Barry Soper: Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent on Luxon justifying his absence from global meeting on Ukraine

The Prime Minister's justifying his noted absence from a global meeting on Ukraine, due to the time difference. 

Coalition of the Willing members gathered for virtual talks overnight, to embolden President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ahead of a meeting at the White House, for a number of them. 

Many leaders attended, including Australia, France and the UK.

Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper says Luxon was invited to attend the discussion - and officials joined the call in his place. 

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We'll get you some more of the Grant Robertson interview
from Q and A shortly thirteen away from five and
Barry so Per, senior political correspondence.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
With I say, Barry, good afternoon, Heather.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Do you really think the reason that Luxon wasn't on
that phone call is because he was sleeping?

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well, I've got a piece of audio that where he
explained that there's a news conference which is just being
held at the moment. But you know, I'm sure many
listeners watched the great event unfold in Alaska over the
weekend as I did, and really I think it was
a triumph for Vladimir Putin over Donald Trump. I mean,

(00:36):
Putin came away with exactly what he wanted. Donald Trump
now saying that when he sits down with Vladimir Zelenski
in Washington tomorrow, then he's got to agree with what
came out of that particular meeting, And we don't really
know exactly what came out of that meeting, so no doubt. Well,
no wonder why the European leaders have now banded together

(01:00):
and a show of force that I can't recall ever
having seen, and all getting on airplanes and heading off
to Washington themselves to give Zelensky some sort of at
least moral backing that he didn't have when he was
humiliated by Trump and JD Vance in the Oval Office.

(01:20):
So they'll have their meeting with each other, but the
other European leaders will join later. But the sounds of
things and let's just hope we don't see a repeat
in the Oval Office that we saw in February this year.
Luxon was invited to attend that zoom meeting of the
Coalition of the Willing, as you said, overnight, but says

(01:43):
officials took his place because he said of the meeting's time.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
This one was at one am in the morning. It
goes for two to three hours. And then I'm on
a media around this morning and obviously down here for
Cabinet this morning as well, so I was well represented
by officials. But you know, what is encouraging is the
progress that we are seeing the fact that there is
conversations have led with President Trump but also the European
leaders are But again, our message is pretty clear. Russia
could stop this today if it wished, by having a

(02:09):
cease fire immediately on land sing any.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Thing is I don't see how Luxeon would have added
anything to it or got anything more out of it
by not being on the Zoom meeting. So I can't
blame him.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
You don't think that he wasn't part of it because
he's trying to avoid being anti Trump and this is
an anti Trump.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well indeed, it would have been an antie Trump meeting,
there's no doubt about that. Basically a meeting to come
to an agreement that Trump can't be the bully that
was seeing him being.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Is that not the real reason?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Well, who knows, But like you know, it was a
terrible time when he had, as he said, media rounds
on the cabinet meeting this morning, to be up all
night talking to leaders where he's got officials that can
do exactly the same job and report back to him
in the morning.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Okay, what do you make of the moves to build
a speed up the building consents?

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well, you know it's been long said that building a
standalone house in New Zealand takes fifty percent. It's more
expensive here than it is in Australia, so something has
to be done. And I know that you're having Chris Penk,
the Building Minister, on after five o'clock but there are
shortcuts and I guess liability that rate pairs can find

(03:24):
themselves facing if a company goes bally up and the
components they want to be able to single out of
that to make it not so expensive for rate pairs,
not making them liable. So Pink says, the changes will
see less liability for counsels passing on the surely work
to rate pairs to settle.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
Each party will only be responsible for the share of
the work that they actually carried out or the decisions
that they signed off. This will remove the fear that
slows down the consenting process currently, reduce costs, and reduce
the risk to ratepayers having to underwrite someone else's mistake.
Right now, there are sixty six different council building concent
authorities across the country, each with their own interpretation of

(04:07):
the building Code. This has resulted in a ridiculous situation
where builders can have their paperwork rejected by one council
whereas it would be accepted by the one up the road.
I expect that they will seize the opportunity to pull
resources such as inspectors and IT systems and pass the
savings on to rate payers.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Well, let's hope that happens, but you know, you'd have
to say that indemnity insurance should surely be encouraged for
each component of the building construction work, because otherwise you're
going to have a company going belly up. What are
you going to do about?

Speaker 1 (04:38):
And then who have you got to chase?

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Larry?

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Thank you appreciate a very sober senior political correspondent.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
For more from Heather Duplicy, Allan Drive, listen live to
news talks.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.