The star of the prime ministerial press stand-ups is stepping down. Who will fill his angry shoes?
Chris Luxon’s press stand-ups follow a familiar format. There are recurring characters. Ministers, often singular, sometimes plural, may stand behind him, nodding appreciatively at his incisive and scintillating points. Sometimes those ministers stand in on questions about specialist policy areas such as roads (Simeon Brown), housing (Chris Bishop), or Māori affairs (Paul Goldsmith).
Usually though, Luxon is accompanied by just one ally. For two years, across the Beehive and beyond, he’s been joined by a man who stands directly behind him looking absolutely ropeable.
That man has a name: Hamish Rutherford. The former New Zealand Herald Wellington business editor became Luxon’s press secretary back in March 2022. Since then, he’s spent eight hours per day standing no more than three centimetres from the prime minister as he’s espoused on everything from tax changes to the ownership arrangements for his family Tesla.
Most of the time, Rutherford wears the expression of someone who’s just seen a person cut in front of them in the line at McDonald’s. But he has a few variations up his sleeve. Sometimes he simply stares straight at the side of Luxon’s face with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.
Other times he’ll drift away, as if overcome by a sudden melancholy.
Occasionally he’ll don eyewear and take on the appearance of someone who’s just been given top secret information about a plot to assassinate the president.
It’s unclear what Rutherford is doing in the moments he almost melds himself into Luxon’s body. He’s always holding a phone near the prime minister’s face, so it could be he wants to analyse the conferences for training purposes. He may also just be making sure to get everything on tape in case there are any misrepresentations or misquotations for him to complain about later.
Whatever his job is, it could be yours soon. Rutherford just let the parliamentary press gallery know he’s resigning, effective at the end of the year. In a message viewed by The Spinoff, he says he just doesn’t have it in him to see out a full term of parliament. “Right now I’m looking forward to a decent summer break and spending more time with my family,” he says. “The one consistent piece of advice I’ve received is that you’ll miss your kids being small. [Child’s name] was born less than a month after I started in 2022 so that’s the priority in the near term.”
It’s a head-scratching decision. There’s no better time to work 16 hours per day than when your child is between the ages of two and four. Doing so will allow you coast through their time as a rageaholic juvenile delinquent and swan back into their life just when they become semi-human again at age four to five. But Rutherford also had one of the best jobs in the world. Who wouldn’t want to stand in the background of every media outlet’s live streams looking like the supermarket self-checkout just told them there’s an unexpected item in the bagging area?
Whoever replaces him will have to pick up that mantle now. But there’s another unexpected, unseen, bonus to the role. Press gallery members spoken to by The Spinoff say though his purposes are otherwise inscrutable, Rutherford always delivers a pair of firm, two-fingered prods to Luxon’s back when it’s time to wrap up a standup. The prime minister may be the boss of the country, but in those moments, Rutherford is the boss of the prime minister. It’s unchecked power. Occasional physical violence. Constant, grinding stress of the kind that will give you stomach ulcers and nightmares. What’s not to love? The job will probably be up on Seek soon.