August 31, 2025 • 10 mins
Christopher Luxon doesn't think the Reserve Bank's reputation has suffered any long-term damage.
Neil Quigley resigned as chair of the central bank on Friday night, after Nicola Willis raised concerns over its handling of Adrian Orr's resignation earlier this year.
Willis has revealed to Newstalk ZB, she would have asked Quigley to resign, if he hadn't resigned of his own accord.
The Prime Minister says Quigley has made the right decision.
He doesn't think the current situation is a mess, but it would have been a shambles if it had carried out much longer.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Krystopa Luxon is with us. Very good morning to you, MORTI,
Mike how I am very well and die A couple
of issues, so neil quickly Friday night. Yep. How big
a mess reputationally does this look for the Reserve Bank?
Both quickly and or.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I don't think it's a mess at all. I think
it would have been more of a shambles if it
had carried on much longer. Frankly, I think you know
there were issues there around the handling of the employment
issue with the governor that wasn't as fully transparent as
it needed to be. You heard Nicola express her own
happiness about it, and I think he made the right
decision actually thinking about any reputational damage that would have
carried on.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Were you was unhappy with him, as Nikola was.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Well again, I think you know, Nicola and I very aligned.
You know, we're unhappy with the handling of it. It could
have been much better done and more transparent. But you know,
at the end of the day, he's done fifteen years
with a service, he's delivered a capital rules reset, he's
advancing well a new governor, which will be something we
hope to announce shortly so right, decision to go.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Do you know who the governor is.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
We've got a couple of candidate. We're in a process
at the moment, so I so that's days weeks, Yeah,
that'll be weeks.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yea. Where's the avana itself? So as opposed to their
where's the chairman? Have you got someone lined up a chair?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
A step done?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Okay? And for what the foreseeable or.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well that will be worked out in the coming weeks. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
As far as the money is concerned for or at
the start, it looked like you give the guy some
money to go away. Now it looks like he packs
a mass of sad. The chairman packs a mess of sad.
Everyone's stamping their feet being children. How come he got
money to go away?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, those will be tied to his employment contracts that
he'll have with the with the board, and that'll be
arrangements between obviously chair and CEOs as you'd expect in
any other rules. And you're comfortable with that, Yeah, Well,
we've got to uphold employment contracts and that's what and
that's that. You know, we don't employ them, We don't
have influence over how they spend money. What we agreed
as five year funding agreements as you know, which we've
(01:47):
had some you know, pretty tough conversations around, which I
think is in the public record. But ultimately, what the
employment contracts are we have to you know, that's that's
you know, that's up to boards.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Is there a lesson here for other government departments or agency?
Is that this sort of official information act on Woodsman.
Let's keep it quiet, let's not say anything. Someone needs
to wire the be transparent war.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I think I think truth is always the best policy, right.
I think that's the takeaway from all of this.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, now I ask you one more time. God, this
is foreign biased? Isn't that it is foreign biased? Is
today the day? Are we any closer to being able?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
We are very close to, Mike, And I've said that
now for the last seven weeks. I think you've been
hammering me on this point every single week.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So I hope to have something to say very shortly
about it when eminently eminently within within within but before
we meet next time, within a week.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So this week, so this is the week that could
well be Okay, why has it taken seven weeks?
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, there's I mean, you've got a situation where as
you know, we went to a policy saying we actually
wanted to unwind their foreign by bant. You've got equally
a position from New Zealand first, which is that they
didn't want any of that, and fair enough, we agreed
not to do any of that, and I sus suspect
what I'll end up announcing will end up announcing will
be a compromise where neither of us is one hundred
(03:08):
percent happy. But we've found a way to do something
that actually will actually support investors in particular coming into
New Zealand so they can purchase the house ultimately, and
it equally it also drives some trade activity as well,
for tradees good.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
So in making this announcement this week, I'm assuming that
it gets sorted today.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Cabinets today, I can't possibly talk about kebnet as you know.
No I know, but you're about to put me up
against a wall and just no, I'm just sick of
asking the question answering.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I just the reason I asked the question, one more
week of this, Well, it can't be one more week
because he said it's this week exactly, So it is
it is this week. Can you explain from Winston. Peter's
point of view.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
What his problem has been, Well, I think you know,
they've had a long standing position around foreign investment and
in fairness to Winston and also New Zealand first, and
I think they've actually been they've actually really understood quality investment.
