New Zealand Herald podcast examines Christopher Luxon's media struggles ahead of the 2025 election
NZ Herald podcast The Front Page discusses Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's media performance and the appointment of broadcaster Rachel Smalley as a communications adviser.
Summary
Host Chelsea Daniels speaks with NZ Herald editor-at-large Shane Curry about Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's ongoing media difficulties, 208 days out from the New Zealand general election. Curry argues that Luxon's corporate background has produced a rigid, evasive interview style — illustrated by a three-minute exchange with Mike Hosking in which Luxon refused to give a straight answer about whether he would have sacked a cabinet minister. The episode reveals that broadcaster Rachel Smalley has recently been brought in to help Luxon and National Party MPs with their communications, and Curry suggests her influence may already be showing. A recent Taxpayers Union–Curia poll showing National below 30% is discussed, along with speculation about internal caucus pressure and the possibility of a leadership challenge. The episode closes with a discussion sparked by a Verity Johnson opinion piece asking whether Helen Clark should return to lead Labour, which leads Curry to reflect more broadly on whether New Zealand is producing the next generation of strong political leaders and whether public scrutiny is deterring capable people from entering Parliament.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Chelsea Daniels: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is The Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. It's 208 days until Kiwis hit the polls and vote for the next government. And despite campaigning not officially starting, the Prime Minister's performance has been called into question time and time again. Accusations range from Luxon leaning too much into the corporate speak and acting like a CEO, to dodging questions and even dodging entire press conferences during a global fuel crisis to open a stadium. With flubbed media interviews going viral, Christopher Luxon's behaviour is being put under a microscope — so much so that there are whisperings of a potential coup. Can one man's public image impact an entire party, and who's been sent in to help National months ahead of election day?
Today on The Front Page, NZ Herald editor-at-large and media insider Shane Curry is with us to break down Luxon's trials and tribulations and how he might turn them all around.
Luxon's Monday morning media round
Chelsea Daniels: First off, Shane, tell me — how is the Prime Minister doing on the media front, do you think?
Shane Curry: Well, Chelsea, we've just come from a round of Monday morning live media interviews. He's had, for the first time, John Campbell up against him, who started as the Morning Report host today. And in terms of this morning, a pretty lacklustre, slightly dull round of media interviews, which the Prime Minister will probably be slightly relieved about, having had a couple of weeks where moments during interviews — particularly with Tova O'Brien at TVNZ — have gone viral, for responses or lack of responses to questions she's asked. So all in all, a pretty stable response this morning from the Prime Minister, which, as I say, he'll be pleased about.
Chelsea Daniels: Well, look, the Monday morning media round now consists, like you said, of Hosking, Tova, and John Campbell. John Campbell gave him a verbal beating this morning over some weather assistance to rural communities and growers, but like the rest of it, pretty lacklustre, like you said. How important do you think this Monday morning round will be in an election year going forward?
Shane Curry: Yeah, it is still vitally important. In the case of ZB, which was the original broadcaster to introduce these Prime Minister interviews — going for something like three decades now, back to the days of Paul Holmes — there is still a big audience for all three broadcasters at that time of the morning. In fact, I added them up and it's around almost a million New Zealanders tuning into one of those shows at some stage during the morning. So yeah, still important.
Now, we know that a lot of politicians are obviously talking directly to audiences through social media or through events, but mainstream media still plays a vital role. And we see through the audience numbers that those certainly increase as we get closer to the election. So it is important that Christopher Luxon and other politicians put their best step forward. And we know they invest a lot of time and use a lot of expertise in terms of preparing for these interviews. And we can talk about Rachel Smalley, who's just started with the Prime Minister in the last few weeks to give him some extra communications help.
Chelsea Daniels: Yeah, absolutely. We'll get to Smalley in a second, because I did a double-take this morning when I saw her in the lobby. We kind of looked at each other like, oh. Obviously I work with her at ZB. But do you reckon we'll ever get to the point where Luxon just refuses to talk to certain people? I'm thinking Jacinda Ardern, who obviously famously would refuse to speak to Hosking in the late tenure of her prime ministership.
Shane Curry: I certainly hope not. We saw it with John Key — he didn't do Morning Report — and the same, as you say, with Jacinda Ardern and Mike Hosking. I don't think we're at that point for Christopher Luxon. He knows that, judging by the results and ongoing results in the polls that we constantly see, it is a tight race as we head into the election period. So I think it's important that he's in front of as many eyeballs and as many eardrums on these shows as possible. He needs to be there. Otherwise, that gap is filled by other political leaders or opinions from other people. So it's important that he's in front of the people. I don't think we will see that.
