Written By:
- Date published:
11:16 am, January 20th, 2026 - 17 comments
Categories: act, chris hipkins, Christopher Luxon, david seymour, Donald Trump, election 2026, national, nz first, same old national, winston peters -
Tags:
Christopher Luxon gave his state of the nation speech yesterday.
Without exaggeration I can truly say it was the worst state of the nation speech I have ever heard. It was even worse than his 2025 or his 2024 speeches.
There was no passion. No vision. No drive. As Chris Hipkins commented the speech was full of management speech mumbo jumbo.
There were no new policy announcements. Existing announcements about Kiwisaver, education reform and Resource Management reform were mentioned.
The Kiwisaver statement was startlingly disingenuous.
Luxon claimed that the new policy was to “support New Zealanders’ financial security”, to “establish a spine of national capital, sheltered from the winds of financial and political change offshore”, and to “improve the returns from work and make New Zealand a more attractive place to build a career and raise a family, by closing the gap with Australia on superannuation contributions”.
You would be startled to hear that the Government’s policy is an effective cut in Government contributions. Government contributions were halved and if you earned over a certain amount then you received no contribution at all.
Employers are expected to pick up the slack. Overall balances will increase over time but less and less of this would be paid by the Crown. So much for wanting a spine of national capital.
His comments on the international situation were disappointing.
At a time when the President of the United States is justifying the invasion of a western ally’s territory because a private organisation in another country did not give him a medal you would think this was the time for Luxon to grow a pair and take an independent stance.
Instead of this he wimpered about how the Government was “using what agency we have to champion our values and interests on the world stage – supporting Ukraine to resist Russia’s illegal invasion and bringing the EU and CPTPP together to reinforce the rules of global trade”.
The comment was exceedingly weak. Under Luxon’s leadership New Zealand has become a lapdog of the Trump administration.
What was noteworthy was the lack of any walkback of the Government’s intensification plans for Auckland.
Four days ago Bernard Orsman in the Herald claimed that Luxon was poised to water down Auckland’s Housing Intensification Plan.
But on this topic Luzon said nothing.
It may be that it was realied that the matter had been handled really badly. Requiring Auckand Council to propose and consult on drastic intensification goals and then pull the rug from under the process without even telling Councillors looks haphazard in a keystone cops on steroids sort of way.
But he could have looked tough and stated it publicly, giving Chris Bishop a pubblic slap down in the process. Instead he said nothing. Some reporters may be worried at the way they have been played.
And the change in content from last year’s speech was stark. Last year was all about going for growth with the word “growth” mentioned 31 times.
This year the word “growth” only appeared three times, twice in the context of RMA changes. I guess championing a year of growth and then failing has its downside.
The Green Party anticipated pretty well everything that Luxon said in this post.
Luxon was flat and low key and uninspiring. If you compare this speech to the speech he gave two years ago you will notice a dramatic change.
I suspect that there are a number of National MPs now worried about their future. Comparing Luxon to Peters or Seymour is going to cause many National supporters to question their loyalty.
Christopher Luxon’s latest State of the Nation speech suggests that over summer he has been spending more on his Spotify summer list than he should have.
the change in content from last year’s speech was stark. Last year was all about going for growth with the word “growth” mentioned 31 times. This year the word “growth” only appeared three times
Could be the notion of de-growth is impacting dimly on his consciousness. Nats would claim that the ratio of 31:3 isn't significant, yet there is actually an entire power of 10 involved, so that won't work. Alternatively they could argue that he did use the word 3 times, so the algorithm is inevitably effective (like `location location location').
As a team-building exercise in rhetoric, the effect is similar to hottentots dancing around the campfire chanting a slogan. No need to put a missionary in the pot.
When the market doesn't work, govt regulation doesn't work, pc stances don't work and geopolitical alignments don't work, neoliberalism seems to limp along by default. Everyone defaults to TINA in unison since anything else seems too hard. Some may still vote on that basis, even while knowing it'll make no difference.
"As a team-building exercise in rhetoric, the effect is similar to hottentots dancing around the campfire chanting a slogan. No need to put a missionary in the pot."
That statement in itself is not team-building. Hottentot is a term of abuse and a reference to cannibalism, of which the Khoekhoe have been ill-informedly accused, is not conducive to debate. So you get called not for what you say but how you say it.
I wondered actually whether you were having a dig at the title of the opinion itself from Mickysavage. When I googled mumbo jumbo I found it too had overtones of a racist past.
So at the accepted risk of being called 'woke', I post these two for consideration.
https://www.tiktok.com/@benjykusi/video/7279143727963082016 on the racist overtones of 'mumbo jumbo' and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hottentot_(racial_term) as to who these people were.
Dunno if Afrikaner descendants still speak Dutch, but it would make primary school elocution lessons fun for the kids.
