The Country 14/11/25: Christopher Luxon talks to Jamie Mackay

The Prime Minister talks about country music, his experience at the show, the latest polls, capital gains tax, asset sales, and Mark Mitchell.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We go country on the country on a Friday, especially
for our first guest, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who absolutely
loves country music. Who's your hot artist at the moment, PM.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Well, there's so many, but you know, Zach Bryan's really good.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
And we had a great performer this morning, Age singing
Strong Country Strong, which was pretty awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
She was great and great Kiwi Kiwi.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Young persons come in loves country music too, so I'm
just part of my education member. I said to you
had come on your show every week if we could
talk an upgrade New Zealands understanding your country music from
country and western and all the twangy stuff into the.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Well, I need to get a shameless plug in for
our iHeart country station.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
It's pretty good. You listen to that, Yes I have,
I have.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I have tuned into it a few times. But thus
us younger kids these days, we just go off our
Spotify playlists, so we don't we're not sitting in the
but you know, me being it with the millennials and
all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
You know, yeah, rock and roll and slightly right the
issues of the day. You know what amuses me about
your politicians as you have people standing behind you, who
officially there just to not in the background. Today, we've
got Grant McCullum.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
He's one of our best nodders.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Well, Nichola Willis. Not Nichola Willis, will try Nicola Griggs here,
and I'm thinking I would sooner have Nicola in the background.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Nicola.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
We've got Mike Butterick, we could have Miles Anderson. We
should have had a whole quartete not us. Yeah, yeah,
they're really good. But Grant's excellent at it. I mean
he is affected that very well.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Well, yeah, affected some political skills. As a focus group
told you that not as are effective in the background.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
I got no idea. I got no idea. But how
good is this? This is good?

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Like it's a classic, you know, stinking hot Canary Day,
just cranking up, which is great. And I've just been
wandering around the show and it's been really awesome. People
in good shape.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
So this must bring back memories for you, your christ
Church more and bred. You were to come to the
show every year as a kid.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, I did.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
And I think I said to you earlier this morning,
was that, you know, my grandmother used to work at
Burks Catering and it was a big, big, big week
for her as well at the show, and it was awesome.
Brought back a lot of great memories actually, and I
was actually even this week just you know, great anticipation
of coming at you.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
It's really good.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Okay, Let's look at some of the issues of the day.
And I know you hate poles. You're a bit like
Jim Bolger. You'll say, buger the poles. But the latest
Talbot Mills poll has labor at thirty eight percent. Do
you believe that?

Speaker 3 (02:17):
I just say to you, I think when people take
a I don't comment on the poles because there's a
hell of a lot of different numbers that we you know,
and I've just got to say, focused on what I've
got to do, which is sort.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
The country out.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
But you know, when you think about Hipkins and Martam
Davidson and Debi Nowaapaka and Rawori and you know, Maam Chloe,
and then you think about the two new independents that
are in the mix, that's going to be hell of
a government if ever got through.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
So I think that's your motivation to avoid that.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Do you think some of the reason for the uptick
in labor because there is to be fair. If you
average all the poles out, they are creeping up a
week bit. Their potential coalition partners are going the other
way with just cause too, I might add, But do
you think some of it do people like, for instance,
the capital gains tax?

Speaker 3 (03:00):
No, I mean people's that's a tax on every single
business in the country, right because if you've got to
operate out of a commercial premise, that's a cost that
you've got to pass on. That's a tax on every
key we saver account because your own businesses and they've.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Got to deal with that cost.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
But that's also a tax on a hard working tradee
who's actually decided to buy a badge, you know, or
you know, mum and dad have got one rental property
to help support them in their retirement. So you know,
I just think think the answer is the tax their
way is the taxi way out of it. And what
was interesting to me was there's no change to what
they're doing. They just want to go back to what
they've always done, which is spend more, tax more, borrow more.

