Apart Together.

The happy couple, and the broken hearted.

A notification popped up yesterday afternoon, “PM-elect Luxon to speak a day out from final vote count.” I messaged a friend that would be interested, then caught myself…

Is this what it’s come to? Getting excited about the National Party leader doing a press conference? Jesus.

Sadly, the answer was “yes”. Given that much of my job is writing and reading about politics. Add in the fact that it’s been pretty much radio silence since the election. Slim pickings, other than the odd brain fart from Mark “luminous spheres” Mitchell, or Chris Bishop upgrading his rhetoric all the way from “shambles” to “holocaust”. Yeah, that seems to be the situation. Partly the announcement was just so unexpected.

Given the vacuum of political news ahead of the special votes, why would Luxon hold a press conference the day before results? After having remained silent for so long?

The first thought I had was that the coalition agreement must be about to be revealed. Perhaps someone in the room with loose lips had spilled the beans to the press? Either that, or Christopher didn’t trust his new partners not to steal his thunder. Could you blame him?

Perhaps he’d already done a deal with Winston and didn’t want the release of the special votes, where he might lose a seat or two, to lead the news with speculation following the official results?

I imagined that the presser might open with Luxon talking about the hard work ahead, with his new deputy beaming alongside him. Meanwhile the jilted party would be elsewhere, commencing an evening of rage tweeting.

Would it be Winston first? Surely he was the favourite, potentially holding the balance of power. Or was the victor now New Zealand’s most eligible bachelor, David “swipe far right” Seymour? Easy there ladies.

Image: EDeb.

In the end the smiley one was flanked by Erica Stanford, looking shell shocked as always, as if she’s only just realised which party she’s in, and Simon Watts. Someone who always looks delighted that a man of his ability should reach such heights.

Surely these two were not the harbingers of anything remotely important?

Luxon began by rabbiting on about the training facility they were in, how it would be driving into more excellence, and celebrating excellence, and excelling at excellence (alright, he didn’t say the last one) as the two MPs cringed behind their leader, and wondered why Nicola hadn’t written him a speech.

Then he jumped straight into questions. So no announcements to make then.

As quickly became apparent he had no intention of answering anything on the one topic anyone was interested in, coalition arrangements, either. So basically just a photo opportunity then. Couldn’t he have picked somewhere more picturesque than what looked like the corner of a gym?

Image: NZ Herald.

The first reporter asked how he was feeling about results being released the next day. A nice looping patsy of a question - just like they always gave Chippy, remember?

Luxon said he’d be glad to get clarity where they are, which is probably a good thing to know, and that they’d put together a government at great pace. Erica was starting to look quite ill at this point. I wondered what she knew.

Next Christopher was asked about his plans for Friday evening. He grinned as he eyed up the easy lob, and readied himself to knock it out of the park. Before giving an unenthusiastic reply that some of his MPs were in tight races. Maybe someone had told him to stop answering “eating ice cream”, in response to questions about his plans as Prime Minister?

Another reporter wanted to know how quickly we might see the conclusion of all this, “working at great pace”, following the result. Luxon said quite a few words, including using the word “process” numerous times, but there was no meaningful answer.

There were a few questions on other topics. The first laughs of the afternoon, from a surprisingly subdued press pack, came when someone asked about Mark Mitchell’s plan for gang members to wear makeup to cover their facial tattoos.

Mitchell and Luxon with a natural glow from watching the Men in Black. https://www.facebook.com/christopherluxon

Luxon was a bit annoyed at someone pointing out the absurdity of his crime fighting hero, saying “I am focussed on removing gang patches because Kiwis know what that means. For someone to have earned a patch, there is some stuff that needs to have happened.”

I’m guessing that by “stuff that needs to have happened”, he didn’t mean social deprivation, disadvantage, and dysfunction. More likely he had the theme from the TV show Cops running through his head, “Bad boys, bad boys whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when we come for you?”

He continued “When you are peddling drugs across our families, and across our kids, and across this country ... my message is really clear, I am sorry it's going to be tough to be a gang member in New Zealand under a National-led government.”

I couldn’t help thinking - you know Christopher, if you just legalised weed then people wouldn’t buy it from gangs, and they wouldn’t get upsold something actually dangerous while they were there. The gangs might find that a bit more concerning than Mitchell’s request that they wear makeup, which no one’s been taking seriously.

But despite the absence of forthcoming answers, the questions were mostly to do with the final results.

“Hurry up and wait”, was how Luxon described the last three weeks. A phrase used to show irritation at an impediment that pauses your progress towards a deadline.

Kind of like the phrase “your team is only as fast as your slowest member”, except with Luxon it sounded like it’d be, “if your slowest member holds the team back, push them down an empty lift shaft.”

That was the vibe I got from him, anyway.

A frustrated Luxon asked “does it need to take three weeks to count the special votes if you’re working 24/7?” Erm, I know Luxon doesn’t have any experience of working with government departments, but the phrase “24/7” isn’t the first one that comes to mind.

To be fair I don’t really think Christopher imagined the vote counters were beavering away 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s probably just one of those meaningless phrases he likes to throw around to appear hard. Gee Mr “I’m going to Slash Public Services”, I really hope those government workers are giving it 110% eh?

I got a bit of a sinking feeling watching. Luxon didn’t attempt to answer questions, it was all platitudes and buzzwords, and the sort of spiel that should’ve been left behind on the campaign trail.

The reporters seemed to be going through the motions too. Although you could kind of understand that given there’s been virtually no political news for three weeks, and that Luxon wouldn’t answer questions about the only thing there was to discuss.

Ladies and Gentleman, I have seen the future, and it is a Happy Meal. Highly marketable to the easily distracted, but not particularly satisfying.

Image: https://www.lightxeditor.com/

Still, in the meantime, here’s to the happy couple. We’ll probably have a good idea who they’re going to be later this afternoon, the results come out at 2pm.

My pick is that Winston will be blushing, and Seymour will be ever the bridesmaid.

A beautiful clip today from Tim Minchin, probably a good idea to have a tissue handy.