The prime minister has had a bad week, and it’s barely Thursday. This week’s Luxon low points, ranked.

8. Bad poll, part one

A Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll released on Monday showed that Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori could form a government. Christopher Luxon is down 3.8 points at 20.7% in the preferred prime minister stakes, while Labour leader Chris Hipkins is up 2.3 points to 17.6%. Despite Luxon saying “growth” at a rate of repetition that outpaces Daft Punk on ‘Around the World’, 50% of respondents stubbornly refuse to believe the prime mojo-minister when he tells them the government is getting the country back on track. Annoyingly, they instead want some evidence. 

A poll for corporate clients from Labour’s pollsters, Talbot Mills, showed similar results, but this is fine. That was just one poll last week, and this is just one poll this week.  

7. David Seymour tries to drive a Land Rover up the steps of parliament

As the number one proponent of healthy living, Act leader David Seymour said he tried to drive a Land Rover up the stairs of parliament to raise awareness for heart health. He would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids. No, not the kids eating hardened balls of macaroni salad for lunch, but a security guy and the Speaker of the House.

This is also fine. It’s just one soon-to-be deputy prime minister trying to Mad Max his way up the steps of parliament. Laying his head down to sleep on Monday night, Luxon could easily find the upside here. Despite potentially compromising the safety of people and the structural integrity of parliament’s steps, Seymour’s highly logical tirade against the over-regulation of vehicular parkour was a win in the fight against saying no. It was also a distraction in more ways than one, and Luxon labelled it a political sideshow. Fine.

6. Bad poll part two, the return of the wrong direction

Hot on the heels of the Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll, a 1News Verian poll revealed much the same as the last two. The left bloc could govern, and 50% of respondents think the county is still heading down the shitter. This is still fine because, as Luxon and every politician facing a fall in the polls says, only one poll matters, and that’s the one in [insert election year]. As long as someone in a Land Rover doesn’t crush them in their fragile state of tentative emergence, there are also “green shoots”, the microgreens of economic prosperity, according to every politician facing a fall in the polls.

5. Seymour’s letter to police in support of Phillip Polkinghorne revealed 

On Sunday, the NZ Herald reported that David Seymour had written a letter to police supporting Philip Polkinghorne during the investigation into the death of his wife, Pauline Hanna. While not a breach of the cabinet manual as Seymour wasn’t a minister then, gallery doyenne Audrey Young called the letter “so dumb“.

Facing questions in the House from the opposition about Seymour’s conduct and calls for Luxon to sack him this week, the prime minister tried some comedy. Quoting Alanis Morissette’s ‘Ironic’, he listed the names of Labour MPs Michael Woods, Meka Whaitiri, Stuart Nash and Kiri Allan, seemingly attempting a tit-for-tat on a lack of disciplinary action from party leaders.

As RNZ’s Jo Moir pointed out, Luxon forgot something. All those former ministers were, as the opposition yelled, “sacked”.

4. Trump tariff threats

US President Donald Trump continues to burn everything down, including the rules-based international order and the usefully accepted wisdom of the merits of freedom of trade. This week, he announced that the US will impose a 25% tariff for all steel and aluminium imports. Trade minister for New Zealand, a small trade-dependent nation, Todd McClay, told Newstalk ZB that “it won’t significantly impact us, especially compared to exports like beef and wine”.

Sense Partners economist John Ballingall wasn’t quite as optimistic about Trump’s protectionist economic policies, telling RNZ’s Morning Report last week that “the move could spark a potential retaliatory trade war between the nations, spelling bad news for New Zealand exports”. Won’t someone think of the economic microgreens?

3. Opening the paper to read that you should be landing troops in Rarotonga

On Tuesday morning, Luxon might have hoped to regather his thoughts after two bruising poll results. Perhaps he was carefully portioning out some of his $60 a-week breakfast grocery haul, looking forward to the boost that can only come from eating the cereal that powers the nation, when he opened the New Zealand Herald to find columnist and long-time Luxon stan, Matthew Hooton, asking whether we should invade the Cook Islands. Owing to a diplomatic scuffle with the Cook Islands, Hooton has placed seeking advice on military options regarding the crisis on Luxon’s to-do list. 

2. Seymour says actually, it’s the PM who is ill-advised  

After being peppered with questions about Seymour’s letter to police supporting Polkinghorne, Luxon told the gallery he thought it was “ill-advised”. In response, Seymour told RNZ’s Checkpoint that it was not his actions that were ill-advised but the prime minister’s for “commenting when you don’t know all the facts and criticising a local MP for doing their work, which is standing up for their constituents”. As one veteran Labour politician told Richard Harman’s Politik, “Seymour has just told Luxon publicly to get f..ked.” 

Harman also reported rumblings that National has indicated it would be prepared to see Seymour’s electorate, Epsom, abolished at the upcoming Boundaries Commission. That might have been a triumphant assertion of boss energy in a horribilis hebdomadal except…

1. Derek, the menswear guy now knows you exist

Luxon is no stranger to minor viral fame, with a series of “trend” videos on TikTok under his belt, but nothing prepares you for the big leagues of internet fame: being pasted by Derek Guy, the menswear guy on X.

