Barry Soper: Luxon needs to become more relatable

It's not much shy of a year ago that Chris Luxon signed the warrant to become New Zealand's 42nd Prime Minister.

Having been congratulated by the Governor General at Government House in Wellington, the gathered throng applauded.

That's when the show was over and the real work began.

It's been one hell of a year for Luxon, who just over four years earlier never had a decision he made questioned in any serious way as the boss of our national airline.

This man was corporate through and through and the learning curve to become the country's leading politician, answerable to everyone, can't have been easy.

Politics is a tough game and the attacks from your opponents can be vicious, as they have been with Luxon, who had lived a relatively sheltered life up until he decided to enter the fray.

Coming into the place in 2020, he would never have dreamed that he would have been the Prime Minister so soon, after just three years.

Jacinda Ardern, who was also shocked she'd got the job even though Labour lost the election, had a nine year apprenticeship and in just five years went from being deified to vilified.

The day they become Prime Minister is the day the writing's on the wall.

They will leave the job of their on volition, as Ardern did, knowing she couldn't win the next election, or the electorate makes up their mind for them at the ballot box.

This Government has had the shortest honeymoon period of any in recent history. They couldn't bask in the glory of success, they had to get on the deal with the mess.

For Luxon it was a baptism of fire, he had never been confronted in the corporate world with what was tantamount to salvaging the Titanic.

They have legislated more than any other in their first 100 days and are still out there trying to dig this country out of the post-Covid hole.

Luxon told me recently he loved the job - and if that's really the case, he falls in love too easily.

The skill in politics is reading the room and that's the most difficult task. His deputy Winston Peters has written the book on it and Luxon, who genuinely likes the New Zealand First leader, could learn a thing or two from him.

Even though he may have been in politics for a short time, the PM's an enthusiast. He likes to be liked, who doesn't?

But unlike his predecessor John Key, he's a little more clumsy at it, even though the ever-popular Key even himself felt at times worried he'd gone too far. Like the time early in his tenure in the top job he asked me whether he'd taken it too far, laden with flowers and swivelling his hips, in his colourful shirt in the Pacific.

He was told it's the sort of thing the public likes, a Prime Minister being one of us and being prepared to let his hair down.

And that's what Luxon, who has a keen sense of humour has got to do, become more relatable.

Barry Soper is a New Zealand political journalist, and has been featured regularly on radio and television since the 1970s. Currently, Soper's main role is political editor at Newstalk ZB, a radio network in New Zealand.