And I think, you know, in fairness, there was a
question around a lot of what we've seen in the
past with has been speculative investment. So if you think
(04:11):
about it, people coming and buying houses, flipping houses, none
of that adds any value to New Zealand productively as
an economy, and so you're trying to find the way
in which you can support productive investment that actually does
help our economy sort of grow. We've had massive challenges
with foreign investment. We've attracted zero capital sovereign wealth funds
for the major public infrastructure. We're doing a good job
(04:33):
in there, We've got more to do. Equally, if you
think about the active investivies a like, I think we've
had something like close to one point eight billion come
in since we made the change on April one. It
was more in the first two months than it was
in the.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Previous three years. One of them can buy a house.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So that's why how ridiculus link that together? So watched
the Space.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Okay, so I am watching that, and so I will
watch this afternoon. What I want to know is you
and we will get them on and ask him. But
say it's four or five, seven million, whatever it was
the election you were to So maybe two's too low.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
And I think we got I think we got the number,
as I said before, too low. And I think we
had a complication to it all and probably didn't get
our policy one hundred percent right either. And that's why
I think there's a you know, that's why we've been
that's five.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
And let's say you've got to live in it. For example,
So you come in with your golden visa, you put
ten million dollars into the economy, you spend five on
your house, you live in your house. What's Winston's objection
to that?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Well, I don't think there is, That's what I'm saying here.
I think he's been quite sensible actually about making sure
that we're not driving speculation, that we actually are driving
productive investment. And I think you know, Winston, you will
often talk about as I do about Singapore or the
Irelands of the world, and we've realized collectively that there
is a real challenge around, you know, getting investment into
(05:45):
New Zealand. So I actually think he's been very reasonable
in his position, but he's also holding us to account
to say, hey, listen, I want to be reassured that
this isn't just going to drive speculative.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
So all you do is you say you've got to
live in your house or do something like that.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
There's lots of ways for it.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, but okay, what are the other ways?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Have to wait and see? Okay, this feels like a
John Dawes John Plas.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
All I want is it, as I keep telling you,
I want. I want this country up and running and
pulling every level we can to make exactly easy to
do business.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Exactly that's right. So I think what we've both come
to realization is, hey, listen, if we've got people who
are coming here to put quality investment into New Zealand,
it's perverse that they can't own a house. How we
do that to make sure that we actually can reassure
ourselves that it is actually proper investment activity that's happening,
not speculation, sure, which is what I think.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
And so if we ring in booked Winston and for tomorrow.
Would he be available to come on and talk about this?
Would he be well, I mean, I'm sure he loves
coming to talk to you. I'm sure multimately all right,
we'll stand by Brian Roche in the mergers. Is this real?
And the government departments?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah. Look, I mean I've asked Brian Roach, who's a
really seasoned guy, to take on that role as Public
Service Commissioner. I think he's excellent. I think he knows
machinery of government well. But he's also given him a
brief to say, make this thing more efficient and make
it delivered. I think there's two things you can do.
One is you could you can restructure to get rid
of the back office functions of lots of agencies. You'll
find endless government departments. Agencies replicate the people function that
(07:09):
it function, that counting your function, all that stuff. You
could simplify a lot of that. And the second thing
that I think is important is that my vision, as
I said to him, is I want to see these
government agencies as large service organizations having a customer delivering
for a customer who happens with the public of New Zealand.
And it's not a customer mentality in the public service sufficiently.
(07:30):
So you can do that partly through restructuring. As he's
looking at a series of proposals, nothing's come to cabinet.
We haven't had a discussion about it. I appreciate there's
media reporting of possibilities. But the other thing that I
think is really important is embracing technology, because actually, when
you embrace technology, as I found in business, you know,
you actually end up backward engineering your systems and your
(07:51):
processes and your structure to actually serve a customer. You know,
through technology.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Shouldn't you have done this the first time round when
you got rid of the two thousand people.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Well, I just think there's ongoing work that's needed. I mean,
you know, you're trying to think about the first eighty months.
