I have heard about a poll that shows three-quarters of us rank the cost of living in our top three issues. But the other quarter don’t rank it in their top 10. We call that slice of society “breakfast radio hosts.” Luxon has put himself on their team.
You can tell that his strategy team know he is a liability because he is not exactly prominent on National’s billboards. There’s only one reason for leaving the leader out of your pitch to voters.

The problem with Luxon is not his personality. It’s tempting to assume that leaders who repeatedly put their foot in their mouth have hidden depths that haven’t yet been revealed. Tempting but usually wrong.

When business was Fifa-flopping, Luxon made an apology he didn’t mean for a statement he didn’t really regret. He could have held to principle. Sure, businesses are struggling but for National, the way out of the darkness isn’t government handouts. I am old enough to remember when business would preach to the rest of us the soul-cleansing virtue of self-reliance and self-respect. They used to say the market should solve our problems. Now? Now the queues of lobbyists out the Beehive door are longer than the queues for food banks and social housing. Every dollar that goes from government to a Rotorua business is a dollar that isn’t going to a hip operation, a child’s reading lesson, or a cop preventing a ram raid. That makes a high bar for helping businesses.

Luxon didn’t say any of that. He caved.

https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/361058286/make-change-national-or-country-will