Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Mike Hosking that ongoing strikes and counter-strikes won't lead to a resolution.
He says all the parties need to get around the table and negotiate a way forward, although that will be very difficult.
The Prime Minister said, “You’ve got to be able to get the parties around the table and have a negotiation.”
This comes ahead of the Prime Minister’s visit to the Netherlands, where he will meet with the Dutch Prime Minister and leaders of NATO.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We find the Prime Minister in Europe this morning ahead
of the latest NATO meeting Crystal luctions with us. Very
good morning to you morning Mike.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
How are you today?
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Very well? And do before we get to NATO itself
related matters that Iran, How worried are you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Oh? Look, I mean it is worrying. We really need
to see sort of diplomacy and dialogue take place, because
that's the way you get a political solutions. What's needed.
They're not more military action, frankly across the Middle East
and yeah, it's you know, it's an area ridden with conflict,
and it's of course huge amounts of pain are suffering
for lots of people. But if you want peace and
stability in that region, you've got to be able to
(00:33):
get the parties to get around the table and have
a negotiation and hopefully now that's what can happen in
the next few days and weeks.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Do you worry about things like the who moves straight?
And the price of oil and inflation and the effect
on the economy, yep.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I mean all of those things are possibilities. But you
know what, we've got to encourage the regional players and
actors to do and you know, let's acknowledge we're a
small country that's a long long way away from this conflict.
But you know, it is in the world's interest to
see stability in the region. And but you know, more frankly,
more military action isn't the way to deliver that. You
actually need to get the parties to want to come
(01:09):
to the table. And you know, that's what I think
everyone's exalting the parties and players to do post the
strikes that we've seen over the last twenty four hours.
So that's the opportunity now in front of the players
to say, well, you know, you know, if you want,
you've got to get to a political solution. Ultimately, that
means you've got to show up and actually have a
negotiation and engage in some dialogue to do.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
So, do you support what the Americans did?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, again, what we want to see in the Middle
East is not Iran with a nuclear weapon. We don't
want to see, you know, Israel occupying Gaza. We don't
want to see how mass holding on to hostages. You know,
in all of those cases, the chances to sort of
now get on and get into proper negotiations to get
the region calmed down and stable. Otherwise you're going to
have endless military action and constant conflicts and it's going
(01:53):
to cause huge You know, we've already seen the you
just look at garz and like I mean, ninety four
percent of the hospitals are destroyed. Percent of the people
that displaced one in five in our facing famine. So
you know, you've got to be able to get round
a table and have a sensible conversation, as difficult as
that will be, Let's be clear, it'd be very difficult.
But you know, carrying on the way that things are
is not the way through those issues.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
All right, Let's go back to China. Eight hundred and
seventy one million dollars worth of business, which I'm glad
because all I heard was a little bit of visa tweaking,
and in one of the Chinese airlines are putting more
seats on what business did we do with who, when's
its start and who are they?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, so look, here's a good example. You've got about
five hundred million people in the middle classes over there.
You've got a massive cosmetic sector and New Zealand's cosmetics
companies and brands haven't been able to sell into China
in part because we've got a different approach to animal testing.
We have no animal testing in New Zealand. China demands
animal testing on products to be sold in China. We
(02:50):
found in pass through with the government there that actually
enables us to make sure that we don't have our
products tested on animals and it's acceptable to the Chinese.
And that about two hundred million dollars for brands like
Trilogy and Linden Leaves and Ecostore and Antipodies now, so
you know, they are really really pumped because they've got
great products with infused Kiwi products that the Chinese consumers
(03:11):
absolutely love, pear peculiarly made for the Chinese market, and
they couldn't sell them into the mass retail market. They
could only sell them through online channels. And that's about
two hundred million dollars worth. The thing that you're talking about,
which is the Southern links, something I've banged on about
for the last ten years, even when I was at
in New Zealand, was that this You've got this economic
powerhouse called China, got this other one called South America,
(03:32):
and the fastest way to connect them is actually third.
