ℍ𝕠𝕨 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕙𝕖𝕝𝕝 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕃𝕦𝕩𝕠𝕟 𝕘𝕠𝕥 𝕙𝕚𝕞𝕤𝕖𝕝𝕗 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕞𝕖𝕤𝕤?

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕡𝕠𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕝 𝕪𝕖𝕒𝕣 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕠𝕟𝕝𝕪 𝕛𝕦𝕤𝕥 𝕓𝕖𝕘𝕦𝕟 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕟𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕝 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕡𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕥𝕤𝕖𝕝𝕗 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕔𝕠𝕣𝕟𝕖𝕣.

I

t’s quite difficult to nail that sweet spot between not racist enough, and too racist.

But, kudos to them, ACT have nailed it.

They’ll get their Treaty ‘debate’ over the coming months, with enough race-baiting to satisfy the base.

Then, National will kill the proposed treaty principles bill, ensuring the Right aren’t robbed of that particular lightning-rod cause. Answered prayers are often the most dangerous, after all.

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It’s bizarre to grant a coalition partner with just 8% of the vote the ability to rewrite the country’s founding document (without bothering to ask the other signatories), and thus ignite a destructive and ultimately pointless debate. But, that aside, the real question is just how the hell Christopher Luxon got himself into this mess?

National loses every way out of this exercise, a conclusion anyone who spent more than 10 minutes thinking about this issue would have drawn.

The Luxon mess is exactly unfolding as expected as this troika policies are clashing . pic.twitter.com/ogUhsAVDsC

— FMWB (@NZLP55_66) January 27, 2024

The prime minister has wasted the opening week of the political year defending the indefensible, a position that is not even the National Party’s, and one that he personally opposes.

Even NZ First, never one to shy away from a spot of iwi-bashing, is wise to the stupidity of this legislation.

Minister-in-charge Luxon just doesn't know

Like with Tuesday’s first political post-Cabinet presser, this issue is going to dominate the political discourse for at least the rest of this year. Spoiler on the main plot for next week’s Waitangi commemorations.

Luxon cannot escape from this scrutiny, and he is fool to think he ever could.

Is this a cul-de-sac that his predecessors John Key or Bill English would have blundered into? No, because they had what he lacks: a deftness to navigate complex, intergenerational political problems, or at least the good sense to body-swerve them.

And so we are where we are: wasting time on an idea that is going nowhere, and upsetting, or unsettling, vast swathes of the population.

As a consequence, the prevailing energy of the year’s first press conference was defensive crouch. The main topics on the agenda were the deployment of Defence Force spooks to the Middle East, and the Treaty.

Luxon, Judith Collins and Winston Peters gave the distinct impression of three ministers who knew they were doing something wrong.

On the Houthi strikes, the trio flubbed it. Their explanation should have been simple and non-threatening: our position in the Western Alliance is integral to the security we enjoy in our region, so when they ask for a bit of help on a limited but worthwhile mission that impinges directly on global trade, of course we would say yes. Next question.

Yet, they descended into obfuscating, technocratic double-speak. There were no straight answers. We know more about Judith Collins’ reading habits (she likes The Economist, in case you cared) than her rationale for the deployment.

She could barely bring herself to admit the central operational reason for deploying the six personnel. Yes, Judith. They. Will. Be. Assisting. In. The. Bombing. Of. Yemen. That’s the point.

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The glowering foreign minister, who looked like he would rather have been at Jacinda Ardern’s wedding than that painful press conference, was strangely unprepared for what seemed like an obvious question: would New Zealand consider recognising Palestine as a country?

As to denying that the military action was related to the Gaza conflict? That was just plain odd.

Left alone at the podium, after Peters and Collins beat a hasty retreat, matters only went downhill for Luxon as he was relentlessly grilled on the Treaty bill.

The political year is only just beginning and Luxon has already painted himself into a corner. He is yet to develop the skills - or good enough relations with coalition partners - to get out of it.

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