You know we're coming to power, even here at the
hell of a mess, recession, COVID, hangover, tarrifs, We've got
a bunch of things. We've got to get out the door.
You've got to sort of restructure and change the tire
while you're driving the car at the same time. And
so this is just ongoing daily work that should be happening.
(08:20):
And if there's better ways to do it. We should
be relentless about constant improvement.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Nikola Willis wasn't happy with me last week. Why it's
a long story, so friendly and nice exactly, but the
point but do you worry image wise that she is
running the supermarket thing and this butter thing, and you're
supposed to be a government that is friendly with business
and to help business. And she's beating up on supermarkets
and telling us what's wrong with supermarkets and what's wrong
(08:48):
with butter and she doesn't come up with any actual solutions. Well,
you're just trying to draw bonus solution.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Now I push back on that. I think you know
when you say how does this country get wealthy? One
of the five things we have to do is make
it easier to do business. And we have to look
at competitive settings, green tape, red tape, or getting rid
of bureaucracy, all of that stuff. Right. And so we
are a party, you know that's always been built on
competition and whether it's larger, whether it's smaller. We want
competitive markets. And so all she's done in supermarkets is
(09:16):
take a step back and say, my god, we've done
it endless talking about this stuff. Have we done everything
we possibly can to make those regulatary settings easier, and
it turns out there's probitive zoning, there's slow consenting, there's
a bunch of stuff getting in the way. So if
she actually gets rid of all of that, she's done
a good job linking all of that to fast tracks,
so supermarkets can be treated like fast track projects. The
harder thing, to be honest, it's taken some time is
(09:38):
working through the Building Act changes, which is to get
those multiproof ideas so that if you've got one store
format like a costco, you can hit copy paste and
get more of it done. And yeah, we have eighty
two building code authorities in New Zealand, which is probably
about eighty one too many that end up interpreting the
building code differently. So if you're a Costco and you
want to put a store in christ Church, you're dealing
with a whole bunch of different malarkey around all that.
(10:00):
And so to get to a place where we can
guarantee them one building code authority that they will work
with and how the Crown may help support that to
make that all happen, there's some complexity in all of that,
so you know, all we can do is we don't
create the growth, but we have to create the conditions
for growth and get the operating system right. And I
think that's what she's done. Really well, have.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
A good week. I will make good and told you
Christola lux And for more from the mic Asking Breakfast,
listen live to news talks that'd be from six am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
Krystopa Luxon is with us. Very good morning to you, MORTI,
Mike how I am very well and die A couple
of issues, so neil quickly Friday night. Yep. How big
a mess reputationally does this look for the Reserve Bank?
Both quickly and or.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I don't think it's a mess at all. I think
it would have been more of a shambles if it
had carried on much longer. Frankly, I think you know
there were issues there around the handling of the employment
issue with the governor that wasn't as fully transparent as
it needed to be. You heard Nicola express her own
happiness about it, and I think he made the right
decision actually thinking about any reputational damage that would have
carried on.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Were you was unhappy with him, as Nikola was.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Well again, I think you know, Nicola and I very aligned.
You know, we're unhappy with the handling of it. It could
have been much better done and more transparent. But you know,
at the end of the day, he's done fifteen years
with a service, he's delivered a capital rules reset, he's
advancing well a new governor, which will be something we
hope to announce shortly so right, decision to go.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Do you know who the governor is.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
We've got a couple of candidate. We're in a process
at the moment, so I so that's days weeks, Yeah,
that'll be weeks.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yea. Where's the avana itself? So as opposed to their
where's the chairman? Have you got someone lined up a chair?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
A step done?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Okay? And for what the foreseeable or.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well that will be worked out in the coming weeks. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
As far as the money is concerned for or at
the start, it looked like you give the guy some
money to go away. Now it looks like he packs
a mass of sad. The chairman packs a mess of sad.
Everyone's stamping their feet being children. How come he got
money to go away?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, those will be tied to his employment contracts that
he'll have with the with the board, and that'll be
arrangements between obviously chair and CEOs as you'd expect in
any other rules. And you're comfortable with that, Yeah, Well,
we've got to uphold employment contracts and that's what and
that's that. You know, we don't employ them, We don't
have influence over how they spend money. What we agreed
as five year funding agreements as you know, which we've
(01:47):
had some you know, pretty tough conversations around, which I
think is in the public record. But ultimately, what the
employment contracts are we have to you know, that's that's
you know, that's up to boards.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Is there a lesson here for other government departments or agency?