The complete antipoties from each other is actually through New
Zealand and so Auckland Airport becoming a freight hub between
things about the trade that happens between those two regions
of the world, and also the ability to bring Latin
American tourists to New Zealand as well as more Chinese
tourists to New Zealand. And then we supported that with
(03:52):
the transit visa, but we needed an airline to actually
make for connections, and that's China Eastern who we were
able to do the deal with. We were in Shanghai.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So I've also got four million. Okay, so I've also
got four hundred million for the primary sector. Is that
over and a bible we already in two way?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah it is, Yeah, it is. It's just basically what's happened.
I was really impressed, Mike. You know, the literacy of
the New Zealand exporters into the Chinese market is very
very high. But they also are working with really outstanding
Chinese distribution partners. They're actually able to sell those products
into more of regional China outre and you've got to
remember there's two hundred and twenty cities in China with
(04:32):
populations over a million people. So you know, a lot
of it was signing deals with new partners that actually
could get those products that we sell out into to
more parts of China. So yeah, so that's how that
sort of works around dairy, hort and meat. But you
know care we free on fire up there, you know,
dairy on fire up there. Red meat actually a huge opportunity.
(04:54):
Wine very small, fifty one million dollars only of wine sold,
so huge opportunity for us to grow wine into China
as well. So yeah, a lot of it is actually
just them are signing deals with better and newer partners
that actually can have Begger reach and get the product
to more Chinese consumers.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Okay, so to the here and now you're in Brussels,
you meet the Dutch Prime Ministry as well, and NATO.
Anything tangible to come out of this week?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, really, three things I'm focused on. I'm in Belgium
tonight because tomorrow morning I want to meet with the
European President and talk about the EUFTA. As you know,
that's gone up. We've grown about twenty five percent our
exports and other extra billion dollars out of just the
European Union. In the last twelve months, so I just
wanted to reinforce the trade component with them at the
(05:39):
Macro European Union level. I'll have a heap of bilaterals.
I'll keep shifting around as we go through the week,
but you know already, I think I've got fifteen or
so sort of slotted, and to meet individual leaders of
countries and do the relationship between New Zealand and individual countries.
Netherlands is a great example. They're a biggest investor from
Europe into New Zealand and I want to know I
(06:02):
don't want to be able to spend some time with
the Dutch team as well. And then obviously NATO Peace
will be very focused on European security issues, and of
course we're not there as members of NATO, we're there
as members of the Pacific Four, but we are affiliate
sort of partners. And there are some issues obviously like Ukraine,
where you have North Korea providing minisions and troops to
(06:23):
Russia to fight a war in Ukraine that have a
huge impact and touch onto our region as well. So
it'll be a good interesting to see where everyone's heads
are at on different issues, and particularly Ukraine and other
issues are globally as well.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Okay, domestic issue. Shane Jones gave a speech last week
said we should get regional councils, should.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
We Well, we're working through the Resource Management Act. You know,
I have a personal view that I think that's something
that we can explore as part of that Resource Management
Act legislation at Chris Bishop's driving through. He'll bring a
bill to the House before the end of this year.
We'll be introduced into Parliament because we've got to change
our RMA laws pretty quickly. But I think we've got
(07:00):
too many layers of government frankly, if I'm honest with you,
and so whether it's district council's, regional council, central government,
you've got a lot of farmers and folk that having
to present lots of different information and lots of different ways,
and so I think that will naturally be explored as
part of the RMA laws.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Excellent. I've thought you were going to say no, But
this is good because I've did some work over the weekend.
I've looked at every rate increase from every council in
this country. It is shocking and it is adding to inflation.
As regards what Bishop said last week about housing decisions
and overriding councils. What can you do with anything about
(07:38):
rates and general inflationary costs that are just being loaded
upon us.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, well, yeah exactly. I mean, well, as I've been
saying consistently, you know, there's a lot of councils doing
some really dumb things and that is actually just adding costs.
