Today’s state of the nation address will see the PM defending his record – and trying to convince voters that his economic promises are finally becoming a reality, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.
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All eyes on the state of the nation
Christopher Luxon’s state of the nation speech in Auckland today marks the formal end of the political holiday and the beginning of an election year in which National is under intense pressure to prove that a technical recovery is translating into real-world gains for voters. Luxon is expected to use the address – delivered to a 700-strong audience at Auckland’s convention centre under a “fixing the basics, building the future” banner – to defend the government’s record on law and order, education and reform, while trying to reset perceptions of his leadership before National’s caucus heads to its Christchurch retreat.
There, according to the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan (paywalled), Luxon is expected to announce the election date, with both Coughlan and The Spinoff’s Toby Manhire homing in on November 7 as the most likely option. Read exactly why Manhire is so confident with his election date prediction here or watch Now You Know’s Robbie Nicol explain it all in under 90 seconds here.
A pivotal political week
The coming days are unusually dense with party political events – Labour is also holding its caucus retreat on Wednesday, and the Rātana cross-party meeting is on Friday. Today’s speech is National’s first big chance in a long time to arrest a slide in the party’s polling to around 30%, although the coalition itself remains competitive. In the Sunday Star-Times (paywalled), Luke Malpass, Vernon Small and Tracy Watkins all note the challenge for the prime minister in delivering an upbeat economic message. The problem is what Malpass calls the Luxon paradox – “the macroeconomic ‘green shoots’ are visible to the bankers in the convention centre, but the ‘feel-good factor’ hasn’t reached the suburbs.”
Watkins argues that with leadership jitters in the caucus and National’s dominance inside the coalition waning, Luxon must spend the next few months convincing both MPs and doubtful voters that the recovery is at least in part due to his competence as PM. “If Luxon can’t ride the momentum of that recovery it would be a death knell for his leadership. It would also be a disaster for the campaign.”
National’s housing tightrope
Into this fraught economic and political context walks National’s apparent U-turn on Auckland’s Plan Change 120, which will dog both Luxon and housing minister Chris Bishop this week. As Matthew Hooton outlined in his Herald column on Friday (paywalled), the original proposal to force Auckland Council to zone for up to two million additional homes over 30 years had become a “lightning rod” for criticism, alarming the wealthy inner-suburb voters who form a large part of National’s Auckland constituency. His party sources suggest that, with the plan change dealt with, Bishop’s housing programme will be re-positioned around the CRL, focused on “developing the CBD into a lively, high-population, low-crime inner city, as found in most developed countries, while protecting the Kiwi way of life in the suburbs”.
According to Coughlan, Luxon and Bishop aren’t that far apart on the need for change: both want to decouple house prices from the health of the economy and stop treating property as New Zealand’s primary growth engine. Yet Luxon is also getting badgered by MPs fearful of what Bishop’s plans mean for their voters – including those who own more than one home. “Bishop’s public cheerleading for falling rents has angered MPs who see landlords as part of National’s base, rewarded in 2023 with the promise to restore interest deductibility … The issue is less electoral than principled: MPs shouldn’t bash the base.”
Not in my backyard
Writing in The Spinoff this morning, Hayden Donnell is scathing about the government’s apparent explanation that a lack of proper infrastructure planning lies behind the Plan Change 120 rethink. An anonymous source told The Post on Friday that “it’s not as simple as removing all the zoning and saying anyone can build anything anywhere they want. You’ve got to connect the infrastructure, you’ve got to have the buses, otherwise it’s a nightmare.”
Donnell isn’t having it. He notes that Auckland already has the country’s most extensive bus network, a multi‑billion dollar rail upgrade, and a massive Central Interceptor sewer project, and that Plan Change 120 explicitly directs growth to areas best served by that investment. As he concludes, “Their pro-planning message makes little sense except as a cover for another less palatable one, heard in the background of every housing debate since time immemorial: not in my backyard.”
