Christopher Luxon sat down with Senior Political Reporter, Thomas Coughlan. Video / Mark Mitchell
National leader Christopher Luxon thinks there's merit in Act leader David Seymour's idea of running a ruler over every single part of the public service, but he won't say whether references to the Treaty of Waitangi should be expunged from our statute books.
In his weekly interview with the Herald, Luxon said he liked the idea of zero-basing the public service, meaning each part of the Government would be forced to justify its existence, and the size of its operations.
"I have a major issue with the cost that's going into our civil service at the moment. I think we're adding a huge amount of centralisation, a massive amount of bureaucracy and we're not getting better outcomes," Luxon said.
"You're seeing it because the Government has reduced a lot of targets and measures that the previous National government had in place to make sure that everything you added was actually creating value for New Zealanders," he said.
Under almost any conceivable election outcome, National would need Act if it were to form a Government, meaning at least some of Act's policy platform would likely find its way into a National-led Government.
Luxon wouldn't confirm if zero-basing the public service was one such policy, but he said he would "look into" the idea.
Luxon was less keen on another of Act's policies: a proposal to remove references to the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation and to axe co-Governance arrangements.
National leader Christopher Luxon reckons curbs to public service growth aren't a bad idea. Photo / Mark Mitchell.
"No society where people have different political rights based on birth has ever succeeded," Seymour said, explaining the policy in a speech last week.
Luxon would not rule-in or rule-out passing legislation to repeal references to the Treaty in other laws.
"Our view has been pretty simple, you know, in terms of co-governance what we don't want is a separate system - we want one system," Luxon said.
"We want to be able to have innovation in that and we are very clear in that,"
Luxon said National still believed in devolution and local-ism, "we believe people closest to it could solve those problems".
"I think the Treaty is important and we acknowledge the Treaty, there's no doubt about that," Luxon said.
He said policy that might emerge from coalition talks was "hypothetical - not answering that today".
Luxon was also asked to confirm National's previous policy of repealing the new top rate of income tax introduced by Labour - 39 per cent on income over $180,000.
Luxon said he was still talking with finance spokesman Simon Bridges about where National would sit on the issue.
"I think that's a really big thing, I think that it is something practically when you have a cost of living crisis on, that we should be thinking very strongly about tax indexation and other things," Luxon said.
Core Crown tax revenue rose from $76 billion in 2017 to $98b last year, with the tax take rising even after taking inflation into account.