Guy, who runs one of the last remaining good X accounts, is never wrong about sartorial matters. He has a particular focus on “macho” men wearing ill-fitting suits. Andrew Tate, Elon Musk and Connor McGregor are frequent targets. After favours bestowed upon him by X’s algorithm last year, he became one of the internet’s main characters. He has 1.2 million followers on X. In short, it’s best he doesn’t know you exist.

On Wednesday night, Guy learned about Chris Luxon. He responded to a video posted by Luxon where he was inexplicably wearing a T-shirt over his suit jacket, asking, “Are you wearing a T-shirt over a suit jacket??” The two question marks indicate this is not a trifling enquiry but a cause for national security threat levels of alarm.

The video, which tonally registers somewhere between being yelled at by Lily from Big Save and the desperation just before you slide down the front door after being unable to get your key in the lock because you’re having an emotional breakdown, was in honour of national lamb day. 

Not since Shane Reti tagged Elon Musk on the world’s most refined and highly regarded platform, X, asking for some Starlinks after Cyclone Gabrielle, has the best country on planet Earth felt this level of shame and pride.

Then again, it’s probably fine. There’s plenty of time to turn this week around.

Could iwi and hapū be the unexpected solution to the government’s asset dilemma?

David Seymour pressured the prime minister into an unwelcome conversation, and in the couple of weeks since the Act leader raised the issue in his state of the nation speech, privatisation has shifted from absent in the growth agenda to “open for discussion” long term, to the Treasury now reportedly reviewing state assets and management options.

Former prime minister John Key waded into the conversation, saying there was “not a hell of a lot to sell”. This is, of course, is against the backdrop that in 2013, Key’s government sold 49% of the Crown’s holdings in power companies Meridian Energy, Genesis and Mighty River Power (now Mercury) to investors. But as NZ Herald’s Claire Trevett put it, “[Key] had the political capital to do it and he took the time to do it. Luxon has time but does not have the same capital.”

Which turns us to the unashamed politics of this discussion. While the soon-to-be deputy prime minister has forced the prime minister’s hand, the current deputy prime minister, Winston Peters, is proudly reaffirming that he has spent his whole political career “ensuring that our assets stay in our possession”. NZ First’s enduring view is that state-owned assets belong to all New Zealanders.

So what is a prime minister to do?

Despite being thrust into a conversation that doesn’t seem like a high priority, the privatisation debate presents National a unique opportunity to pacify both coalition parties while upholding a commitment to its own values of limited government and recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi as the founding document of New Zealand.

In a serious conversation about privatisation of state-owned assets that are retained onshore, there is no better partner for the Crown than the partner it already has – iwi/hapū Māori. If Act is serious about privatisation, then it needn’t look further than its leader’s own iwi, Ngāpuhi.

The government has already made clear that reaching a settlement with Ngāpuhi is a high priority, but the form of that settlement is likely to be a challenge. In October, Te Rau Allen-Arena, chair of Ngāpuhi hapū Te Whiu, told Treaty negotiations minister Paul Goldsmith that Ngāpuhi should get $8.43bn in redress. For a government that slashed $3.9bn of government expenditure in its first year, with savings estimated to be $23bn over four years, cash compensation of that size is an improbability of the highest order – even before you consider the need for relativity across settlements.

Instead, Seymour’s apparent insatiable lust for a conversation on privatisation has had the unintended consequence of elucidating the need for the Crown to place greater assets on the table when working towards settlement with Ngāpuhi.

Former Treaty negotiations minister Christopher Finlayson has said that sometimes he needed to push the boundaries in Treaty settlements when dealing with natural resources. I say the time has come for National to be bold once again.

Tupu Tonu to one side, there are ample assets in the north that the Crown could divest from, helping to reach a settlement that goes much further than cash.

Take Northpower Fibre Limited. The Crown has a single shareholding in the organisation, because it was established as a local fibre company by virtue of the government-led ultra-fast broadband programme. There is no denying this public-private partnership has been an overwhelming success, and with Ngāpuhi and Northpower sharing geographical interests, we have a prime example of where privatisation could be used for mutual benefit.

Another example is NorthTec, which is currently a business division of Te Pūkenga. The government has already said it is supporting the return of vocational education decision-making to the regions by amending the Education and Training Act 2020 to disestablish Te Pūkenga, and will support technology and polytechnics to be established as autonomous entities. Carving a place for NorthTec to be a joint venture between the Crown and Ngāpuhi as part of the Treaty settlement could help ensure Te Tai Tokerau grows the skills that iwi and hapū leaders already know they need.

Or take the government’s recently released minerals strategy, which identifies three minerals of potential in the north: gold, sulphur and lithium. Toitū Te Whenua manages over two million hectares of land on behalf of the Crown. It makes sense that where economic opportunity relating to mineral production exists in land in the north that is currently under stewardship of the Crown, a right of first refusal (in the absence of returning that land) for permits and consents could be made to Ngāpuhi.

It takes zero political will to sell an asset to the highest bidder, but it takes enormous circumspection to entertain privatisation through the lens of penance for one’s own goal – the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill.

For a prime minister with a penchant for a good “turnaround”, what better turnaround of Māori and Crown relations than being the prime minister who dared to set a course for productive asset privatisation through iwi/hapū Māori?

After all, if devolution is a government priority, there is nothing more devolved than returning parts of the Crown’s asset base to those whose suffering helped build the asset base in the first place.