And there's a lot of it's vanity projects and nice
to do stuff, not must do stuff. You know, we
want them focus on the must do things and we
want them adding really good value to to rate payers.
So you know, looked we've already floated out there. We're
very interested in rate rate caps, so we actually can
(08:06):
cap the amount of rate increases. You know, Simon Watts
is continuing to look at that piece of work. I
think there's also a lot to do around getting these
councils to organize their finances and it gets very technical
with their balance sheets and leverage them in the right way.
If you think about Auckland, for example, you know, Wayne
Brown was contemplating a twenty four percent rate rise. We
(08:27):
ended up putting the water care assets into a separate structure,
a different entity, and that then therefore freedom up and
he had eight hundred million dollars more. He did a
six or seven percent rate increase from memory as a
consequence of dealing with restructuring his finances in in a
much smarter way, using debt in a different way, and
some of those just being smart with the balance sheet.
(08:48):
The reasons some of that stuff at this put.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Okay for the record, we can look at fewer councils
and we can look at rate capping. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
And the thing that I've talked to ALGNZ about is
also so there is actually some appetite from the local
communities now for district councils to start to think about
how they might work together. You've actually even got some
local mayors advocating for amalgamation, you know. And part of
what's happening is as they work together on their regional
city deals, you know, we don't want to deal with
each individual council. We want to do with groups subregions
(09:20):
of New Zealand. As they work on how they're going
to structure their three Waters assets, they're getting some experience
of working together, and then you start to logically say, well,
why do we have different councils, Why wouldn't we just
work together permanently? So, but that's got to be a
bottom up driven thing. But for us, I think, you know,
the RMA laws we've really as an opportunity for us
to think about, have we over complicated the country and
(09:42):
it's just taking too long to get stuff done and
resource consented? And is there a better smarter way of
doing some of that stuff? And then I think for
councils themselves, there's some things around using their balance sheets
better and ultimately you know, looking at things like rates
caps and stuff like that that forces them to make
sure they're doing the basics.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Well, good, bitter go, Well appreciate it. Christopher Luxean out
of Brussels for US this morning. For more from the
Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to News Talks at B
from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
We find the Prime Minister in Europe this morning ahead
of the latest NATO meeting Crystal luctions with us. Very
good morning to you morning Mike.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
How are you today?
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Very well? And do before we get to NATO itself
related matters that Iran, How worried are you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Oh? Look, I mean it is worrying. We really need
to see sort of diplomacy and dialogue take place, because
that's the way you get a political solutions. What's needed.
They're not more military action, frankly across the Middle East
and yeah, it's you know, it's an area ridden with conflict,
and it's of course huge amounts of pain are suffering
for lots of people. But if you want peace and
stability in that region, you've got to be able to
(00:33):
get the parties to get around the table and have
a negotiation and hopefully now that's what can happen in
the next few days and weeks.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Do you worry about things like the who moves straight?
And the price of oil and inflation and the effect
on the economy, yep.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I mean all of those things are possibilities. But you
know what, we've got to encourage the regional players and
actors to do and you know, let's acknowledge we're a
small country that's a long long way away from this conflict.
But you know, it is in the world's interest to
see stability in the region. And but you know, more frankly,
more military action isn't the way to deliver that. You
actually need to get the parties to want to come
(01:09):
to the table. And you know, that's what I think
everyone's exalting the parties and players to do post the
strikes that we've seen over the last twenty four hours.
So that's the opportunity now in front of the players
to say, well, you know, you know, if you want,
you've got to get to a political solution. Ultimately, that
means you've got to show up and actually have a
negotiation and engage in some dialogue to do.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
So, do you support what the Americans did?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, again, what we want to see in the Middle
East is not Iran with a nuclear weapon. We don't
want to see, you know, Israel occupying Gaza. We don't
want to see how mass holding on to hostages. You know,
in all of those cases, the chances to sort of
now get on and get into proper negotiations to get
the region calmed down and stable. Otherwise you're going to
have endless military action and constant conflicts and it's going
(01:53):
to cause huge You know, we've already seen the you
just look at garz and like I mean, ninety four
percent of the hospitals are destroyed. Percent of the people
that displaced one in five in our facing famine. So
you know, you've got to be able to get round
a table and have a sensible conversation, as difficult as
that will be, Let's be clear, it'd be very difficult.
