National Party leader and Botany MP Christopher Luxon campaigned during last year’s general election on the message ‘Get NZ Back on Track’. Almost six months after becoming Prime Minister he talked to the Times about how he rates his Government’s performance so far and whether he believes he’s delivering for New Zealand as promised.
Christopher Luxon has had a pretty busy last six months.
He’s moved at pace to address the major challenges he inherited from the previous Labour Government including ballooning debt, rising inflation and a cost of living crisis, gangs running amok and major problems in health, education and law and order.
“I think we’ve gone incredibly fast,” Luxon says.
“Our work plan for the next three years is very clear, but obviously we’ve been very focused on making sure we’re rebuilding the economy by lowering inflation and the cost of living.”
He says his second main focus is on is restoring law and order and the third is delivering better health and education.
“What we’ve done is set some targets for 2030 as to where we need to be and that’s focusing with all Government ministers and the public service to deliver against those goals.
“So the first 100 days, we had 49 actions. Our quarterly plan we’ve got finishing on June 30 has another 36 actions and in that period of time I think we’ve moved incredibly fast.
“We’re working incredibly hard because we know New Zealand’s in a really tough spot and New Zealanders are doing it really hard but we also know we need a good plan and good management to be able to take the country forward.”
With the coalition Government’s first Budget being delivered today, May 30, Luxon says it isn’t possible to correct six years of problems in one year.
“The key thing is we want to be able to get rid of the wasteful spending that’s been going on.
“Make sure we take that money and ensure it’s invested in frontline services in health and education and law and order and disabilities, so there will be more money going into those places.
“And also giving people tax relief. Low- and middle-income New Zealanders, people who are working incredibly hard and still can’t get ahead.
“The reason is they haven’t had tax relief for 14 years yet inflation’s gone up over 40 per cent in that time.
“We’ve got a big focus on education, infrastructure, regulations, international connections, science, technology and innovation.
“We got rid of the RMA (Resource Management Act). We’ve introduced the Fast-Track concessions so we can get things built in a much faster period of time.
“We’ve started our work on gang laws and committed to 500 more police officers in the next two years.
“We’ve got our work on young serious offenders coming out very shortly and Three-Strikes has been brought back.”
His Government has also stopped several large infrastructure projects that he labels wasteful spending.
“We’ve got a very good infrastructure plan which [Pakuranga MP and Transport Minister] Simeon Brown is leading,” Luxon says.
“Fifteen Roads of National Significance, four big public transport projects, and then Roads of Regional Significance as well.
“We’re re-orientating our transportation around our roading network to make sure it’s in good shape.”
He also points to the changes his Government has made in education, including banning mobile phones in schools and introducing an hour of reading and writing each day in primary and intermediate schools.
“We have work going on with structured literacy where we train about 8500 teachers to teach kids to read the same way.
“We do another 8500 teachers next year and that means by the end of next year we’ll have all of our year 0-6 teachers really confident teaching reading consistently to our kids.
“That’s the key thing we need to get right in education. It’s been really busy.
“We’re all working very long hours, seven days a week, because we understand we’ve got to get the country turned around.”
