National MP Chris Luxon is touted as a future leader and is registering in recent polls. He spoke to political editor Jo Moir about his current challenge in iwi development, and why he hasn't fronted on He Puapua.
Chris Luxon joined the National Party after seven years at the helm of Air New Zealand.
The backbenches are a long way from corporate high-flying wining and dining, but that said, his leader Judith Collins has given him three portfolios where he has the opportunity to be seen and heard.
That in itself is generous when Luxon is repeatedly framed as the “next John Key” and Collins is battling bad polling, including a NZ Herald report of an “unprecedented” UMR poll that has ACT leader David Seymour ahead of her as preferred prime minister.
Luxon registered on the same poll, behind Collins.
Local government and iwi development are two significant areas undergoing reform and debate in Parliament, and Luxon is spokesperson for the Opposition for both.
He also has associate transport which has seen the MP for Botany take on Minister Michael Wood over the Harbour Bridge cycleway, which makes sense when National’s transport spokesperson is from the deep south.
But in the eight months Luxon has held those portfolios he’s only been visible in two.
Newsroom has requested an interview with him six times on his iwi development portfolio and all have been declined.
Colleagues of Luxon's spoken to by Newsroom offered a reason for that, saying it's possible he didn't want to have to toe the party line on race relations and be forever branded by it.
This week Newsroom again contacted Luxon to say a story was due, which prompted him to give a sit-down interview on Thursday afternoon.
"It’s difficult to do the role to be honest as a non-Māori – I don’t have that lived experience’’ - Chris Luxon
Asked why he hadn’t done interviews about the portfolio, in particular the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the controversial He Puapua report, Luxon said his colleague Simon Bridges was handling that.
Bridges holds the Māori/Crown Relations portfolio which is shadow to Minister Kelvin Davis – but it’s Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson, who Luxon shadows, who's progressing the UN Declaration.
“It’s more that [Simon’s] got familiarity having been part of the last Government - obviously we signed that agreement in 2010,’’ Luxon told Newsroom.
Asked what's important in the iwi development role and what work he is doing, Luxon conceded, “It’s difficult to do the role to be honest as a non-Māori – I don’t have that lived experience’’.
This speaks to a wider problem within National - a lack of diversity.
One interview request Luxon declined was at the time Harete Hipango was returning to Parliament.
A spokesperson for him said there was a reshuffle of portfolios on the cards so he didn’t want to be interviewed when his role could change.
That reshuffle never came but raises the question whether Luxon would have preferred Hipango, a Māori wahine, to take the job off him.
Luxon denied that and said he had spoken to Collins about wanting the portfolio in the first place.
“I was excited to do it because my own experience and journey had started at Air New Zealand when I came back after 16 years overseas, and the country had changed for the better because Māori culture was growing and strong.”
He pointed to a number of things he’d done in his time at Air New Zealand that had empowered Māori in business and enterprise, including work with Ngāti Porou to get their food on planes, and approving airline staff to display cultural tattoos.
But when pressed on what he had done or what policy work he’d progressed in the eight months holding the iwi development portfolio, Luxon came up short.
At Air New Zealand he said he “saw Māori enterprise, and it was really good business people doing good things’’.
“For me personally I think those are the things we need to keep pushing on. You look at the income and economic statistics - Māori are doing poorly there.
“So it's about how do you power up iwi businesses and get them into mainstream.’’
Newsroom asked Luxon whether Māori businesses needed help to do that, such as the Government’s new 5 percent procurement target for Māori businesses to support them post-Covid, which National opposes.
“Well, I did procurement, I bought product from Ngāti Porou - every single piece of fish they could produce in that factory - and got them world-class accreditation.’’
He said he didn’t need a quota to do that.
Asked whether there was an unconscious bias within the corporate world that would mean Māori businesses missed out, Luxon said that wasn’t his experience.
“It was a different generation who came through as CEOs in my time - we were in our 40s and thought about the world differently to the old business roundtable brigade.
“It was good business as well as a good thing to do - you could do both,’’ he said.
Luxon accepted there was unconscious bias, but would only speak to his own experience saying, “at Air New Zealand that wouldn’t be a problem at all’’.
Coming back to whether he had started any policy work, Luxon said he was “starting to think about those sorts of things’’.
“But I have to say, where we are in our cycle, we have to first and foremost build relationships and connectivity first and talk about things we will do after that.
“It was the same experience at Air New Zealand with Ngāti Porou - you got to know each other first and then got talking about the possibilities."
