PHOTO
The Prime Minister's Office is defending comments Christopher Luxon made to Rotorua businesspeople that New Zealand businesses had a "parent-child mentality" and looked too often to the government for help.
Labour has accused him of being "out of touch" and "telling struggling business owners to grow up, instead of taking responsibility for a weak economy under his watch".
But ACT party leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour has been more sympathetic in his assessment, telling RNZ Luxon has possibly got "two groups of people mixed up here".
"It's important to differentiate that there are some people who call themselves businesspeople and yet always have their hand out to the government, and there are a whole lot of people not like that doing it bloody tough, for reasons not of their fault."
Luxon was in Rotorua last week and on Friday morning held a breakfast chat with the local business chamber.
It was there that Rotorua Business Chamber chief executive Melanie Short, who was moderating the talk, raised the "challenge" businesses were facing "taking on some extra costs".
"We do not want to pass them on because we're also getting less customers through the door," she said. "So, it's a matter of time - how long can we hang on?"
In a long response, Luxon said since returning to New Zealand he noticed "there's a parent-child mentality".
"I have literally sat in boardrooms across New Zealand, and the conversation goes: 'I wonder what the government's going to do? I wonder what the government's going to think?'
"Who cares what the government thinks or does? Our job is to be adult, adult, adult," he told the business audience.
Below is the transcript of the Luxon’s full response to Short's question, provided to RNZ by his office.
"I think that's a negative view, to be honest. Like we're entrepreneurs and business people, and I get it. You know, if you're not retooling and radically disrupting your business, you ain't doing the job.
"You know, you have to disrupt yourself aggressively before you get disrupted by global events, and if you keep thinking you want the same business model, the same customer mix, the same margin structure, you know you've got to be retooling and refinancing and rehoming, and that's just the reality of business people all around the world.
"So, my job is to make sure I'm setting up the conditions for you to be able to go create that growth. And I think some of the subtext and assumption in your question is that...I think in New Zealand I'll be honest with you as a business person who was... I sat in Illinois for six years in Chicago, and the last person I wanted to ever talk to as a CEO was the government. I didn't sit there in Chicago saying I wonder what the government thinks and I wonder what they're doing to help me for my business? Can I get some grant money to do something? No, no, I'm a business person.
"I'm building a kick-ass company that actually has commercially superior returns, great customer experience, and awesome internal culture. That is the job of what makes a great company, not a good one, a great one. And so that was my mentality.
"Come home to New Zealand, and there's a parent-child mentality. I have literally sat in boardrooms across New Zealand, and the conversation goes: 'I wonder what the government's going to do? I wonder what the government's going to think?'
"Who cares what the government thinks or does? Our job is to be adult, adult, adult. The business leaders, the political leaders, and the community leaders working together, doing things differently. I set up the operating system. You go out there and smack it and go create the road, and the community leaders see the pain, the hurt, the need, and the frustration, and the three actors do different things but complementary things to deal with the challenges and the opportunities.
"So I still think there's a little bit of.... okay, so in this chamber, how many of you are actually using Claude or Claude code? Okay great. How many sessions has the chamber run to help you understand that? Is that your number one focus right here, right now? Because that is going to disrupt your businesses, and it's a huge opportunity for you to do exceptionally well off the back of it.
"So how do we collectively lift our SME literacy on something like AI as a result? So I'm just pushing back to say my job is to set the conditions up. We're getting spending under control. We're getting inflation back into the band. We're at 2.9 percent, strip out the fuel pieces. We've got growth coming in. And that creates opportunity."
'Patronising lecture', says Labour
In response to those comments, first published on Saturday in the Rotorua Daily Post, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said businesses were not asking for a "patronising lecture and a handout from the Prime Minister - they're asking for an economy that works".
"Christopher Luxon promised to fix the economy and now he says, 'Who cares what the government will think or do?'
New Zealand businesses care very much what the government thinks and does, because his government's choices affect whether they keep their doors open."
However, the Prime Minister's Office told RNZ Luxon's comments had been mischaracterised in the original write-up, and by Edmonds, who was not at the meeting.
"Labour is desperately trying to distract from the fact that they still haven't fronted up to New Zealanders about whether they intend to pay for their $18 billion spending plans with more taxes, more borrowing, or both," a spokesperson said.
Seymour told RNZ Luxon's point "is a valid one".
"At the end of the day you've got to have a product or service that customers want, at a price they can afford to pay, but it's certainly not true every business is waiting for the government to solve that problem."
Government policy over the past six years had not helped with government borrowing and inflation rates "putting people through a real washing machine", he said.
