The First 100 Days

Most articles about the first 100 days of this Government focus on 49 actions and whether they were completed by 8 March 2024, but that is not what this article is about.

This is a high level summary of what happened in between...and it leaves out lots cos you cannot cover it all in a facebook post.

On day one Luxon's government faced protests from Te Pati Māori up an down the nation for lots of reasons - like the English First thing, and the Treaty Principles Bill and plans to get rid of the Māori Health Authority to name a few.

As a result Winston lashed out like he was the boss and took away Luxon's limelight for two days and Claire Trevett nearly cried - it was so unfair. However Luxon seemed a cuckold and could do nothing about Winston who was out of control.

A few days later Chris Bishop was claiming there would only be one store that would sell Cigarettes up North if we kept on with Smokefree laws - and the next day Christopher Luxon repeated the same words - doubling down, making no apologies and not knowing how to be any clearer - but it was all BS and Luxon and Bishop were both parroting talking points directly from Tobacco companies. A massive backdown followed after Jack Tame exposed the BS on Q&A.

Christopher Luxon looked an utter burke saying we got it wrong - after doubling down so hard - a pattern that repeats now - as Claire Trevett thinks he's doing a great job.

National passed the buck to Casey Costello to take Reti out of the firing line and thought they were pretty smart - but wow did they get that wrong. Costello would soon be up to her neck in it for asking advice about freezing the tax on cigarettes from 31 December 2023 for three years and all sorts of related denials.

National shifted the focus of the Reserve Bank to price stability and claimed this would help - but there is no evidence this will help at all - and it's a red herring when it comes to putting money in pockets or bringing down inflation any faster.

Four unions demand Finance Minister Nicola Willis resign over scrapping of new ferry terminal funding. Willis had no plan B and still does not have one.

Todd took a plane to India but no outcomes.

Soon with the Half Year Economic Update, Willis was making up a cool story about imaginary fiscal cliffs and Grant responded to her Mini Budget by saying, "New Zealanders were told several things about the mini Budget. The first of those is that they would have certainty about how tax cuts would be paid for – that is not here. We were also told that we would know the details of the cuts to public services that were going to be used to fund tax cuts – that is not in here either."

Lots of legislation was being repealed under urgency one of these was Fair Pay Agreements which also caused protests from multiple Unions. The rich were Punching down for no good reason but to satisfy ideologues.

The first annual report under the Taxation Principles Reporting Act was due by the end of the 2023, but the government's move to repeal it canceled that. This law required IRD to report on the efficacy and fairness of our tax system. National said that this reporting could be done without the law while also committing not to report this information.

The RMA 2.0 was also repealed under urgency all that mammoth work - just thrown in a rubbish bin and National and Act celebrated.

There was lots of talk about returning to parliament early to "get things done" but that never happened.

We started to hear cases being sent to the Waitangi Tribunal - about stopping what this Government is doing.

It wasn't long before Luxon was off to celebrate Christmas for two nights at the very liveable Premier House where he limited Santa presents to only $80 per present due to the cost of Living crisis. The same dreadful photos of family PJs were predictably cringy on social media.

Soon Luxon was trembling cos rocks were landing on his mansion roof at Onetangi and security damaged a kids hand.

Luxon posed for publicity that he was painting the shed - but had not a single drop of paint on him - nor was any on the surrounding ground - and there was no drop sheet. You know a fake photo when you see one.

Jacinda got married and this cheered up the nation and she was fabulous and the whole world wanted the photos.

There was much speculation about Ratana and Waitangi Day but most of the news was focused on Golriz in early January 2024 and why the Greens had not said much - as media only had one story to focus on for three weeks - plus it was a woman of colour who they like to bash for days on end - as opposed to Luxon - who they brush past in 24 hours or less.

Luxon commenced a campaign of unclear spin about his intentions and commitments around the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi - and appointed Seymour as the lead on this.

Thomas Coughlan claimed National were soaring in a Taxpayers' Union poll - when it was just a shift within the margin for error.

Shane Jones was the first MP ever to be booed at Ratana and swore to tear strips off people who called him out at Waitangi. Luxon used cue cards and did not say anything worth repeating but he certainly was not listening.