He Puapua and the UN Declaration
Luxon says meeting the obligations of the UN Declaration is a “serious constitutional conversation’’.
“It’s a worthy one to have and we should have it, but we need to make sure all New Zealanders can participate.’
“We shouldn’t walk back from UNDRIP at all - we committed to it in 2010 but the Declaration is non-binding, and it’s implemented very differently by signatories all around the world.’’
New Zealand signed up to the Declaration under the then-National government and now Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson is progressing the work on the back of an independent report, He Puapua.
From the outset it's been made clear He Puapua isn’t government policy, rather a think piece to get a national conversation started.
“On He Puapua the Government is saying that’s the natural extension from UNDRIP, we’re saying it doesn’t have to be." - Chris Luxon
Māori will be consulted with first on what co-governance should look like in the future and then all of New Zealand will have their say next year.
Luxon said the Declaration can be achieved through a range of activities and the scope goes from self-determination through to language and culture and a raft of other measures.
“He Puapua seems to be the natural outflow of all of that, when there’s quite a lot of discretion for how a government might choose to implement or action it within their own country and laws.’
“On He Puapua the Government is saying that’s the natural extension from UNDRIP, we’re saying it doesn’t have to be.
“There were some radical solutions in He Puapua about 50/50 co-governance, separate courts and Parliament.’’
He says the Government commissioned He Puapua and now there’s an “ethos around it they feel attached to’’.
Luxon pointed to Te Paati Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi being on record saying democracy as it is doesn’t work for Māori.
While he caveated the fact Waititi is not a member of the Government, Luxon said “there will be sympathy for some of that from government ministers’’.
So what would National do differently?
“What we would fundamentally do is have very targeted practical choice-based programmes to actually deal with the inequities we’ve got. I’m a big fan of Bill English and what he was talking about in social investment, that’s the kind of model of stuff we need to do,'' Luxon told Newsroom.
“We aren’t a big party that does lofty ideology - we’re a party that does practical, pragmatic, solving solutions, getting stuff done.’’
Asked whether the proposed Māori Health Authority, which National opposes, is exactly that, Luxon argued it isn't because it creates two systems.
Some would argue Whānau Ora creates two systems as well - a policy driven and celebrated by National.
Luxon says Whānau Ora is different because it’s “available to everyone to participate in, and it’s a choice-based system and more targeted from the bottom-up’’.
Newsroom countered that if Whānau Ora clinics were really "available to everyone" did he think they were being flooded by Pākehā.
Luxon responded, “No, no, no - I take your point’’ and then moved to charter schools as a better example.
He described this policy, which actually derives from the ACT Party but was implemented by the National government, as being a “targeted and powerful intervention’’.
Charter schools are also built on co-governance and when that was put to Luxon he said the difference was that the Labour-majority government is pushing for everything to be 50/50.
Asked when the Government had indicated it was pushing for everything to be 50/50 with Māori, Luxon replied “that’s how it’s been represented by He Puapua’’.
Luxon accepts He Puapua is an independent report, but defended his argument saying “that the language people have been using when they say co-governance - it’s 50/50 - and that’s not what I understand co-governance to be’’.
Co-governance isn’t new - in fact under the last National government, Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson progressed a lot of work in this area, including Te Urewera and Whanganui River settlements.
Luxon says that work was “outstanding’’ but described them as “bespoke bits’’ carried out by Finlayson and not in the realm of a “constitutional system change where it’s 50/50’’.
In the case of Te Urewera it is a full-blown co-management model with Tuhoe.
Luxon described it as a “practical pragmatic solution versus a system-wide everything is 50/50, and we’ll have two parliaments, thank you very much’’.
A separate Māori Parliament has already been ruled out by the Prime Minister.
Where to from here?
Luxon says New Zealand needs to keep working on unconscious bias and “our understanding of racism in this country’’.
While he doesn’t accept the argument from some that police and other state systems like corrections are “racist’’, he says there’s plenty more work to be done by both Pākehā and Māori.
“I do think it’s good as a leader of a large organisation that you make sure people are working through any unconscious bias they might have - that’s a good thing.’’
Luxon has a performance review of sorts coming up in September when Collins sits down with all her MPs to assess what they’ve done in their portfolios before making any changes.
In his first sit-down with Collins following last year’s devastating election result, Luxon said he told her he wanted to focus on “getting out and about and building relationships’’.
“Then we’ll earn the right to be able to have a different conversation around where we think those policy conversations are going.’’
