Luxon said he did not know how much money had been spent on the lessons. As the funding came from the party’s Parliamentary funds, which are exempt from the Official Information Act, the figure will never be known unless National or someone else chooses to release it.
As recently as this month, Luxon said that “in the real world outside of Wellington and outside the bubble of MPs, people who want to learn te reo or want to learn any other education actually pay for it themselves”.
On Monday, Luxon defended the spending, revealed in a story from the Australian Associated Press, saying the difference is that the money for his lessons came from discretionary funding set aside for the leader of the opposition to fund their working of their office. This was distinct from what National is opposing in Government, which is bonus payments for staff where te reo Māori proficiency is not necessarily core to the job they do.
Luxon said he believed learning the language was important for his job.
“I actually think it would make me do my job better,” he said.
“I’m someone who genuinely wished that I had learned te reo as a young person and I never had that opportunity to do so,” he said.
“I am wanting to try and use te reo and it’s difficult because sometimes it is intimidating, but the bottom line is that I’m trying,” Luxon said.
Prime Minister Chris Luxon speaking at yesterday's post-Cabinet press conference. Photo / Marty Melville
Luxon was speaking after Monday’s Cabinet meeting. He was coy when asked whether he had discussed a paper to kill Labour’s Auckland Light Rail project, which the Government has promised to scrap. He would not say whether the Government would confirm this side of Christmas that the scheme had been axed.
The trip will be Luxon’s first official foreign trip as Prime Minister (he made a visit to the country in a personal capacity last week to watch his daughter graduate from university in Melbourne).
Luxon will be meeting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who he said he knows well from his time at Air New Zealand. Albanese was Transport Minister in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Government of 2007-2013. Luxon joined Air New Zealand in 2011 and became chief executive the next year.
Luxon said it was “critical” the new Government got off to the right start with Australia.
“As I said before, I’m determined to bring new urgency, new intensity to our international engagements and relationships and that starts with Australia. That is a relationship that I never want to ever take for granted,” Luxon said.
Chris Hipkins took two RNZAF as far as Manila when he visited China earlier this year - the second was in case the first broke down. Photo / Thomas Coughlan
Closer to home, Luxon and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced a former Prime Minister Bill English would lead a review into the sustainability of Kāinga Ora, the Government’s public housing agency.
The agency has been at the forefront of the former Government’s impressive public housing build programme, which had seen many older single-unit homes torn down and more dense, multi-unit homes built in their place. More than 12,000 new homes were built by Kāinga Ora and Community Housing Providers under the former Government.
The document showed Kāinga Ora’s deteriorating financial position, largely as a result of spiralling construction costs, which are not offset by increased income.
Back then, officials presented a cost comparison of what Kāinga Ora’s building programme would cost comparing the latest 2022 economic model with its “previous benchmark” from 2018, before the recent spike in inflation.
Using 2018 economic assumptions, the average interest cost per year for each additional state housing place would be $14,457. The revised 2022 model used by Kāinga Ora had the average interest cost of a new place at $29,339.
Bishop said he could not release the latest “commercially sensitive” advice on Kāinga Ora’s debt, but said a recent public review found the agency’s debt had grown from $2.7 billion in 2018 to $12.3 billion in June of this year.
“Advice released last year suggests that if Kāinga Ora continues on its current trajectory, their debt would reach $28.9 billion by 2033.”
Bishop said Kāinga Ora was the country’s biggest landlord and that “its operations have a significant impact on the Crown’s books” in justifying the need for a review.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
