Luxon survives a leadership challenge, but many questions remain, writes Henry Oliver in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.
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Yesterday, finally, Luxon had some good news to share. After a three-hour emergency caucus meeting (click here for The Spinoff’s as-it-happened account), Luxon emerged to declare he had the “full support” of his caucus, calling it “united” and “determined to win this election.” He took no questions, said he was “going back to work,” and left.
Then, in mid-afternoon, Luxon’s office released a second statement: defence minister Chris Penk had “launched a leadership challenge this week, which resulted in today’s confidence vote” – and Luxon had sacked him from Cabinet entirely. Hours later, Penk announced he wouldn’t seek re-election in November either.
So Chris Penk was behind this all along?
Surprise! Going into yesterday, all the speculation had centred on Erica Stanford and Chris Bishop as the two most likely challengers. Penk – one of National’s more capable and well-liked junior ministers, but not a name in the leadership conversation – turned out to be the one who actually put his hand up.
The Herald’s Thomas Coughlan (whose reporting helped start this whole mess) argued Penk was almost certainly a “kamikaze candidate” rather than a genuine contender – someone willing to trigger the confidence vote, clearing a path for Stanford or Bishop to contest the leadership without being tainted as the one who “wielded the knife.” Coughlan reported hearing, at different points, that Penk was working for both Stanford’s and Bishop’s camps.
Bishop denied any involvement, telling reporters “people don’t launch leadership challenges on behalf of anybody else, they launch leadership challenges on behalf of themselves.” Former defence minister Wayne Mapp offered a blunter read to RNZ: Penk, lacking Bishop or Stanford’s profile, was simply the expendable one – “you can’t punish everyone … so he was chosen.”
Did anyone actually win here?
Not really, is the emerging consensus. Toby Manhire sums up the whole affair for The Spinoff today as a near-exact rerun of April, just compressed into roughly half the time – “a cluster,” in the words of Luxon ally Mike Hosking, who said the day amounted to nothing but “introspection, self-absorption, selfishness.” Manhire noted the plotters, whoever they were, arguably made their own job harder: Monday night’s Herald story caught Luxon’s camp off guard early enough to mobilise, denying any challenger of the element of surprise a successful coup would have needed.
The deeper problem, according to The Post’s Anneke Smith, is that National is exactly where it was 48 hours earlier – same leader, same deputy, same team, minus one minister – after a second very public airing of its own internal dysfunction. Mark Mitchell himself conceded that “we’ll probably take a hit in the polls, but the important thing is we bounce back now.”
Can National move on from this?
That’s the open question, but the early signs aren’t encouraging. RNZ reported that National MPs are keen to draw a line under it, with one former MP telling the party bluntly to pull itself together if it wants any chance of winning in November. But Coughlan pointed out the awkward reality facing Stanford and Bishop: both are central to National’s campaign when it comes to education, transport and housing, but Labour can now credibly argue either of them could be “put to the sword” at any moment after the election as delayed punishment. He also flagged a long list of MPs who conspicuously declined to confirm confidence in Luxon this week – including senior whip Stuart Smith – suggesting the discontent runs well beyond Penk alone.
Stuff’s Jenna Lynch points out that the caucus has spent months publicly insisting it backs Luxon 100%, and the events of this week have made clear that just isn’t true – “you don’t call an emergency caucus meeting in the middle of a recess week just to check.”
According to Manhire, Luxon survives, again, but gets “at least some energy, some smidge of mana” out of it — probably just enough, barely, to carry him to November. But the real question is: how much lasting damage the party’s second very public leadership crisis in four months has done to its chances in November?
