National is holding its caucus retreat in Queenstown today, and new leader Christopher Luxon is trying to convince his party that they need to change and "demonstrate that we care about people". Which probably sounds great to a CEO for whom everything is a matter of branding and marketing and calling people on the phone and demanding a powerpoint presentation. Meanwhile in the real world, there's a problem, in that National pretty clearly does not care about people. They've spent the last thirty years clearly demonstrating that fact, via racism, homophobia, climate change denial and Ruthanasia. And they've spent the last two years screaming it at the top of their lungs, with demands that we "open the economy" in the middle of a global pandemic so their mates can get rich over the corpses of their fellow citizens. Today, at the start of an Omicron wave fed by leakage from MIQ, they still have an "end MIQ now" petition on their website, clearly demonstrating that for them, the economy is more important than people's lives (no, I'm not going to link to it).
I'm not sure how a party can overcome such a legacy, and honestly, that's not actually my problem. At this stage, its enough to say that if National says "we care about people now", only a fool would believe them. And only a bigger fool would believe it would survive the next leadership coup. Don't be a fool. Or, to put it another way: National have already shown us who they are, and we should believe that.
