I bet you’ve never heard of ‘aptronym’. I certainly hadn’t until I looked it up.
Aptronym – as the word itself suggests – refers to someone whose name aptly matches their deeds. Thus, we have such aptly stunning examples as:
Alexander Graham Bell – Inventor of the telephone
Donald Trump – (eech..!!)
Usain Bolt – Sprinter supremo
Tiger Woods – Champion golf clubber
Don Popadick – Canadian man arrested for exposing himself in – of all places – Mooney Bay Park, Ottawa. (True!)
You get the picture.
Our present prime minister is a chappie by the name of Christopher Luxon. A self-declared man of Christ, as his Christian name suggests. Critics cruelly point out words are cheap, especially given his attitude towards those he terms “bottom feeders”. I seem to recall this very same cohort was a major constituency of the original Mr Christ. We’ll leave that aside for now.
But when it comes to his surname, many will have no trouble associating its first syllable with a cleansing product, Lux Soap – a popular brand of bar soap made by the multinational titan, Unilever. Readers of a certain age will also recall ‘Lux Flakes’ – a top-end line of laundry cleanser comprised of gossamer soap shavings.
So, we now have a prime minister whose surname reduces to ‘Lux-on’ – a clarion call to immediately lather up and self-cleanse with a fragrantly scented product developed by the fabulously wealthy Unilever company. There’s more. Readers may or may not know that prior to political life, Christopher Luxon was employed for many years by – you guessed it – Unilever! He eventually was oh-so-aptly promoted to “Global Deodorants and Grooming Category Director”. So, ‘Lux-on’ – a prime aptronym if ever I heard one.
Now he is the Prime Minister of New Zealand. His job title may have changed, but his job description remains the same. While some previous PMs may have been flattered with sobriquets as per Jim Bolger’s ‘The Great Helmsman’, Luxon remains true to form – and name – as The Great Deodoriser and Groomer.
Any new government knows they only prevailed because the electorate were pissed off with the previous lot’s performance, and they have therefore inherited a dog’s breakfast. And everyone knows the failings of the previous lot are partly always due to unaddressed systemic failings from several generations back, which no incoming government can rectify in a niggardly three-year term.
So make way for a Great Deodoriser and Groomer – a man whose time had truly come. One who can take a B.O. economy, deodorise and groom it, and soon have it all smelling and looking rosy. Nothing transformational, you understand, but at least much easier on the nose and eye.
A couple of years into his current gig, it’s been entertaining watching his various role-plays unfold. Firstly, he seemed to genuinely think that the electorate would be beside themselves with delight with having snared another global corporate mover and shaker who’d selflessly taken – à la John Key – a sabbatical from their busy corporate trajectory to reward the community that breast-fed them.
Unfortunately – despite a pretty good run – Key had ultimately queered that particular pitch, and Luxo soon found that he wasn’t getting quite the same traction as his Nat hero. Especially when his perpetual sloganeering about growth, growth, growth in reality was panning out to be more like economic sloth, sloth, sloth – and Kiwis suffering painful wallet-pocket spasms began quitting the country in droves.
Our chrome-domed and squeaky-clean saviour now had pause for thought. This was a dangerous development. Especially when his mental compass had been so severely warped with a couple of decades’ consumption of the corporate Kool-Aid – a necessary prerequisite to attaining such exalted positions as Director of Global Deodorants and Grooming Categories.
As we know, the corporate Kool-Aid of recent times has been the liquid fuel for the brand of economic toxicity now known as neo-liberalism. This rank piece of self-serving stupidity declares that items like taxes, unions, and government in general are to be drastically minimised lest they interfere with the wholly legitimate need for predatory corporate marauders to exponentially enrich themselves at the expense of all and sundry. This is no small matter when “all and sundry” encompasses the wider society on which their whole schtik depends.
The aforementioned previous Nat hero – John Key – was a prime example of the corporate Kool-Aider at work. One of his alma maters was a Wall Street outfit called Merrill Lynch, where he acquired the nickname of “The Smiling Assassin”. Merrill Lynch was a prime mover in what arguably became the planet’s biggest-ever mass fraud, the so-called Global Financial Crisis of 2008 – although, of course, its effects reverberated long after. Key had left the company in 2001 to go into politics, well before the actual Crash. But he’d been awash in the Kool-Aid for so long it was now one of his essential bodily fluids.
