Before last October’s election, mainstream journalists often reassured their audiences that Christopher Luxon wouldn’t go near a referendum on the Treaty principles if he became Prime Minister. They said he had ruled it out — although if they had listened carefully they would have realised that he mostly stuck to the line that a referendum would be “divisive” and “unhelpful” and that it wasn’t “National Party policy”. That is clearly not ruling out anything, but some journalists preferred to hear something he hadn’t said.
