The Empathy Emulator - Christopher Luxon’s Awkward Stab at Humanity

Empathy - the hardest KPI

Somewhere deep inside the beige-carpeted corridors of National Party HQ, a decision was made - “Let’s show them Chris has empathy.” It was possibly uttered by a communications intern moments before being thrown under a fleet of BMWs. Because if Christopher Luxon’s recent conference speech proved anything, it’s this - empathy, when performed by a man genetically engineered to be a LinkedIn post in human form, lands with all the warmth of an Inland Revenue audit.

Watching Luxon attempt to emote is like watching an AI try to cry. There’s an uncanny sense that he’s read about emotions in a briefing paper once but didn’t quite catch the nuance. “There’s always more to do,” he offered, somewhere between corporate slogan and hostage note, before reminding us that many Kiwis are still “struggling to keep up with the cost of living.” Ah yes, the cost of living, a phrase so clinically abstract it could be mistaken for a line item in a PwC spreadsheet.

But credit where it’s due - he almost pulled off concern. For a fleeting moment, viewers may have believed he knew what a packet of pasta costs. Alas, the illusion evaporated the second he pivoted back to phrases like “economic trajectory” and “tight fiscal envelope,” as if empathy were a pop-up notification interrupting his favourite Excel dashboard.

Let’s be honest. Empathy isn’t in Luxon’s operating system. This is a man whose vibe screams “middle manager on a power trip at the AGM,” not “leader of a diverse, struggling, emotionally bruised population.” You don’t get the sense he’s ever missed a rent payment, cried into a power bill, or chosen between childcare and groceries. You do get the sense he once asked someone what a bus was and was startled to learn it doesn’t fly.

He’s a man of success, born in a blazer and raised on buzzwords. His faith in markets is as unwavering as his commitment to never appearing relatable. Which is fine if you’re pitching to investors, but when you’re running a country full of people increasingly unsure how they’ll make it to payday, “optimism” without substance isn’t strategy. It’s gaslighting in a suit.

And the crowd lapped it up, of course. Conference delegates applauded like labrador retrievers at a sausage festival. They want to believe the world is righting itself. That butter will soon be affordable, the mortgage gods will smile kindly again and somehow, by sheer force of corporate smugness, we’ll all be okay. But outside the Beehive echo chamber, there’s an unamused electorate counting down the hours to payday like it’s a rescue helicopter.

When Luxon murmured “we’re doing what we can,” one could almost hear the nation collectively mutter “are you, though?” Because from where most New Zealanders stand,on dodgy rental carpet, holding a calculator with a look of mild panic -“what we can” feels suspiciously like “what won’t upset our donor base.”

Empathy, in politics, is not about staging the right soundbite. It’s about being able to walk into a cold, damp flat in South Auckland and not try to rezone it into luxury townhouses. It's the ability to talk to a minimum wage worker without reminding them that you once flew economy by accident.

What makes this all worse, of course, is that Luxon seems to genuinely believe he’s got the common touch. He wants to be your mate. Your dad. Your pastor. Your accountant. Your airline CEO. He wants to be all of these things and more and yet somehow remains none of them - just a slightly starchy man with a relentlessly furrowed brow who thinks "vibe" is an acronym.

The tragedy isn’t that Luxon lacks empathy. Lots of leaders do. John Key didn't exude empathy so much as the thin, cool charm of a man who'd beat you at poker then lend you the bus fare home. But Key had charisma. Even Helen Clark, whose default tone was “stern principal,” radiated more human warmth than Luxon in full pep-talk mode.

Luxon, by contrast, has the tone of someone who wants to inspire you to meet Q2 targets, not endure a cost-of-living crisis. His solution to emotional pain is probably a pie chart. And when he speaks of “hope,” it sounds like a commercial product line soon to be divested for efficiency.

The deeper issue, of course, is what happens when such a man is in charge during a time of real national uncertainty. He’s not a monster - just miscast. A man who won’t be remembered for monstrous cruelty, just a kind of accidental indifference that feels worse because it thinks it’s kindness.

That, perhaps, is the most galling part. Because for those struggling every day, the leader’s empty nod to their hardship is worse than silence. It’s like being offered sympathy by a chatbot - all syntax, no soul.

We don’t need Luxon to hug a nurse or cry with a foodbank client. We need him to understand that “doing what we can” needs to look like more than “removing lunch from schools and calling it efficiency.” We need policy. Strategy. A backbone that bends toward humanity, not quarterly margins.

But if he can’t manage that, perhaps he could at least have the decency to stop pretending he feels our pain. Because the nation isn’t fooled and we’d rather skip the patronising performance and get back to work trying to survive his empathy.

Empathy, the trickiest KPI of them all.

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