After Key became Prime Minister in 2008, he was soon implementing the Neo-Lib playbook by cutting corporate and upper income taxes and dunning the lower socio-economics by raising the GST rate – a tax which impacts low socio-ecos by far the most. His government also aided and abetted the trend to transform residential property from roofs-over-heads into casino chips, to be pump-primed and punted to create an illusion of money-for-nothing. It was a type of Ponzi scheme whereby those who’d got in early creamed it, while the also-rans and youngies got the bum’s rush either through crippling rents or mortgages, or shut out of home ownership entirely. All additionally fuelled by increased immigration to stoke demand.
It’s interesting that after Key pulled the plug in his third term, he soon ended up as chairman of ANZ Bank New Zealand. ANZ is one of the several Aussie-based banks that dominate the NZ banking scene, and the most lucrative – seldom out of Australian courts for all manner of financial shonkiness. So Key was now in effect in charge of the NZ bit of ANZ. A few years back its yearly profit was more than the top eight or nine NZX listed companies combined. A big chunk of this profit derived from interest on fat mortgages being paid by captive Kiwis on now drastically over-valued houses.
In a sense, Key had gone full circle from his old stamping ground, Merrill Lynch. As of early 2023, Merrill Lynch (Australia) Nominees Pty Limited was listed as one of the 20 largest shareholders of ANZ Group Holdings Limited. Key didn’t resign from his ANZ roles until 2024.
As to be expected for a once Global Director of Deodorants and Grooming, Luxon is a smooth operator. “Let me be clear”, he incessantly proclaims, when he’s being anything but. He runs off a fully deodorised script constantly vetted within an inch of its life by a squadron of highly paid spin groomers. Namely, keep on making all the right noises re the really big issues like climate change, rampant social inequality, housing unaffordability, basic cost-of-living expenses, and the like. But where the rubber hits the road it’s all still business as usual. Much like the previous Ardern government had their “we’re working on that” mantra.
Nicola Willis, Minister of Finance, is cut from the same cloth as Luxon, but having entered parliament as a list MP following an earlier career as corporate lobbyist and political advisor to not one but two previous National Party PMs – Bill English and John Key. She’d also vigorously beaten the neo-liberal drum as director of the New Zealand Initiative for a year or so, a think tank linked to the nefarious Atlas network. This organisation still hypes the demonstrably failed policies of Thatcher, Reagan, Douglas et al, still hawks the snake oil of the non-existent supposed ‘free market’.
The GDP, employment, cost-of-living indexes, et al might all be tanking, but any minor twitch in the macro-figures is lauded as a clear indication that “the corner has been turned”, or some such similar cliché. Just don’t talk about the health, education and incarceration stats that all point to privatisation by a thousand cuts. Not to mention the hollowing out of the public services that underpin everyday capacity to exist in a semi-civilised manner.
Let us pray.. lest we all be Luxed, deodorised and groomed to the point of not smelling so much of roses as of the horsey stuff that is their preferred fertilizer.
Frank Greenall has been a copywriter, scriptwriter, artist, political cartoonist, adult literacy tutor and administrator, and Whanganui Chronicle columnist for many years, amongst numerous other sundry occupations. His cartoons and articles have appeared in most major NZ newspapers at various times. He has a BA in politics and a Masters in adult literacy/numeracy. https://stevebaron.co.nz/author/frankgreenall/
Tony M says:
Frank, that’s quite the linguistic connection you’ve drawn there! While I appreciate the cleverness of the aptronym angle, I reckon we might be getting a bit caught up in wordplay rather than substance. Running our family vineyard for three generations has taught me that what really matters isn’t someone’s name or even their corporate background, but how they support local communities and small businesses like ours. Sure, Luxon’s got his corporate past, but I’m more interested in whether his policies actually help places like Hawke’s Bay thrive – our local growers and tourism operators need practical support, not just clever observations about soap brands. At the end of the day, we judge our wine by how it tastes, not what’s printed on the label.
Bob G says:
Frank, while your wordplay is clever enough, I’m more interested in what Luxon’s actually doing with the taxpayers’ money than his surname. His corporate background at Unilever might explain why he seems comfortable with big spending – easy to be generous when it’s not your own pocket being picked. What concerns me as a ratepayer is whether all this “deodorising” you mention translates to actual fiscal responsibility or just more polished presentation of the same old wasteful spending. The bottom line is what matters to us Grey Power members – are our rates and taxes being used efficiently, or are we just getting better marketing of poor value?