National leader Christopher Luxon: Grant Robertson doesn’t understand the economy

[ad_1]

National Party leader Christopher Luxon has made a blistering attack on the Labour Government’s record and claimed no one in Government – including Finance Minister Grant Robertson – understands how the economy works.

“I have to be honest, I don’t see anybody on the Labour side that has the experience and understanding how an economy works and what is needed to make an economy work so that people can get ahead and get the things that they need,” he said on Wednesday morning.

Luxon blamed the Government for the economic stress households are under, and lashed out at the state of the health and education systems, as well as public infrastructure.

He was also critical of the political dramas involving Meka Whaitiri’s move from Labour to the Māori Party, and former Green MP Elizabeth Kerekere.

READ MORE:
* National’s Christopher Luxon sharpens pitch to middle-income voters as party warns of Labour’s ‘envy-driven tax-grab’
* National’s Luxon says Hipkins as new PM will be ‘more of the same’
* Christopher Luxon says incoming Labour leader Chris Hipkins changes ‘nothing’

Māori Party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were ejected from Parliament on Tuesday while welcoming Whaitiri to their party. It was also Kerekere’s first day in Parliament as independent MP, after resigning from the Greens.

Luxon said the saga showed the parties did not have the chops to form a coalition in the next election.

“It has been a debacle, a shambles, messy, and it shows you a Government that is falling apart,” he said.

“There have been personnel issues in Labour, the Greens and now grandstanding in the Māori Party … it’s a coalition of chaos.”

National Party leader Christopher Luxon says the Government doesn’t understand the economy.

ROBERT KITCHIN/STUFF/Stuff

National Party leader Christopher Luxon says the Government doesn’t understand the economy.

Luxon said his party’s promises to ease the cost of living, lift incomes, build infrastructure, restore law and order, and improve health and education were realistic. He said he wasn’t worried about making promises he couldn’t keep.

“That is the work we have to deliver. The situation we have today is untenable,” he said.

“I will run things differently. I am a person who has come from outside of politics, I have been here for two years. All that matters is outcomes, and that is what this Government doesn’t understand.”

He said he had “tremendous” feedback on his party’s policy to encourage nurses to stay in New Zealand by paying off more than $22,000 of their student loans, as well as the party’s policies on water infrastructure and renewable energy.

“You have got a problem and it’s going to get worse, we have to start somewhere,” he said.

[ad_2]

Leave a Comment