But. Air NZ was a profitable and well-run company when he took over as CEO and "then rode one of the greatest travel booms in history... He arrived at the very start of a boom and left right before it came crashing down."
Prior to this, he was a manager at the Canadian subsidiary of Unilever where he was in no position to “reverse the fortunes” of the already highly successful global giant.
He was, however, very well remunerated for his business efforts and now owns seven properties, more than any other MP. His Remuera home is worth $7.68m and his total properties are worth $21m. This makes for total capital gains a week on the seven properties of $90,000.
Annualised, this is more than a nurse would make in 50 years and a primary school teacher would never make.
It will be interesting to see what his housing policies will be. See below!
Probable Falsehood/ mislead/ lie #2. He claims he offered no positions to anyone in caucus, including Bridges before the caucus meeting but Politik (paywalled) reports that he promised Bridges the role of finance spokesperson and a high spot in the party ranking. Note, just over an hour before caucus met, Bridges dropped his hunt for the leadership. The party was deeply divided, with both men controlling about half of the caucus.
And he promised Bridges nothing!
What we do know is that the new National Party leader downplays his socially conservative views, although he openly equates abortion with murder, and is opposed to euthanasia and legalising recreational cannabis. He also at the time supported a "no jab, no pay" policy for sanctioning welfare beneficiaries who do not vaccinate their children. However, following his election as leader, Luxon said he did not support cutting the benefit of parents who do not vaccinate their children against COVID-19.
Luxon has "the least political experience of any party leader in the country’s modern history”.
One of his first moves could be to backtrack on a bipartisan bill advanced by Labour and National to create new housing supply, according to The Kākā (paywalled). The party has faced criticism for its support of the package and Luxon indicated that National will want amendments to allow for building in “a sustainable way”. Luxon told the NZ Herald that he wants to give councils more power over housing. He avoided questions about the party's stance on conversion therapy and the role of Māori in three waters. He also told Stuff in an interview that he was dropping his predecessor’s "Demand the debate" campaign that often focused on the He Puapua report on education.
He aims to bring back National supporters who switched to Labour and ACT at the last election. To do this he will need to be appeal to moderate "middle" NZ while at the same time cosying up to some of ACT's far right social policies.
We shall probably have to wait until next year to see how good he is at conjuring tricks.
His latest statement is on the traffic light system which he opposes but said Auckland should now be on green. "There's just no logic to this traffic light system at all and here today, "We've got to be able to open the country up and get people moving."
"Again it's another example of a Government that's just doing things on the fly and making it up as it goes and it's always johnny-come-lately, right, it's always never quite thought through."
I would have thought the last thing this government could be accused of was doing things on the fly.
Based in part on https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGllCmcNxsvBGZbdCLZsRgwFzsx
-- ACW
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