Andrew Dickens: The times when the media and academia are their own worst enemy

This weekend Sunday Star-Times published a think piece on why Christopher Luxon is not popular. 

And he’s not. Monday's polls showed that Christopher Luxon and his National Party is not as popular as maybe they should be. 

Interviewing university professors and their typewriters, the article came up with answers like no-one likes anyone who demands to be called Christopher and one professor even speculated on New Zealand’s attitude toward baldness. Apparently we don’t like them, which will be news to Monty Betham. 

It came in response to the latest poll which showed Chris Hipkins and Labour keeping up with Christopher Luxon and National, despite Labour changing nothing.

While the Sunday Star-Times plucked at straws, I’d like to say it’s the economy, stupid. 

These are tough times and we always blame the sitting Government, no matter what they inherited.

But I would like to say that Mr Luxon has not made it easy for himself.

When he inherited our damaged economy the Reserve Bank was already acting on inflation through interest rate hikes. 

The National led coalition then kept on with their cost of living crisis solution which was tax cuts and government spending crackdowns and lay offs.

So the country had a two pronged attack with none of the solutions making life better in the short term.  In fact it’s made everything worse. 

So all the people who are collateral damage believe the government are monsters.   

All the people not affected who can see how the austerity overkill will be good for the economy and the country in the medium and long term, will be thinking Mr Luxon and his team are heroes. 

The Government will be hoping that by the time the only poll that count comes around in 2026, more voters will view them as heroes and not monsters. 

The last time we tried that was in the 90s as Don Brash raised interest rates at the Reserve Bank while Ruth Richardson gave us the Mother of all Budgets. She lasted less than 3 years after that and is not remembered fondly despite the good the austerity did. 

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