I must add that I had no idea about the back story and provenance of 'hottentot' and 'mumbo jumbo' before googling them today. The question of 'a missionary in a pot' occasioned the original query.
Well for me it dates from reading English books as a child in the 1950s. The missionary in the pot was a feature of adventure story plot-lines dating from the 19th-century, set in the African jungle, which I suspect literary folk nowadays call a trope…
"What I tell you three times must be true." – Lewis Carroll, The Hunting Of The Snark
Thanks
and it reminds me of the advertising formula that politicians use to optimise messaging: tell em what you're gonna tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you just told them. Apparently it even works on sheeple.
Mind you, to integrate this as gnosis, it is essential to avoid the error capitalists make (taking mathematicians seriously). In the deep green view, natural numbers have qualia, and are influential due to being informational in nature. They make natural forms and processes as components of the number field. Patterning is the effect, which in psych nowadays is called affect. Scientists remain allergic to extending field theory like this: too much deep thought required.
The dumbest and weakest New Zealand leadership in my lifetime.
Huge radical moves, no result.
Don't worry, the neolib tooth fairy may yet wave her magic wand to get them out of the shit. Meanwhile, the marriage of quantum computing and AI threatens to lift all boats.
So all Lux needs to do to up his game is to toss these two complex memes (qc +AI) into his word salad and everyone in the audience will wake up simultaneously. Thus woke in unison, they will be enthralled by the Humpty. To preserve neolib parity at the top, Chris B could do likewise. Everyone would love it.
Luxon should read up on the Vietnam war, Ben Tre.
That's where a General famously quoted "we had to destroy the village in order to save it".
Would have been a good way to open the state of the nation speech.
Bring on the Election. Stop saying "They are as bad as each other." The Left are clearly more concerned for wellbeing of the people and the country.
Luxon is a parody of a Leader, all show and self interest. Weak, bought by vested interests and is uninterested in ordinary kiwis. A self seeking parody of Trump. in mho.
Good Post, MickyS. I had been, and still am, mulling doing one myself but you’ve already covered (too) much ground (aka taken the wind out of my sails).
Looking at Luxon’s body language, he looked tense rather than serious.
This example from Luxon’s speech shows that we can expect more than the usual disingenuous spin from National in the lead up to and during the election campaign:
First, that income is way off the median annual income for people that age, assuming they even earn an income at all. Second, a 21-year-old is likely to retire a few years after turning 65, as Luxon mentioned in his speech the “inevitable lift in the retirement age”.
Here’s an example from the speech simultaneously of CoC’s dogma and spin:
Where to start with this warped one-eyed view? Is NZ’s [government] debt dangerous? No! For example, it’s nowhere near the levels of local government (councils) with common debt-to-revenue ratios of 280% and an allowance for increases up to 350% for fast-growing councils. [NB those debt levels have led to warnings from international credit agencies] An obvious way to increase spending more money is to increase revenue (e.g., productivity, but National has no plan for this).
Tim Murphy of Newsroom has written a good comment piece on Luxon’s speech and underlying philosophy. It could also have been written by Steve Braunias.
I share this sentiment with Luxon and this is where our ways of thinking part too. In any case, control is not the same as influence.
It felt more like a hybrid of a lecture and a sermon; Luxon was tense, and the audience was patiently waiting for it to be over, i.e., it was an immersive stage(d) performance and a networking event for the business elite and National Party donors.
The performance theme was strong in Luxon’s speech and associated mutterings and this will be at the core of National’s election campaign, I believe. This was also evident in Tim Murphy’s closing lines:
Feelings can be heavily influenced through spin in/on media, social and mainstream, and I expect this be National’s main weapon. The opposition may choose not to take the bait with counter-spin and to keep it real and grounded. Let the CoC lose themselves in a maze of smoke & mirrors and tangle themselves up in a web of lies & deceit. After all, they’re the best at that.
The CoC (govt by and for the sorted) is wilfully eroding 'our' local Goldilocks zone, but these biting comments will be like torrential rain off a lux's back.
I forgot to include the link to Tim Murphy’s piece: https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/01/20/new-zealand-meet-christopher-luxon-stoic-philosopher/.
The speech was delusional stuff. Still trying to blame Labour for his failures. No longer aspirational for the country. Instead he talks about lowering expectations and more cuts. Oh and imagining a fictional version of NZ instead of talking about the actual state of the nation.
Doesn't sound like he even believes his own bullshit any more. Does he even care that "fiscal discipline" went out the window with Nicky Noboats' disastrous and chaotic budgets?
But he's wealthy and sorted. I guess the PM gig is getting a bit tiresome for old Luxomatic, having to pretend to work is inconvenient when he could be getting pissed on Waiheke for a month.