But you know, carrying on the way that things are
is not the way through those issues.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
All right, Let's go back to China. Eight hundred and
seventy one million dollars worth of business, which I'm glad
because all I heard was a little bit of visa tweaking,
and in one of the Chinese airlines are putting more
seats on what business did we do with who, when's
its start and who are they?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, so look, here's a good example. You've got about
five hundred million people in the middle classes over there.
You've got a massive cosmetic sector and New Zealand's cosmetics
companies and brands haven't been able to sell into China
in part because we've got a different approach to animal testing.
We have no animal testing in New Zealand. China demands
animal testing on products to be sold in China. We
(02:50):
found in pass through with the government there that actually
enables us to make sure that we don't have our
products tested on animals and it's acceptable to the Chinese.
And that about two hundred million dollars for brands like
Trilogy and Linden Leaves and Ecostore and Antipodies now, so
you know, they are really really pumped because they've got
great products with infused Kiwi products that the Chinese consumers
(03:11):
absolutely love, pear peculiarly made for the Chinese market, and
they couldn't sell them into the mass retail market. They
could only sell them through online channels. And that's about
two hundred million dollars worth. The thing that you're talking about,
which is the Southern links, something I've banged on about
for the last ten years, even when I was at
in New Zealand, was that this You've got this economic
powerhouse called China, got this other one called South America,
(03:32):
and the fastest way to connect them is actually third.
The complete antipoties from each other is actually through New
Zealand and so Auckland Airport becoming a freight hub between
things about the trade that happens between those two regions
of the world, and also the ability to bring Latin
American tourists to New Zealand as well as more Chinese
tourists to New Zealand. And then we supported that with
(03:52):
the transit visa, but we needed an airline to actually
make for connections, and that's China Eastern who we were
able to do the deal with. We were in Shanghai.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So I've also got four million. Okay, so I've also
got four hundred million for the primary sector. Is that
over and a bible we already in two way?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah it is, Yeah, it is. It's just basically what's happened.
I was really impressed, Mike. You know, the literacy of
the New Zealand exporters into the Chinese market is very
very high. But they also are working with really outstanding
Chinese distribution partners. They're actually able to sell those products
into more of regional China outre and you've got to
remember there's two hundred and twenty cities in China with
(04:32):
populations over a million people. So you know, a lot
of it was signing deals with new partners that actually
could get those products that we sell out into to
more parts of China. So yeah, so that's how that
sort of works around dairy, hort and meat. But you
know care we free on fire up there, you know,
dairy on fire up there. Red meat actually a huge opportunity.
(04:54):
Wine very small, fifty one million dollars only of wine sold,
so huge opportunity for us to grow wine into China
as well. So yeah, a lot of it is actually
just them are signing deals with better and newer partners
that actually can have Begger reach and get the product
to more Chinese consumers.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Okay, so to the here and now you're in Brussels,
you meet the Dutch Prime Ministry as well, and NATO.
Anything tangible to come out of this week?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, really, three things I'm focused on. I'm in Belgium
tonight because tomorrow morning I want to meet with the
European President and talk about the EUFTA. As you know,
that's gone up. We've grown about twenty five percent our
exports and other extra billion dollars out of just the
European Union. In the last twelve months, so I just
wanted to reinforce the trade component with them at the
(05:39):
Macro European Union level. I'll have a heap of bilaterals.
I'll keep shifting around as we go through the week,
but you know already, I think I've got fifteen or
so sort of slotted, and to meet individual leaders of
countries and do the relationship between New Zealand and individual countries.