(03:34):
And you know, we're cleaning up that ungodly mess because
they lifted spending bay eighty four percent and put us
in the hole they've you know, the borrowing went from
sixty billion to one hundred and eighty billion. We had
to write an interest bill out the other day. I
know the Farmer's listening got a big interest bills, but man,
we had to write out nine to ten billion dollar
bill the other day. That's five to need in hospitals
that I could be building every year that I can't
because we've got debt, just the interest on that debt.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
So if you've got to broaden of the tax space,
and that's a separate argument, but if you were to
accruise some money surely the best way to spend it
on health would be to put it into the health
budget rather than give every man and his dog three
free visits to a doctu.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, you and I don't need a free visit, right,
And so the other thing that we've done yesterday is
effective February, will be saying if you've got regular medicines,
for example, we're going to let you have a prescription
repeat for up to twelve months, meaning you don't have
to go back to your doctor every three months.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
And get a new prescription. Now, that alone saves two
doctors visits a year and labor won't support that.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
That then frees up a hell of a lot of
doctors to actually see people that are on their lists,
and they're waiting lists, they can get into.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
A doctor in a much easier way. So there's it
just doesn't make sense. And the other thing was.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
There was this crazy policy they had about something called
a future funds where they were going to put all
the assets into but then that those assets generates six
hundred million dollars of dividends and that pays for some
of your health and education anyway, So you know that
the dog don't hard and they're just not economically listerate.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Those guys.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
I want to talk to you about asset sales. You
have indicated a keenness to fill the coffers some asset sales.
You have got a problem. What do you do with
the problem?

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Like Winston Well, I mean, I think what I'm trying
to say is, you know, you've got to ask yourself
the question. You know, you you know farmers have balance sheets.
Everyone has a balance sheet, and the question is have
you got your cash tied up in the best possible things?
That's all I'm saying. So if you look at something
like a let's say Land Corp. You know, there's got
one hundred and forty farms and there. I think they're

(05:24):
about two point four billion dollars. They've bred about a.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Two percent return.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
You know, if you think about the two point four
billion just stuck into a S and P five hundred
index funded at twelve percent return?

Speaker 2 (05:35):
What is that difference that ten percent?

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Are you going to put Parmu on the block.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
No, I'm just using that as an illustration. Say well,
is that actually be a conversation where you could legitimately
say is that better?

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Is that better?

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Is that cash working harder for New zealand doing something else?
Because that means we could build a hospital or a
school or a road that we can't do today because
the capital is tied up in things that aren't generating
good enough returns. So that's all I'm trying to say is,
let's let's be a bit more intelligent. Let's be a
bit more stateg it more sophisticated. If you want to
have a conversation about asset recycling, let's do that. But
let's also not just go back to the old hash

(06:07):
hashed up sort of political.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
You're pretty much hamstrung though, because a couple of things
that you would really like to do, some asset sales
and raging, raising the age of national super they will
not happen as long as Winston's drawing breath, and you
won't can't govern without Winston.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Well, let's see, I mean we we are well, we
had a very differentive opinion on foreign buyer band, remember
as well, right, and we actually got to a better
place through having a conversation where I think Whenston came
off his position, we came off our position and we
actually got to a good place. So but I think
we should make the case. And I think you know,
you know, I think you know, when you look at
you know, as a national party, we feel like we've

(06:43):
got everything we campaigned on done and you know, being
done and delivered. The two things were foreign buy a
band and lifting this retirement age of sixty seven. I
think that makes sense because people are living in a
year and a half longer every ten years in this country.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
That goes on.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
It's also the sensible thing financially and UK and Australia
all at sixty seven. And it's also I'm looking at
the demo demography of it all and say, well, you
do it in a phased way, you do it in
a sensible way, so it doesn't impact people today, but
you'd have time to adjust to it. We should have
that kind of conversation because otherwise we're talking again tens
of billions of dollars we don't get to spend helping

(07:17):
keys get ahead.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Perhaps the final one for you, we've got Grant McCullum
nodding vigorously in the background, going he's just coming back
and coming back into shop now to do some nodding.
But I want to pay tribute if I can, to
one of your ministers who I think has had the
toughest gig in the past few weeks, and that's Mark Mitchell.
Obviously the controversy around the police, and also the great
work he's done because he seems to be always on

(07:40):
the ground as emergency management minister.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, he's a good personal friend of mine, but he's
also our great minister and he's done a brilliant job
because he's one of those great operational leaders and he
loves to you.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Know, you'll watch him. There'll be a potential emergency.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
He's down on the West coast before the events actually happened,
he's engaging with the local government, he's talking to the
local civil defense folk. And if you think about the
handling of say the Porthills fire here in Canterbury, or
you think about the potential flooding event that we had
and weather event we had in Dunedin, we had two
very similar events in both those cases and each time
they were handled much better. So now he's a good

(08:15):
man and he's importantly a good leader.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Prime Minister Christopher Lux and thanks as always for your
time and enjoy the rest of the day at the
christ Chain we have fun or the Canterbury a MP
Royal show.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
We all do you take care