Chris V Chris: No Mistake, No Magic Moment

Jo Moir
Political editor

Analysis – A meaty
quickfire round in Tuesday
night’s debate revealed a long list of things National
and Labour could agree on, but the rest of the head-to-head
was far from cordial.

In the final of three leader
debates where
the two Chrises faced off on the issues gripping the
country the temperature was turned right up.

At one
point National’s Christopher Luxon described his Labour
counterpart Chris Hipkins “without doubt the most abysmal
education minister this country has ever had”.

Hipkins
accused him of being “petty and pathetic” – a fitting
description for several exchanges between the pair over the
course of the evening.

Luxon went personal more than
once, most notable was after Hipkins had taken a whack at
the power dynamics within the coalition
government.

Luxon had been responding to why he was
ruling out Opportunity, and pointing to the land tax the
party is campaigning on, which prompted Hipkins to pipe up
with, “so this is the difference between Christopher and
I”.

“So, he thinks that if you work with another party
in government, you have to let them do whatever they want. I
don’t believe that that’s the case. You’ve let Winston
Peters and David Seymour run circles around you for the last
three [years].

“If you had just said no to them a
little bit more often, you wouldn’t be in the pickle that
you’re in.”

Luxon was quick to fire back with a
warning.

“I really wouldn’t go there. I remember the
last three years of your government, you were on your own,
and you had a justice minister crash a car.”

The
reference to former Labour Party MP and minister Kiri Allan,
who pleaded guilty to careless driving and refusing to
accompany a police officer following the crash, was
short-lived as moderator Paddy Gower cut Luxon off and
pivoted the debate elsewhere.

Question evasion was
also on full display – something Hipkins has roundly
criticised Luxon for over the years.

Asked for one
thing Hipkins would do about the fiscal time bomb of
superannuation, he didn’t answer how it would be paid for at
all, instead replying, “we’re going to keep the age of
eligibility for superannuation at 65”.

For all of the
bickering and sniping (and there was plenty) there was
bipartisanship on display too, though neither Chris fully
committed to sitting down together post-election and getting
any of it tidied away.

They agreed social media users
should be able to choose their own feed and not be served up
an algorithm – a policy Labour announced on the campaign on
Monday.

Both leaders agreed exploiting an overhang in
MMP was cheating, life sentences for child rape should be
explored further, noise camera trials for boyracers should
go ahead, gambling ads during sports games should be looked
at, and a referendum on a four-year parliamentary term
should proceed.

We also learnt they both haven’t tried
cocaine, they don’t think the Dame Julie Christie
documentary into the Tom Phillips investigation should go to
air, and neither of them have any interest in doing a debate
next election with the other political party
leaders.

While neither of the leaders made a grave
mistake or flubbed an answer so badly it would change the
dial for its party there was no clear winning moment
either.

Perhaps most telling was that after five years
of being on opposing sides, having both been opposition
leader and prime minister at some point, and having already
faced off in multiple debates last election, neither has the
ability to talk for 45 seconds unscripted about what they
see for the country’s future.

Both have been given the
opportunity at the start of each of the four debates last
election and three debates this campaign to sell a succinct
message to the public – a vision for New Zealand under their
prime ministership.

All seven times they’ve both
loaded up a scripted message to an autocue and awkwardly
tried to read it down the barrel of the camera.

After
all these years neither has committed to memory what they
believe
in.

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