Luxon flubs minimum wage fact and other depressing takeaways from the leaders' debate

Please don't make us watch another one next week.

The closer Christopher Luxon comes to annihilation, the more confident he seems to become. After he called a vote in his own leadership in April, and again after Chris Penk – acting alone – attempted to roll him in August, his performance immediately and noticeably improved. The same curious inverse relationship seems to be in play again.

On Monday, a 1News/Verian poll put National at 28%, neck-and-neck with Labour and with no way (if Luxon stands by his refusal to work with Opportunity) of forming a government. The effect? Last night the National Party leader was full of confidence and ready for a fight at the NZ Herald’s leaders' debate.

He took Chris Hipkins’ policies and made them scary. The capital gains tax? “It is little but it will grow and grow and grow”. He hogged credit and threw shade. “In 2028, we get back to surplus, pay down Chris’s debt.” No one could stop him mid-attack – he simply continued to talk when host Ryan Bridge tried to cut in, and met Hipkins’ attempts to interject with belittling waves of the hand and remarks surely learned in his days as a parent to young children: “Let’s not get so chirpy. Let’s calm down”.

Luxon even managed to come across as a human being, his long struggle to project authenticity and relatability momentarily buried as he admitted he liked to go to McDonalds and order a quarter pounder, large fries and a chocolate milkshake – and that he’d also get in trouble with his wife for admitting these “campaign stops”.

Projecting confidence, however, is different to inspiring it in others. Any headway he’d made with viewers, was surely undone by a record scratcher of a gaffe. He claimed the minimum wage had increased at the same level as inflation under his government. It had not.

Luxon has spent three years asking the country to hang on, to believe that the economy is turning around, that we’re all going to feel better off soon, and National is the party who will get us to those good times. To then reveal he doesn’t know basic facts about what the country’s lowest earners make was like wrapping up an early Christmas gift for Chris Hipkins. 

Hipkins gladly accepted it. Like Luxon, he was not there to paint an inspiring vision for the future, but simply to fend off attacks and launch them at his opponent. In this depressing war, here was one more weapon.

On defence, Hipkins’ shortest answers were the most effective. Luxon was keen to rake over a Greens and Te Pāti Māori visit to a Mongrel Mob pad and what that might mean for a left-wing coalition’s approach to crime. Hipkins shut the issue down by ruling out having either party taking the police or corrections portfolios in a future government. He went further by disapproving of the gang pad visit. “No, I don’t condone it. I think it was a bad judgment.”

On attack, Hipkins went long and prosecutorial. He took to Luxon over pay equity, and successfully painted what the coalition had done to so many groups of women as brutal and unfair. 

You could say he won that particular battle, but it was hard to feel at any point that anyone was winning, particularly the voters. There was a lot of arguing but no fresh ideas and very little fresh information.

Perhaps the only person enjoying the night was Ryan Bridge. God, he was having a good time. He delighted in forcing Luxon and Hipkins to shake hands, squeezed in a reference to Barry White while discussing fertility, and joked that he was going to start a game of Shag, Marry, or Kill. 

It made for quite the juxtaposition; the host’s joy rubbing up against the leaders' stale war.

Can we really face another leaders’ debate next week? Apparently we must.