An autumn of ordinariness?

It's been a summer of discontent for the coalition government but it will be hoping for calmer times ahead.

- Danyl McLauchlan

In his first public speech of 2024, Christopher Luxon announced, "We're looking ahead to deliver a set of deliverables that will help our vision of New Zealand take root and come to pass."

John Key communicated in All Blacks analogies, Jacinda Ardern employed the therapeutic language of love, wellbeing and kindness. Our new CEO PM loves management jargon and he mixes metaphors like a needle in a long-tailed cat.

Every new administration begins with the assumption it can solve problems where its predecessors failed; it will fix what the last lot broke and Labour's consistent failure was delivery - an inability to turn Ardern's shimmering dreams into any kind of reality.

National believes it can do better but during its first two months, the new coalition government has experienced a Summer of Discontent: protests, leaks, court actions and intense criticism from prominent Māori leaders have combined to deny National and its partners the traditional honeymoon enjoyed by incoming governments.

It has also made promises around spending and tax cuts it will struggle to reconcile. Is Luxon's vision invisible? Are his deliverables undeliverable?

Its most serious problem is the response to its Treaty of Waitangi agenda. Each coalition partner has policies that would be controversial on their own - National's abolition of Three Waters and the Māori Health Authority, New Zealand First's promotion of the English language over te reo and its plan to erase the principles of the treaty from legislation, and Act's Treaty Principles Bill.

Taken together, they represent an unprecedented rollback of 40 years of political, legal and cultural progress on treaty and tikanga issues, and Opposition Māori politicians have promised an equivalent response.