Luxon says he will not touch the present Government’s abortion laws, but why should I trust him?
After all, Luxon refused to release to the public a King’s Counsel report into Sam Uffindell, a National MP who admitted to beating a fellow student and being a “bully” at King’s College. A woman alleged Uffindell was “an aggressive bully” who once pounded on her locked bedroom door, screaming obscenities, until she fled through her window. In 2004, the flat inhabited by Uffindell had a coat hook displaying women’s underwear.
This is the man Luxon is protecting. As I see it, it would be reasonable for New Zealanders not to trust him.
While protecting a man who has admitted to a violent attack, Luxon wants to be tough on crime. He hyper-focuses on gangs. After commenting on the Roe v Wade decision, he told New Zealanders women are most worried about gangs alongside failing health and education systems.
When asked last year why Luxon thought young people were turning to gangs, he claimed, “If you’re sitting in a garage in South Auckland with your two brothers and you’re thinking about life and where you’re going, consciously or unconsciously, the gang life looks pretty attractive.
“The bottom line is I’m not apologising for having serious, substantive conversations about what causes crime”, Luxon added. Luxon has proposed to separate young offenders from their families and lock them up in military boot camps. He has put forward no evidence that this will reduce youth offending.
It’s rich for Luxon to suggest that the causes of crime are young people joining gangs as a result of sitting with their brothers in a South Auckland garage while the National Party houses a private school, wealthy, white perpetrator of a violent attack.
I am not convinced Luxon will serve all New Zealanders. His other actions strengthen my belief.
In 2019, when Luxon was chief executive, Air NZ attempted to trademark the logo for its in-flight magazine Kia Ora, an act the Māori Council described as “cultural appropriation”.
At Rātana this year, Luxon, standing in opposition to co-governance, called the debate “divisive and immature”. At Waitangi, he claimed that Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the colonisation that followed was a “little experiment” that led to “a 21st-century success story”.
In 2021, Stats NZ reported that Māori life expectancy was 7.5 years less than Pākehā. Luxon will scrap the Māori Health Authority. Who is this a success story for?
At other times, Luxon has gunned for unemployed young people saying he would end their “free ride” and not “waste human potential”. Even if his policies were effective, the way he describes people is dehumanising.
His actions haven’t been particularly supportive of queer people either. He claimed there are only “two biological genders”; described Judith Collins ridiculing trans people as “Judith is being Judith”; and said Posie Parker, whose event was attended by neo-Nazis in Melbourne, shouldn’t be stopped from hosting her anti-trans rally in New Zealand just because people “don’t like what they say”.
Who does Luxon stand for? I don’t find Luxon trustworthy, likeable, or reasonable. I don’t feel that Luxon has my back. Luxon’s politicking feels mean-spirited, and I don’t believe New Zealanders are willing to put up with him for three years as prime minister.
Shaneel Shavneel Lal (they/them) was instrumental in the bill to ban conversion therapy in New Zealand. They are a law and psychology student, model and influencer.
