There’s no doubting the Prime Minister’s convictions and commitment to the job he won in last year’s general election.
A few times in Christopher Luxon’s speech and in informal chats with attendees at the packed-out Pakuranga United Rugby Club on Friday for Business East Tamaki’s breakfast in support, too, of the charity I Am Hope’s Gumboot Friday, he mentioned that he “bounces out of bed at 4.30am” ready to tackle the issues of the day in his quest to get the country back on track, his National Party’s mantra of the past two years.
There’s no questioning the Botany MP’s enthusiasm and energy for the role of leader of the nation, as he quickly speaks across a multitude of subjects to a receptive business-leaders audience on his home electorate turf.
There’s no dissenting voices and the messages are welcomed, especially from companies that have been doing it hard economically these past four years.
Luxon is quick on his feet and can reply with detail and authority on many diverse topics, as you’d expect from a Prime Minister, but the ability to do so is developed usually over a longer period by politicians, not a mere four years.
It’s been a while since this writer has followed a PM around on a morning’s appointments and Luxon’s performance on the first day of November was as good as any of his accomplished predecessors, namely John Key and Helen Clark, who I’d covered up-close on similar assignments in the past.
Those two, also, had had longer to groom themselves in preparation for the most important political job in the land.
The difference between Key and Clark, long-serving popular Prime Ministers, and Luxon, is the latter is more naturally at ease engaging on a personal level.
He gives the impression he’s genuinely interested in the person he’s talking with and gives attention to who they are and what they’re doing. One gets the sense he likes people.
“Twelve months into the job and I’m incredibly optimistic,” Luxon opened his speech, adding he’s grateful for the opportunity to lead New Zealand and to “make a difference”.
“That’s why I came into politics.”
“We have fantastic people. I have a great, great hope that we can come together, and my goal is to be the best small, advanced country in the world,” Luxon said.
We’ve heard Luxon and his Government colleagues over the past year daily critiquing the previous Labour-led administration for the “incredibly tough time” and that they’d “inherited a mess” economically, but his speech to the Business East Tamaki audience didn’t linger long in the past and was firmly fixed on the future.
He talked of the importance of New Zealand getting back and better connected with countries it has traditionally good diplomatic ties and can do trade with, especially in the Indo-Pacific region, which will lead to greater economic prosperity for New Zealanders, especially if we can export and sell more of our products and services to nations that are quickly developing and lifting people out of subsistence living into greater-consuming middle classes in the near future.
Luxon described New Zealand as a country “with a lot of abundant natural resources” such as gas and “sun, wind and rain – high levels of renewable energy” and of the desire to harness the sources and develop those cleaner sectors.
There were the now well-established political pillars to “rebuild the economy, restore law and order”, the “social contract with one another”, and to “deliver better public services”, and he’s pleased the “financial fiscal discipline” his coalition Government has instituted has got “inflation down, and that’s bringing down interest rates, leading to more money in people’s pockets”.
But Luxon acknowledges he knows it’s only the beginning and there’s still a lot more work to do in creating greater economic prosperity and stability.
He also told the business leaders, and probably because most of them have children at school and studying at tertiary levels, of the Government’s commitment to improving education by “getting back to basics”, improving students’ attendance rates by “getting them back to school” and having easy-to-understand “structured literacy and maths” learning.
The other subjects he touched on before fielding questions from attendees was the focus on “removing red tape” in bureaucracy, especially when it’s “too slow” in this country to build a house, looking overseas for investment to partner with to build public infrastructure, and of his colleague, the “Minister of Everything” Simeon Brown’s Local Water Done Well strategy.
One question from the floor was on the impending election in the United States, to which Luxon diplomatically answered without naming either of the presidential candidates’ names or parties and focused on the two nations longstanding friendly relationship – “irrespective of who is the winner” – and that overall New Zealand is improving its trade – “our actual exports are increasing by 18 per cent a year”.
Once he left the stage, Luxon took some time to say his goodbyes to many of the attendees – an example of his interest in what people are doing – before heading off to TransNet in East Tamaki, a large and successful energy-sector business, for a tour and meet and greet.
There, he also faced the national news media pack for his daily “stand-up” where he fields their questions on the subjects de jour, Friday’s being I Am Hope’s Mike King’s supposed inappropriate comments about alcohol and drugs earlier this week, the just-signed trade agreement with the Gulf Co-operation Council, and the large cannabis busts the police successfully executed in Auckland recently that led to the arrest and deporting of 11 Vietnamese illegal immigrants.
While the national news hounds kept up their questioning of Luxon on the first and last subjects, as they’re required to do by their respective news desks, the Times asked the Prime Minister what does he think of the people who’ll march up Picton Street in Howick in their gumboots for the I Am Hope charity led by its local representative, Howick resident and former Kiwis rugby league captain Richie Barnett.
“I just say thank you to all those people who are supporting them,” Luxon said.
“I was impressed by the business community in East Tamaki getting behind I Am Hope. I came from a business breakfast there this morning with several hundred people and it was good to see many small and medium-sized businesses supporting I Am Hope in their gumboots and it’s fantastic they’re recognising mental health is an issue for their workforce.”