We have seen, though, that other political leaders still to this day — David Seymour won't do Morning Report. That's been a longstanding policy of him and the ACT Party. I think that's a real shame that he doesn't do that. And Winston Peters himself had a few run-ins recently with RNZ. So whereas the likes of Seymour and Peters probably have a little more leeway to stamp their authority compared to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister quite rightly is sharing the love around.
Chelsea Daniels: Well, but for politicians who hold on to free speech as much as humanly possible when coming into debates, it's pretty poor form that they wouldn't go to the likes of RNZ, though.
Shane Curry: Yeah, they will argue — quite rightly — that Seymour and Peters will be some of the biggest free speech advocates in the political system that we know, and certainly trumpet that. Seymour himself literally does street corner meetings in his electorate every Sunday and every weekend. And he and Peters have a very effective social media communication strategy. But I do think they are missing out, because when you think of the pool of voters that they can call upon, there are some grounds that they could potentially make with an RNZ audience, for example.
Luxon's corporate speak problem
Chelsea Daniels: If we get back to the Prime Minister's style — in December 2024, we actually had the Prime Minister on The Front Page and I asked him about his corporate speak. He kind of acted like I was the first person ever to point out to him that his phrase was "what I'd say to you is." He seemed quite surprised about that.
"So I've heard that you acknowledge that you need to work on your tendency for corporate speak. There's also been some reaction to your use of the phrase 'what I say to you is.' Are these things that you're going to be working on in 2025?"
"Well, I haven't heard about the second one, but — what I say to you is — what I will say to you is that I am from outside the political system. I'm not a career politician. And that's a fantastic thing."
And that was in 2024. Do you think anything's changed since then?
Shane Curry: I think things have changed, judging by the interviews that I heard and saw this morning. I saw a different Luxon in front of the interviewers this morning. And some of that could be down to Rachel Smalley's early influence. The criticism of Christopher Luxon has been, yes, some of those stock phrases that he's used — corporate speak — and not giving a straight answer, and sometimes being very rigid about what he answers back with, regardless of the question. People have observed that that's potentially come from his time at Air New Zealand and other corporate roles.
But I do hope he breaks out of that. Clearly he needs to. He needs to think like the public. He's not the CEO of a company. The public are actually his employers. And so he needs to speak clearly and communicate that way. Now, one-to-one, he is a very personable guy, like most of the political leaders across the spectrum — very easy to chat to one-to-one. But get him in front of a microphone, get him in front of a camera, and up until now he has had the tendency to freeze up.
I recall an interview he had with Mike Hosking just last year, when Hosking quite clearly was asking a very simple question: would you have sacked Andrew Bayly, the cabinet minister, if he hadn't resigned? And it took Mike Hosking three excruciating minutes to get a straight answer out of him, because he stuck to this rigid line that he just did not need to do.
"But are you the sort of person that would have sacked him?"
"I think you've seen me act very decisively on personnel issues. That's something I've done all my life. It's critical."
"No, that still doesn't answer that. I don't want to get bogged down on this. Why can't you be decisive enough to simply say, I would have sacked him or not?"
"In this case, he resigned. If it hadn't happened, I would have been involved with that and would have made a decision to say that he didn't meet my expectations."
"Which would have led to what?"
"It would have led to him losing the role anyway."
"So he would have been demoted?"
"The ministry would have been taken away."
"Right. Sacked."
"Yeah."
"Well, you can call it sacked. Mate, you've made a complete meal of this."
So I hope that that will get knocked out of him by Rachel Smalley, and that he does listen to advisers like her.
Rachel Smalley's role
Chelsea Daniels: What is the importance of bringing in Rachel Smalley, do you think?
Shane Curry: Well, she's got great experience in terms of not just broadcasting and TV, which is vital, but she knows each of those three interviewers that he is up against every Monday morning. I'm thinking specifically of Tova O'Brien, Mike Hosking, and John Campbell. She's worked alongside them and obviously observed them at close distance. So she will know what each of those broadcasters brings to the desk every Monday morning.
But more than that, she's got experience as a foreign correspondent. She's got experience in global affairs and so can offer not just Luxon, but some of the other National MPs in Auckland, some advice around how to communicate different aspects of their strategy — whether it's the fuel crisis, cost of living, or anything else that arises between now and November. So yeah, Smalley will play a vital role, as will the broader media and communications team within the Nats.
