I watched the Prime Minister's State of the Nation speech yesterday.
It's one of the advantages of modern communications. The livestream brings a level of detail and information to us on any given day that used to be the domain of the six o'clock news.
In its own small way, it’s the devolution of the wider media and its years long role of telling us what happened from their cut down "we wont bore you with too much detail" view of the world.
Anyway, Chris Luxon rolls out the line about $200 billion worth of unfunded projects left from Labour.
All of this may well be true. But the trouble he increasingly faces is the conversation he needs to have with the country as to just how much trouble we are in.
The answer, is a lot.
As I have said any number of times over the years, history will show the previous Labour Government was one of the most ruinous of the modern age.
Although the polls tell a good story for this current Government, they had two in the past week both showing postive signs for all parties and National in particular, plus they are also backed up by the confidence polls, both for the public and business. It's off a low base and remains constrained, but they are trending up.
Despite that, political honeymoons always end, like 100 day plans end.
Rubber hits the road and at some point we turn our attention to those making the decisions here and now and start to wonder out loud how come things are still broken.
So Luxon's job is to explain just what sort of mess we are in and, more importantly, how a lot of this is a long way from being fixed.
You only have to look at Auckland or Wellington with the pipes, the transport and the general carnage to know this is an increasingly backward country.
Look at the ferries we can't afford, the deficit that becomes a surplus Lord knows when, the inflation Adrian Orr keeps making speeches about, the power system that can't handle a cold morning, far less an surge of EV's, the roads that still aren't fixed a year after a storm and the towns that still aren't fixed a year after a storm.
There is little in this country that is future proofed. There is little in this country that gets done without a budget and timeframe blowout.
We have many, many areas in a parlous state and fundamentals take time.
The danger of the political cycle is people tend to think in three year blocks. This is no time for three year thinking. What this is, is a time for genuine, clear-headed, bold leadership involving some very hard decisions.
That’s Luxon's job this year. No pressure then.
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