I know very little about Christopher Luxon. I didn’t follow his career when he was at Air New Zealand because he was of no interest to me. I started to take notice when it was mooted that he was going to parachute into Botany though. That makes him a matter of public interest and to be blunt, I don’t much like people who launch themselves (or are launched by the party) into safe seats. It makes it all a bit mercenary I’m afraid and it simply doesn’t sit right with me. You know – local representation and all that.
Let me share a few thoughts following his selection and see where it takes us.
I am a student of psychology and politics and I know a bit about body language and tonal inflection. I also have a sixth sense about people which has been ominously successful at sorting the wheat from the chaff over the years and there’s something about how Mr Luxon presents that doesn’t quite sit right with me.
A Stuffed article in December 2018 reported
“Air New Zealand chief executive Christopher Luxon was the highest paid chief executive during the last financial year. He pocketed over $4m in the year to June 30”
Life must be pretty rosy if you can toss away a $4 million a year salary to become a $160,000 to $185,000 a year member of parliament – that is unless there’s something we don’t know about (not that I’m suggesting there is something we don’t know about), but it does seem a huge leap of faith to drop $3.8 million in salary just like that. If elected, he’ll be stuck with that until the Nats manage to get hold of the government benches after which, he may eventually become Prime Minster where the salary is around $470,000 tossing away $3.5 million.
I know, there are people out there who do these jobs for love of their country and not for money but actually, they usually line up and do the hard yards over a long period of time to get selected. Only the privileged elite like Mr Luxon have the luxury of hinting at what they’d like and then getting it just because of who they are.
No coincidence I guess that his selection is supported by John Key, the PM who led a government that did pretty much nothing worthy of mention in three terms of unparalleled popularity in the polls (how did that go for his last recommendation by the way?).
“The country is in a state of drift at the moment and it really actually needs some things to happen and actually we need to start getting some things done.”
Wow – that’s incisive.
“And there are some really big issues across the country if you think about infrastructure in particular, we’ve talked about an infrastructure crisis, I travel all around the world and I’ve seen how other small countries are …you know, handle their infrastructure – we’ve really got some big work to do there.”
It gets better.
“Are you going to move to the electorate if you win?”
“I mean … we were just working through at the moment … I’ve got a whole bunch of family considerations to make but I don’t live that far away from the electorate and, you know, to be honest… um… you know I’ll be a 100% committed to Botany irrespective of where my head hits the pillow.”
Oops – wasn’t prepared for that one. I’ll take that as a “nope – staying where I am – I am a carpetbagger after all”!
The selection of Mr Luxon in Botany just confirms what most of us already know – the National Party has lost its way and the GPS still isn’t working.
Read the full transcript of his interview below.