Netherlands is a great example. They're a biggest investor from
Europe into New Zealand and I want to know I
(06:02):
don't want to be able to spend some time with
the Dutch team as well. And then obviously NATO Peace
will be very focused on European security issues, and of
course we're not there as members of NATO, we're there
as members of the Pacific Four, but we are affiliate
sort of partners. And there are some issues obviously like Ukraine,
where you have North Korea providing minisions and troops to
(06:23):
Russia to fight a war in Ukraine that have a
huge impact and touch onto our region as well. So
it'll be a good interesting to see where everyone's heads
are at on different issues, and particularly Ukraine and other
issues are globally as well.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Okay, domestic issue. Shane Jones gave a speech last week
said we should get regional councils, should.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
We Well, we're working through the Resource Management Act. You know,
I have a personal view that I think that's something
that we can explore as part of that Resource Management
Act legislation at Chris Bishop's driving through. He'll bring a
bill to the House before the end of this year.
We'll be introduced into Parliament because we've got to change
our RMA laws pretty quickly. But I think we've got
(07:00):
too many layers of government frankly, if I'm honest with you,
and so whether it's district council's, regional council, central government,
you've got a lot of farmers and folk that having
to present lots of different information and lots of different ways,
and so I think that will naturally be explored as
part of the RMA laws.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Excellent. I've thought you were going to say no, But
this is good because I've did some work over the weekend.
I've looked at every rate increase from every council in
this country. It is shocking and it is adding to inflation.
As regards what Bishop said last week about housing decisions
and overriding councils. What can you do with anything about
(07:38):
rates and general inflationary costs that are just being loaded
upon us.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, well, yeah exactly. I mean, well, as I've been
saying consistently, you know, there's a lot of councils doing
some really dumb things and that is actually just adding costs.
And there's a lot of it's vanity projects and nice
to do stuff, not must do stuff. You know, we
want them focus on the must do things and we
want them adding really good value to to rate payers.
So you know, looked we've already floated out there. We're
very interested in rate rate caps, so we actually can
(08:06):
cap the amount of rate increases. You know, Simon Watts
is continuing to look at that piece of work. I
think there's also a lot to do around getting these
councils to organize their finances and it gets very technical
with their balance sheets and leverage them in the right way.
If you think about Auckland, for example, you know, Wayne
Brown was contemplating a twenty four percent rate rise. We
(08:27):
ended up putting the water care assets into a separate structure,
a different entity, and that then therefore freedom up and
he had eight hundred million dollars more. He did a
six or seven percent rate increase from memory as a
consequence of dealing with restructuring his finances in in a
much smarter way, using debt in a different way, and
some of those just being smart with the balance sheet.
(08:48):
The reasons some of that stuff at this put.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Okay for the record, we can look at fewer councils
and we can look at rate capping. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
And the thing that I've talked to ALGNZ about is
also so there is actually some appetite from the local
communities now for district councils to start to think about
how they might work together. You've actually even got some
local mayors advocating for amalgamation, you know. And part of
what's happening is as they work together on their regional
city deals, you know, we don't want to deal with
each individual council. We want to do with groups subregions
(09:20):
of New Zealand. As they work on how they're going
to structure their three Waters assets, they're getting some experience
of working together, and then you start to logically say, well,
why do we have different councils, Why wouldn't we just
work together permanently? So, but that's got to be a
bottom up driven thing. But for us, I think, you know,
the RMA laws we've really as an opportunity for us
to think about, have we over complicated the country and
(09:42):
it's just taking too long to get stuff done and
resource consented? And is there a better smarter way of
doing some of that stuff? And then I think for
councils themselves, there's some things around using their balance sheets
better and ultimately you know, looking at things like rates
caps and stuff like that that forces them to make
sure they're doing the basics.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Well, good, bitter go, Well appreciate it. Christopher Luxean out
of Brussels for US this morning. For more from the
Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to News Talks at B
from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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