Is that this sort of official information act on Woodsman.
Let's keep it quiet, let's not say anything. Someone needs
to wire the be transparent war.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I think I think truth is always the best policy, right.
I think that's the takeaway from all of this.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, now I ask you one more time. God, this
is foreign biased? Isn't that it is foreign biased? Is
today the day? Are we any closer to being able?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
We are very close to, Mike, And I've said that
now for the last seven weeks. I think you've been
hammering me on this point every single week.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So I hope to have something to say very shortly
about it when eminently eminently within within within but before
we meet next time, within a week.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So this week, so this is the week that could
well be Okay, why has it taken seven weeks?
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, there's I mean, you've got a situation where as
you know, we went to a policy saying we actually
wanted to unwind their foreign by bant. You've got equally
a position from New Zealand first, which is that they
didn't want any of that, and fair enough, we agreed
not to do any of that, and I sus suspect
what I'll end up announcing will end up announcing will
be a compromise where neither of us is one hundred
(03:08):
percent happy. But we've found a way to do something
that actually will actually support investors in particular coming into
New Zealand so they can purchase the house ultimately, and
it equally it also drives some trade activity as well,
for tradees good.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
So in making this announcement this week, I'm assuming that
it gets sorted today.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Cabinets today, I can't possibly talk about kebnet as you know.
No I know, but you're about to put me up
against a wall and just no, I'm just sick of
asking the question answering.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I just the reason I asked the question, one more
week of this, Well, it can't be one more week
because he said it's this week exactly, So it is
it is this week. Can you explain from Winston. Peter's
point of view.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
What his problem has been, Well, I think you know,
they've had a long standing position around foreign investment and
in fairness to Winston and also New Zealand first, and
I think they've actually been they've actually really understood quality investment.
And I think, you know, in fairness, there was a
question around a lot of what we've seen in the
past with has been speculative investment. So if you think
(04:11):
about it, people coming and buying houses, flipping houses, none
of that adds any value to New Zealand productively as
an economy, and so you're trying to find the way
in which you can support productive investment that actually does
help our economy sort of grow. We've had massive challenges
with foreign investment. We've attracted zero capital sovereign wealth funds
for the major public infrastructure. We're doing a good job
(04:33):
in there, We've got more to do. Equally, if you
think about the active investivies a like, I think we've
had something like close to one point eight billion come
in since we made the change on April one. It
was more in the first two months than it was
in the.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Previous three years. One of them can buy a house.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So that's why how ridiculus link that together? So watched
the Space.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Okay, so I am watching that, and so I will
watch this afternoon. What I want to know is you
and we will get them on and ask him. But
say it's four or five, seven million, whatever it was
the election you were to So maybe two's too low.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
And I think we got I think we got the number,
as I said before, too low. And I think we
had a complication to it all and probably didn't get
our policy one hundred percent right either. And that's why
I think there's a you know, that's why we've been
that's five.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
And let's say you've got to live in it. For example,
So you come in with your golden visa, you put
ten million dollars into the economy, you spend five on
your house, you live in your house. What's Winston's objection
to that?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Well, I don't think there is, That's what I'm saying here.
I think he's been quite sensible actually about making sure
that we're not driving speculation, that we actually are driving
productive investment. And I think you know, Winston, you will
often talk about as I do about Singapore or the
Irelands of the world, and we've realized collectively that there
is a real challenge around, you know, getting investment into
(05:45):
New Zealand. So I actually think he's been very reasonable
in his position, but he's also holding us to account
to say, hey, listen, I want to be reassured that
this isn't just going to drive speculative.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
So all you do is you say you've got to
live in your house or do something like that.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
There's lots of ways for it.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, but okay, what are the other ways?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Have to wait and see? Okay, this feels like a
John Dawes John Plas.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
All I want is it, as I keep telling you,
I want. I want this country up and running and
pulling every level we can to make exactly easy to
do business.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Exactly that's right. So I think what we've both come
to realization is, hey, listen, if we've got people who
are coming here to put quality investment into New Zealand,
it's perverse that they can't own a house. How we
do that to make sure that we actually can reassure
ourselves that it is actually proper investment activity that's happening,
not speculation, sure, which is what I think.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
And so if we ring in booked Winston and for tomorrow.
