A Good Week for Luxon

Last week was a good one for Christopher Luxon. The prime minister was on solid ground. He was in a place where, for him, the sun does shine. He is a businessman who knows how business works. He has contacts and if he hasn’t he knows how to attract them. He knows that improving the wealth of this country is in good part through improving infrastructure. He knows where the available money to do that is and he wants some of it. He knows how to pitch for it.

For too long this country has been hamstrung: bound up in excessive red tape and regulations. We are held back by having governments with an insular mindset and a fear of thinking or doing anything outside the square. We are quite capable of it. Think of our historic number-eight-wire mentality, our innovative approach and our ability to create new opportunities and ideas. Think Rocket Lab.

What we don’t always have is the required expertise and certainly not the necessary funds to enable the projects we want. This is where Luxon’s business expertise is vital to ‘getting things done’ as he puts it. This is an area, along with trade, where he is a man on a mission. These are the two areas where he sees growth for the country can best be achieved. He’s right. A small country like ours needs both to prosper.

After some dismal poll numbers Luxon needs some runs on the board. The infrastructure summit might just be the place where he scores some. There are reports of an Italian firm showing interest in building the Northern Expressway. It is the long game Luxon is playing. Catches, as sometimes happens in cricket, are not always easily made.

It is encouraging to see Labour showing signs of coming to the party by talking of loosening their policies around foreign investment. Barbara Edmonds is sounding like she might like a slice of the infrastructure cake Luxon is cooking, but in the next breath she talks about involving Māori as a partnership in what has been decided. Ginny Andersen on the other hand, talking to Mike Hosking, doesn’t think foreign investment will have any effect on the country’s economic growth or prosperity. Chris Hipkins doesn’t think hospitals and schools should be privately owned.

It is this narrow minded, archaic, unionised thinking that is holding the country back and has done so for decades. We need to free ourselves of the self-imposed shackles and invite the world in to help with the growth and prosperity we so desperately need. It is past time we let the world know that we are open for business.

Luxon is the best-placed politician to do it. Like Trump, he is not a politician, he is a businessman. If he really wanted more runs on the board he could be more Trump like and get a DOGE operation going aimed at cleaning out the Public Service here. Voters on the right of the political spectrum vote on the policies a party campaigns on and, when it’s elected, expects them to be acted upon.

This is exactly what Trump has done on the domestic front and Luxon would be wise to follow suit. Trump has virtually destroyed the Democrats. They are leaderless, legless and devoid of vision. They are singing from the same songbook that lost them the election. Luxon, if he had the necessary willingness, could do exactly that to Labour and their coalition comrades.

A headline has just popped up on my screen from the Listener, that magazine of left-wing excellence. It reads ‘How can Luxon sell New Zealand if he can’t sell himself’. That would be one of the dumbest headlines I’ve seen. It is simply facile. The two are completely unrelated as I hope I have shown in this piece.

He can sell New Zealand internationally through his business acumen. Where he has problems selling himself is domestically. There is an answer though. Luxon should adopt the mantra Phil Goff gave Trump and become a dangerous idiot.