s relative success. We got lucky with it sometimes – remember the Covid-positive Australian tourist who seemed to visit most of the wider Wellington region without infecting anyone? And even when we didn’t, as with the delta variant finally making its way into the community, it never produced the sort of mass infection (and associated deaths) that other places have suffered through. Maybe this after-Covid era wouldn’t be so bad, and so did it really need as many limits on what we can do and where we can go?

Equally, two years of life with MIQ has made that system’s demands (and foibles) more of a reality for more and more people. I don’t just mean those who have been forced to spend their money on a boat instead of their annual holiday to Europe. Rather, those of us who have been two years apart from family who happened to be making their lives outside this country. Two years in which marriages have happened, babies have been born, funerals have been held; all the human moments of joy and connection that make a life of value. The cost of either putting them on hold or missing out on them completely is cumulative in its effect. While we might sacrifice them on a temporary basis, a third year of loss becomes a real weight to put against the benefits that our elimination strategy delivered.

And now omicron has come along and made everything different. The variant’s R-value makes an elimination strategy not so much passé as a wishful dream amongst a population that is, let’s face it, over lockdowns. Its inevitable exponential spread domestically will mean that extra imported cases from outside the country will not add much more fuel to the viral fire. And just as importantly, Covid is going to go from something that we’ve avoided like, well, the plague to something that lots and lots of us are going to know someone with, if we haven’t gotten it ourselves. The stigma, if not total fear, associated with this virus will abate as familiarity starts to breed acceptance.

In that soon-to-be climate, MIQ in its current form simply cannot survive. Epidemiologically, even those committed to keeping Covid’s spread as flat as possible will find it difficult to argue that MIQ’s abolition significantly increases health risks. Legally, the justification for imposing limits on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act guarantee of a citizen’s right to return home becomes harder and harder to sustain. And politically, the balance between avoiding blame for Covid’s spread and facing heat for an ongoing enforced isolation from the world shifts markedly.

Hence, today’s heralded farewell to MIQ. Whether it was the right policy applied in the right way, or the right policy misapplied in its details, will be something that the High Court will be asked to review on February 14. But its announced end marks the need for two shifts in our thinking about the world. First, it is something that will once again be relatively open to us. And second, it is going to be one with which we will be sharing Covid.

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