National Party leader Christopher Luxon with the first cheese roll he's ever made. Photo / Derek Cheng
National Party leader Christopher Luxon with the first cheese roll he's ever made. Photo / Derek Cheng
Christopher Luxon spent the morning in Invercargill launching a plan to make New Zealand more attractive for international students and turning his hand to making a cheese roll.
The National Party leader was on cruise-control, like a boxer in a match where he’s ahead enough to know he’ll win as long as he keeps doing what he’s doing and successfully fends off any attacks.
He breezed through his agenda, working a 50-person room at the Southern Institute of Technology for 15 minutes before heading to Majestic Tea Room to make cheese rolls, and then to Transport World for a tour of the museum.
International education used to be a $3.7 billion export before the pandemic but is yet to fully rebound.
Most student visas currently take almost nine weeks to be processed, and when the students get here, they can only work up to 20 hours a week.
National wants a 14-day processing time for those who pay a fee to jump the queue, and a work allowance of 25 hours a week.
The fee would be set by Immigration NZ and spent on enough resources to ensure it can meet the 14-day target. But to be competitive, the fee should be capped so that a New Zealand application is 10 per cent cheaper than an Australian one.
Luxon is telling us ad nauseum that it’s all about outcome, about delivery.
“This is a Government that cannot deliver a pizza.”
So how is Immigration NZ going to rip through these extra visa applications, especially when National wants cuts from the public service and with INZ staff already under-resourced and under pressure?
And what if the cap means the fee can’t be high enough for INZ to recover all the processing costs?
“If you’re gutting the backroom staff, what we’re doing is we’re making sure we can deliver frontline services, but we want every resource focused on delivering outcomes,” Luxon told reporters.
“I want everybody going to work at Immigration New Zealand today understanding what they are there to do. I don’t want distractions. I don’t want bureaucracy. I don’t need people wasting time on projects that we’re not supporting going forward.
“I’m very confident.”
It’s a line Luxon often reaches for.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon samples his own culinary effort. Photo / Derek Cheng
Asked about his level of trustworthiness, pretty trustworthy or super trustworthy, he opted for the latter, unsurprisingly.
Was he treating New Zealanders with contempt, as Labour leader Chris Hipkins describes it, by repeatedly refusing to release how National arrived at its revenue numbers in its tax package, described variably by economists as plausible, optimistic, and even “bullshit”.
Luxon did not think he was treating New Zealanders with contempt, unsurprisingly.
“We’ve been incredibly straight up about how we actually fund our tax plan,” he said very confidently.
At Majestic Tea Room, his next stop, he rated his first-ever attempt at making a cheese roll 10 out of 10, unsurprisingly. He clearly saw it as a more successful endeavour than milking goats on Wednesday: he had rated himself a 3 out of 10 for that.
The Herald sampled the final product and confirmed that it was edible.
Majestic staff gave it scores or at least 8.5. Maybe too much filling, one said. Maybe toasted crispy enough, said another.
Two staff told the Herald they were voting for Luxon because they thought National was more business-friendly.
One said she didn’t care about Luxon’s refusal to release the secret costings. She said, in short, that she had confidence in his confidence, that there was a “method to the madness”.
National Party leader inspecting an old Anglia at Transport World in Invercargill. Photo / Derek Cheng
Luxon then had his fondness for classic cars tickled during a visit to Transport World.
He paused at an old Anglia, which local MP Penny Simmons told him was exactly the same as her first car as a young university student.
Luxon’s first car was a 1962 Riley Elf, which was written off when he was a sixth former when someone backed into him while he was driving to see Amanda, his girlfriend at the time and now wife.
It was worth $1000, he said, and he’d been offered $5000 for it the week before, which he had turned down.
He now has a 1966 Riley Elf, which he keeps in Christchurch and still drives when he’s down there.
The museum also had a number of old jukeboxes, where he asked others what their first music purchases were. (His were Grease and Saturday Night Fever).
By just after 11am he’d stepped into museum’s boardroom, at the board’s invitation, before heading to the airport, bringing his brief visit to an end.
Confident, comfortable, at ease. At this point, with National maintaining its lead in the polls and less than four weeks to go, he doesn’t seem to need to do much more than that.
As long as he avoids being knocked out.
Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery and is a former deputy political editor.