And I think with the National Party and the Prime Minister, with his workload, it is really important that he does take on that advice. I think with Seymour and Peters, we see them taking a much more individualist, independent sort of view of the media. Seymour, for example, is bringing along his own camera person to certain interviews to make sure that he can distribute that raw footage directly to his social media.
Chelsea Daniels: Yeah, he's never actually brought them in here. I always try and look and see if they come in. It's like, oh no, not The Front Page. That's OK.
Shane Curry: Yeah, he picks and chooses in terms of the media outlets that he does that with. And of course, he makes great hay out of it in terms of the "bloody media." This is part of the shtick, really — it's us against the mainstream media. And so he's very effective with his voter base in almost driving a wedge between himself and some media outlets, not all. But I think we'll increasingly see that, not just from ACT, but from others, as we get closer to November.
Comparing Luxon to past prime ministers
Chelsea Daniels: If we talk about Luxon for a second here — I thought he did better this morning, but there's so much discourse around his method of communicating, the corporate speak that's obviously been hanging over him since at least 2024. How does this compare to other prime ministers?
Shane Curry: I think we were very lucky — I saw some analysis, and Barry Soper's got a book coming out actually about the prime ministers he's covered in the course of his own political career — but I think we were very lucky to have, for a long stint, Helen Clark and John Key across five or six election cycles. I remember the Australians being very jealous that we had such stable prime ministership across those years.
They were both highly effective communicators, different in lots of ways, but they were both able to talk to media, to editors. They visited editors regularly. They spoke to journalists on and off the record, on background, and both were pretty natural in front of the camera. I mean, it took a little while for Helen Clark. John Key came in and was quite goofy at times in front of the camera, and owned his errors and owned his mistakes. And I get the sense that what we were hearing from Key was actually how he was feeling. Whereas there seems to be a bit of a barrier — or has been a barrier — with Christopher Luxon in the past. And I think that might be the sort of barrier that Rachel Smalley and others will try and lower as we get closer to the election.
Chelsea Daniels: I was actually a little bit surprised and disappointed that in the TVNZ interview this morning, we did not see — for the third week in a row — Tova O'Brien at TVNZ going up against him. Do you think that was intentional?
Shane Curry: Well, I hope not. I think Tova O'Brien has been hired as the breakfast co-host for these interviews. And people would have been tuning in, I think, specifically to see that interview, because she's very effective with her political background, and knowing what the last two weeks have been like, I think we were ready to see what this latest instalment would offer.
And so I hope it's not just this kind of everyone's-sharing-around-interviews thing, that kind of everyone gets a medal, everyone's a winner here in the schoolyard type. Because, you know, Chris Chang's a great broadcaster — he's covering the Football World Cup on behalf of TVNZ later in the year — everyone has strengths and weaknesses. But I think to not have Tova interviewing the Prime Minister every week is a real miss from TVNZ. I think she needs to be in front of him every Monday.
Chelsea Daniels: She got a slight little stab in at the end. Did you catch that?
Shane Curry: Yeah, I did. A cheeky little side comment — by the time they were wrapping up the interview, it was time for a bit of fun, and she asked who should be on Celebrity Treasure Island out of Christopher Luxon's MPs and offered up Christopher Bishop. It's an if-you-know-you-know moment.
Chelsea Daniels: If you know, you know. That's right. And so yeah, Tova quite clearly is politically attuned, knows exactly what's going on in the Beehive, still has a lot of contacts there, and would have been a great person to interview him this morning.
Polls and internal party pressure
Chelsea Daniels: Let's talk polls. The recent Taxpayers Union–Curia poll has National sitting below 30%. New Zealand First, though, is way up on 13.6%. How concerned are you about that?
Shane Curry: Look, a lot of polls saying lots of different things. But frankly, the only one that matters is November 7. And people don't want him focused on polls — they want him focused on doing his job, which is getting New Zealand through this current crisis.
Coming to breakfast this morning, when he was asked about the polls, his constant response was — and Chris did ask him the same question about three or four times to try and get anything out of him — his main line is, "I don't comment on polls." I suppose I would be the same if my party was polling sub-30 as well.
But how important is it that Luxon gets his act together on the media front for his entire party? Because we've heard whisperings of a couple of coups, apparently.
Chelsea Daniels: Oh yeah, well, that's obviously been speculation over the last few weeks and months.