Would he be available to come on and talk about this?
Would he be well, I mean, I'm sure he loves
coming to talk to you. I'm sure multimately all right,
we'll stand by Brian Roche in the mergers. Is this real?
And the government departments?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah. Look, I mean I've asked Brian Roach, who's a
really seasoned guy, to take on that role as Public
Service Commissioner. I think he's excellent. I think he knows
machinery of government well. But he's also given him a
brief to say, make this thing more efficient and make
it delivered. I think there's two things you can do.
One is you could you can restructure to get rid
of the back office functions of lots of agencies. You'll
find endless government departments. Agencies replicate the people function that
(07:09):
it function, that counting your function, all that stuff. You
could simplify a lot of that. And the second thing
that I think is important is that my vision, as
I said to him, is I want to see these
government agencies as large service organizations having a customer delivering
for a customer who happens with the public of New Zealand.
And it's not a customer mentality in the public service sufficiently.
(07:30):
So you can do that partly through restructuring. As he's
looking at a series of proposals, nothing's come to cabinet.
We haven't had a discussion about it. I appreciate there's
media reporting of possibilities. But the other thing that I
think is really important is embracing technology, because actually, when
you embrace technology, as I found in business, you know,
you actually end up backward engineering your systems and your
(07:51):
processes and your structure to actually serve a customer. You know,
through technology.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Shouldn't you have done this the first time round when
you got rid of the two thousand people.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Well, I just think there's ongoing work that's needed. I mean,
you know, you're trying to think about the first eighty months.
You know we're coming to power, even here at the
hell of a mess, recession, COVID, hangover, tarrifs, We've got
a bunch of things. We've got to get out the door.
You've got to sort of restructure and change the tire
while you're driving the car at the same time. And
so this is just ongoing daily work that should be happening.
(08:20):
And if there's better ways to do it. We should
be relentless about constant improvement.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Nikola Willis wasn't happy with me last week. Why it's
a long story, so friendly and nice exactly, but the
point but do you worry image wise that she is
running the supermarket thing and this butter thing, and you're
supposed to be a government that is friendly with business
and to help business. And she's beating up on supermarkets
and telling us what's wrong with supermarkets and what's wrong
(08:48):
with butter and she doesn't come up with any actual solutions. Well,
you're just trying to draw bonus solution.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Now I push back on that. I think you know
when you say how does this country get wealthy? One
of the five things we have to do is make
it easier to do business. And we have to look
at competitive settings, green tape, red tape, or getting rid
of bureaucracy, all of that stuff. Right. And so we
are a party, you know that's always been built on
competition and whether it's larger, whether it's smaller. We want
competitive markets. And so all she's done in supermarkets is
(09:16):
take a step back and say, my god, we've done
it endless talking about this stuff. Have we done everything
we possibly can to make those regulatary settings easier, and
it turns out there's probitive zoning, there's slow consenting, there's
a bunch of stuff getting in the way. So if
she actually gets rid of all of that, she's done
a good job linking all of that to fast tracks,
so supermarkets can be treated like fast track projects. The
harder thing, to be honest, it's taken some time is
(09:38):
working through the Building Act changes, which is to get
those multiproof ideas so that if you've got one store
format like a costco, you can hit copy paste and
get more of it done. And yeah, we have eighty
two building code authorities in New Zealand, which is probably
about eighty one too many that end up interpreting the
building code differently. So if you're a Costco and you
want to put a store in christ Church, you're dealing
with a whole bunch of different malarkey around all that.
(10:00):
And so to get to a place where we can
guarantee them one building code authority that they will work
with and how the Crown may help support that to
make that all happen, there's some complexity in all of that,
so you know, all we can do is we don't
create the growth, but we have to create the conditions
for growth and get the operating system right. And I
think that's what she's done. Really well, have.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
A good week. I will make good and told you
Christola lux And for more from the mic Asking Breakfast,
listen live to news talks that'd be from six am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
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