Nau mai, haere mai.

All governments like to make a big deal of their first 100 days in office. It implies forward momentum, purpose and drive. Given a lot of it is also about signaling what will happen, or repealing the previous administration’s policies, there’s an element of political show business, too.

Writing about the 100-day milestone today, Richard Shaw makes the point that it’s less about what the government has done than about how it did it. In the immortal words of Dennis Denuto in Australian cinema classic The Castle, “it’s the vibe” that matters.

“On that count,” writes Shaw, “the government will be reasonably pleased with recent polls indicating growing support for Christopher Luxon as preferred prime minister and for the administration he leads (the recent furore over Luxon’s short-lived insistence on claiming the MP’s accommodation supplement notwithstanding).”

The real test, of course, comes with May’s budget. “Finance minister Nicola Willis will need to demonstrate how her government’s electoral commitments will be paid for – and how it intends to improve what Luxon has called the ‘fragile’ state of the nation.”

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