Editorial: Rundown Premier House and broken NZDF plane embarrassing look for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon

EDITORIAL

With a dilapidated house and broken aeroplane, it’s been a bad week for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s optics on the global stage.

The former Air New Zealand boss was forced to hitch a commercial ride on his old airline to make talks with other Southeast Asian leaders in Melbourne on Tuesday after New Zealand’s version of Air Force One broke down - again.

It was a humiliating look for a leader of a nation.

Major international media outlets, including far-reaching news wires Reuters and AFP, picked up on the story, which made headlines in major outlets and newspapers like The Guardian, Sky News Australia, and the South China Morning Post.

“Luxon’s flight was scheduled to take off from the national capital Wellington on Tuesday morning but a pre-flight maintenance check on the aircraft found a major electrical fault,” Reuters reported.

Luxon’s Boeing 757 was unable to take off on Tuesday due to a technical fault - the latest instance of the old Defence Force planes disrupting diplomatic travel plans.

Defence Minister Judith Collins said the situation was “embarrassing” while Finance Minister Nicola Willis accepted it was “not ideal”.

But the leader’s plane woes weren’t his only worries, with him saying the Wellington residence that comes with the nation’s top job is uninhabitable.

Premier House, a private property bought for the Prime Minister’s official residence when the Government shifted its base to Wellington in 1865, has fallen into such a state of disrepair that one report found it needed a $30 million makeover.

Premier House in Wellington, as seen in 2015. Photo / Mark Mitchell

In the meantime, Luxon has been shunning the draughty, historically-listed building and was claiming a $52,000 optional accommodation allowance to stay in his own city apartment.

When that came to light last week, he announced that he would stop taking the allowance and repay what he had claimed since becoming Prime Minister.

The issues of a leaky old house overdue for renovations, which is supposed to host official functions with visiting world leaders and dignitaries, and a grounded, unreliable plane all add up to New Zealand looking like an impoverished, isolated backwater.

And while the economic aftershocks of the Covid-19 pandemic linger on, with a cost of living crisis, government cutbacks and mortgage hikes, surely the Prime Minister should be presenting a well-heeled, well-resourced figure to the rest of the world.

Premier House must be fixed while the old military planes are put out to pasture and a realistic and reliable solution is enlisted.

Otherwise, New Zealand and its Prime Minister risk becoming the embarrassing butt of all jokes at future summits and global get-togethers.