CPI Inflation tracked down from 5.6% in Sept 23 to 4.7% in December 23 - no thanks to Willis or Luxon.

James Shaw resigned from the co-leadership of the Greens

Suddenly Willis was expanding the scope of cuts to be made to the public service showing she had no idea what she was doing in December 2023.

RAM Raids and Retail Crime kept happening at the same rate despite the tough on crime talk from Luxon and Mitchell and media woke up that they should start to report on that again after a three month break.

Luxon was a shocker at Waitangi Day and high tailed it out of there after reading from cue cards, talking the same speech he had talked in previous years. The pressure was on him to deal with this - but he refused to listen.

Seymour was interviewed by Mihingarangi and denied Act had any link to the Atlas Network.

There was a week of commemorating Cyclone Gabriel.

There was a leak about a proposed draft of the Treaty Principles Bill - ( five leaks in total ) as the Government leaked like a sieve.

The noise about the Treaty principles grew so loud that finally Luxon shifted his ambiguous rhetoric to say - he ruled it out after the select committee. Luxon however denied he had shifted his rhetoric as he tried to blur things by mixing his spin. A waste of time and money - the whole thing as NZis not ready to have such debates due to most people not knowing enough about NZ History and Te Tiriti.

A taxpayers' Union Poll said most people wanted to change the principles - so Bryce Edwards and Sean Plunket ranted about a BREXIT moment and much noise was made as Seymour launched a website and claimed the momentum was building - BUT - a TVNZ poll shot all that down as Act came crashing back down to where they were in the election. So much for reading so much into a single poll.

Grant Robertson resigned.

Everyone agreed and evidence showed national's education policy to make kids do an hour of bla bla bla per day is already happening and National will make no difference...more BS.

The Government said it would axe Section 27 reports - which was more punching down.

Luxon's scraping of fuel taxes came with raising Road User Charges in subsequent years like a sneaky move and after getting rid of the Clean Car Discount - everyone will pay more for running EVs.

Lots of information about the extent of the Atlas Network in New Zealand began to spread across social media as people began to see the bigger picture.

Three Waters was repealed - but Standard and Poors reckoned the was not much hope that CCOs would get the finance if the Government did not underwrite the debt. So much for Luxon and multiple Councils signalled rates will go up.

National's Transport policies had a $24Billion hole in them.

15 roads of national insignificance yawn...

Luxon started denying Casey Costello had done anything wrong while Gerry made a mess of parliament.

Gerry had frequent memory lapses about names if a person was not white ...and Gerry never stood up so people carried on like he was a clown and the whole place devolved into a circus. Winston ran rings around Gerry - so Audery Young said Gerry was superb.

Chris Bishop and Shane Jones tried to hide how they had granted massive executive powers to politicians to skirt around the Environment Court and get mining and drilling and messing up the climate with fast track consenting. So many vested interests who much oil and coal on their hands.

All sorts of things happened in a hurry - Gang patch legislation was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights but National did it anyway.

Seymour attacked the poor kids about wasteful spending on school lunches after National's State of the nation speech came with pushing 7000 kids back into poverty by 2028.

Luxon insisted that cancer patients can work 10 hours per week and he made no apology for that.

Luxon lashed out that he was entitled to $52,000 on his $471,000 salary and doubled down on it - showing he could not read the room - but was later forced to shift his position.

Luxon's popularity crashed about 15 points in a taxpayers' poll.

Next Talbot poll will be interesting.

Luxon's position about Premier House looked wrong after it was revealed $95K had been spent on making it more liveable by mid February 2024.

Newshub announced they will close down - and the Government refused to help - and Seymour attacked a journalist at TVNZ as a share holding minister.

68 jobs went at TVNZ as Luxon did nothing to help.

Seymour also attacked the ladies who did the Haka for the Hurricanes and lashed out at Professor Joanna Kidman, but thankfully Seymour fell off his bike.

There was lots more but as I said - this is just a facebook post and therefore misses out much but summarises the lowlights of which there were many.

Too many.

The First 100 Days

G