Do Media Think Luxon Is Lying?

Jacinda Ardern can do no wrong in the eyes of some mainstream media, making her government’s list of failures of no interest to them despite the public emphatically rejecting a further term of financial mismanagement, cost blowouts and social restructuring.

Doubtless, the MSM will give the coalition no quarter for correcting problems which MSM will try but can’t realistically blame on Covid. The truth is the issues facing the current government are a result of incompetence and poor management.

Luxon identified problems the coalition government wants to correct:

• Education:
  • Student school attendance is 45%;
  • Since 2000 our 15-year-olds slipped from 4th in the developed world for maths to 19th.
• Health:
  • A few years ago, 250 people were waiting more than 12 months to receive a first specialist appointment, now there are more than 4,000;
  • The 2023 Labour Government did not include Pharmac funding for the millions of dollars required to ensure Kiwis continue to receive medicines they rely on.
• Welfare:
  • 70,000 more people are on a Jobseeker unemployment benefit today than there were in 2017. That’s like adding every man, woman and child in Napier on to the Jobseeker benefit in just six years;
  • The 2,000 young people receiving a youth payment or young parent payment, are now expected to spend an average of 24 years of their working life on a benefit – up 50% in three years.
• Transport:
  • Ministry of Transport estimates a $200 billion shortfall between the previous government’s promises and the money set aside;
  • The recently cancelled interisland ferry replacement, canned because of uncontrolled cost blowout.
• Housing:
  • Housing NZ (Kainga Ora) forecasts relied on the sale of 10,200 homes in the coming years just to balance its books, even while Kainga Ora’s debt is set to rise to $29 billion.
• Government Spending:
  • Government spending is up 84% since 2017;
  • National debt climbed from $5 billion to a staggering projection of well over $100 billion.
• NZ Economy:
  • New Zealand’s economy is now less productive than vast swathes of the former Eastern Bloc, including Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Lithuania.
• Migration:
  • Median full-time worker in Australia now earns $20,000 more a year than is the case in New Zealand;
  • Last year a record net 44,500 New Zealanders left the country.

Luxon’s priorities:

“I wake up in the morning, I’m ruthlessly focused on

• rebuilding the economy,
• restoring law and order, and
• delivering better schools and hospitals.”

Christopher Luxon

Achievements made by the coalition Government in their first 81 days:

• We’ve abolished the Ute Tax, to finally deliver farmers and tradies relief after years of disrespect. 
• We’ve started cancelling the blanket speed limit reductions that are slowing Kiwis down. 
• We’ve stopped Auckland Light Rail, which after six years, cost taxpayers more than $200 million and didn’t deliver a single metre of track.
• We’re repealing the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax – gone on the 1^st of July. 
• We’ve cancelled the planned hikes to fuel tax which would have taken motorists further backwards.
• We cancelled Let’s Get Wellington Moving because frankly it wasn’t moving. 
• We’ve abolished Fair Pay Agreements and brought back 90 day trials – giving businesses the confidence to hire someone who needs a fresh start instead of letting so many Kiwis spend their life on a benefit.
• We’ve returned the Reserve Bank to a single focus on price stability, after years of rampant inflation and hopeless economic management. 
• We’ve delivered more than $7 billion in savings, so we can deliver Kiwis tax relief they desperately deserve – not more wasteful spending. 
• We’ve repealed Labour’s broken RMA reforms that made it harder and more expensive to build anything, just at a time that we need to get our economy moving again.  
• We’ve banned cellphones in schools – and we can already see the impact that’s having to keep kids focused and reduce online bullying.
• We’ve made sure every kid in every school gets an hour a day of reading, an hour of writing and an hour of maths – and appointed an expert group to redesign the maths and English curriculum by the end of the year so we can teach the basics brilliantly.  
• We’ve begun disestablishing Te Pukenga – after the last government spent hundreds of millions of dollars even while staff morale collapsed and regional needs suffered. 
• We commissioned an independent review into the woeful state of Kainga Ora led by Sir Bill English – and judging by the news this morning over their forecasts you can see exactly why we were so alarmed. 
• We’ve progressed work on a third medical school with Waikato University, because we need more home-grown doctors.
• We’ve taken the first steps to extend free breast cancer screening up to age 74.
• Soon we’ll introduce legislation to disestablish the Maori Health Authority – because we want to see better results for Maori, not more bureaucracy.
• We deployed 200 additional security personnel which has reduced violent incidents in hospital emergency departments, keeping staff and patients safe. 
• We’re bringing in tough new laws going after gangs and illegal firearms. And if you’re in a gang, I’m telling you, we’re coming after you.
• We’re ending taxpayer funding for cultural reports, which became a cottage industry to reduce criminals’ sentences, even as victims didn’t get the support they needed. 
• We’ve abolished Labour’s prisoner reduction target – because after six years of a government that let violent crime soar even while they deliberately emptied New Zealand’s prisons, Kiwis knew we needed a change. 
• And just this week, we repealed Labour’s undemocratic and unaccountable Three Waters reforms. Our government will restore local control of water after Labour tried so hard to take it away.

Luxon didn’t comment on reversing government department use of Te Reo in communication and signage, but MSM are fiercely aligned to maintaining the status quo, as are some governmental department leaders.

“I want to assure you that the organisation remains absolutely committed to continuing to build our cultural competency and our partnership with Maori.

“Our work in this space will continue and be expanded.”

She had told the board that staff were worried, so she would “reinforce” the commitment to a Maori partnership strategy.

NZTA chief executive Nicole Rosie

Make no mistake, our coalition Government is at war on bad policy, wasteful spending and consequently bureaucratic idiots. Luxon’s unsaid message to government employees standing in the way of good government policy is to shape up or ship out. There is too much at stake to be complacent.