Shane Curry: And I do think he needs to break out of his stock responses to it. In reality, the Taxpayers Union poll actually showed a very good lead for the right-wing coalition government across the opposition parties. And I think that's something that Luxon himself can focus on, but then come back to his biggest focus — and I think he does refer to this — which is to build up that National Party vote as strongly as possible, so they have as great a percentage as possible as we get to the general election.
But all in all, that latest Taxpayers Union poll was actually very good news for the coalition government. And I think that's the sort of answer where Christopher Luxon could potentially make ground in his responses, rather than just throwing up a brick wall and becoming quite defensive.
Chelsea Daniels: Yeah, chucking up a wall and saying no.
Shane Curry: Yeah, talk about the team, but then bring it back to the National Party and what he's going to do specifically as a leader.
Chelsea Daniels: In terms of him leading National — and I'm not saying that there is a coup on the way or that he's going to get rolled or anything like that — but if you were to give him a space of two or three weeks, two months, we're getting up to 200-odd days until the election. How much time realistically does he have to turn around his media image before things get actually serious?
Shane Curry: I think, you know, almost now it's getting slightly too late — although Jacinda Ardern proved that theory wrong back in 2017. But I think from the commentary that I've seen and from what I understand, the Nats now, generally speaking — subject to no more disastrous polls back below 28% or thereabouts — are pretty much locked and loaded. And I think having seen the overall result for the coalition parties overall and seeing how they're tracking in these recent polls probably gives them slightly good heart from a broader perspective.
There'll obviously be some very nervous National Party list MPs.
Chelsea Daniels: Well, about 11 of them.
Shane Curry: Yeah, yeah. And so that's going to cause a fair bit of pressure within caucus and within the Cabinet. And so that's where Luxon will need to be especially wary.
But this morning's round of interviews were quite dry, quite boring at times — and that's almost what he needs for the next few weeks. He wants to be talking about the topics that are of national importance to the voters. They certainly covered off a lot of topics in the three interviews this morning, rather than more podcasts about us talking about his performance or me writing about his performance in the media column. I think as much as possible, he wants to be wallpaper — or at least show his leadership style and skills that relate to the average voter.
Chelsea Daniels: Talking about him being wallpaper, though — don't you think it's funny that during a national fuel crisis in the Beehive, you've got Nicola Willis and Shane Jones fronting, and he's down in Christchurch opening a stadium? Do you think that was intentional?
Shane Curry: I think he's explained a fair bit of that, and I think in that couple of weeks he's certainly come to the forefront a lot more. He's probably had the message that he needs to be leading the charge a lot more strongly. And I do wonder if Rachel Smalley, who's been down in Wellington — she's not just focused on the Auckland MPs — I wonder if she's played a role in making sure that the Prime Minister's name and his comments are front and centre, that he's fronting the press conferences and the commentary around that.
So I think there probably was a misstep a month or so ago where they thought it should be Nicola Willis doing this. But to be fair, the Prime Minister has stepped up in the last little while, and I thought that on this morning's Mike Hosking interview, he was a lot stronger on fuel than what we'd heard previously. A bit more authoritative.
Chelsea Daniels: Because I can imagine Rachel would be like, no, cancel that trip to Tuvalu. You know what I mean?
Should Helen Clark return to Labour?
Chelsea Daniels: One more thing that I saw this morning — I don't think I've ever clicked quicker on a headline than the one this morning on Stuff. Did you see Verity Johnson's opinion piece? The headline was, "Is it time for Aunty Helen to return?" And she basically argues we need someone brave with experience who can go nose to nose with chaos and not blink. So should Helen Clark make a return for Labour?
Shane Curry: I think Helen Clark's probably got her attentions focused elsewhere. But it does come back to that point that we were very lucky for a long time to have very strong political leadership from both National and Labour in that period where both Helen Clark and John Key led us through some huge crises — and Jacinda Ardern as well.
Now, Christopher Luxon's got his own big plate of problems to handle from a global perspective and how that impacts on New Zealand. And I think possibly what we are seeing in New Zealand at the moment — if you set aside the leaders of the political parties — is: is there that kind of succession planning? Do we have the MPs and other people coming through that will one day replace Winston Peters and David Seymour, Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins in each of the parties?
I think it's a real issue for us to think about the quality of people who are entering Parliament and what is dissuading them. They see what some of these political leaders are subject to in terms of scrutiny and the roles that they have. And I think it's a real shame if we do miss out on some of potentially the best leaders who just choose not to enter Parliament for those reasons.
Chelsea Daniels: Thanks for joining us, Shane.
Shane Curry: Thanks, Chelsea.