Lyric Waiwiri-Smith gets an ‘economic education’ at the prime minister’s Bloomberg Address.
In his hour-long Bloomberg Address, prime minister Christopher Luxon revealed just one new tidbit of information to a crowd of his former ilk: businesspeople. The possibility of a four-year government term, to be voted on in a referendum at the next election. For the rest of his 58 minutes on stage, he mostly talked about business.
It all went down at Auckland’s Park Hyatt on Friday afternoon, starting with a coated man opening my Uber car door for me. This is worth mentioning, because I don’t remember the last time a strange man opened the door for me, which usually means whatever you’ve arrived at is going to be fancy. The walk up the marble steps to the convention space further drives this belief home.
Everyone is wearing navy or black, the suits pinstripe or plain, and the men outnumber the women (though this reporter fails to record how many of these men are named Mark). They’re a mixture of business owners, investors, dignitaries, including the Indian ambassador, and Luxon’s favourite company of all, media people. Don’t ask what the majority ethnicity is.
The only water here is infused, and the food sits on a banquet table in the middle of the room, surrounded by networkers making connections. There’s a watercress salad with poached pear, over-stuffed sandwiches, and fancy lettuce leaves topped with parmesan. For dessert, lemon and yuzu meringue roulade or a chocolate ball sandwiched between two chocolate slabs, which is almost impossible to put onto your plate with the tongs supplied. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, unless you’re the kind of person who can already afford it.
Luxon isn’t around for the “light lunch and networking” aspect of this convention, which is understandable, but a shame. If there was ever a room completely full of people most likely to vote National, it’s probably this one, and Luxon is a dish best enjoyed one-on-one, when he lets his more personable side shine.
The applause of someone – probably a comms person – cheering on a pre-record of Luxon speaking to Bloomberg reporter Haidi Stroud-Watts is the last sound that echoes through the room before the arrival of the prime minister and his posse. He’s introduced as the man whose job it is to deliver us through the choppy waters of the economy and race relations, and Luxon’s 10-minute Bloomberg address focuses on the faults of the previous government for creating a “pressure cooker” economy.
He shares his five goals for the future of the nation, which you’ve probably heard before: quality education, reliable infrastructure, innovations in science and tech (including genetic engineering and AI), “smarter regulation” and strengthening connections to the world.
These are all things we’ve already heard Luxon and the coalition discuss, but as I’m sandwiched between two smart-looking Interest NZ and National Business Review reporters, and the PM looks towards the media tables when he mentions his five goals, I write them down in case they’re important.
He wraps up, and thus begins the interview stage with Bloomberg News New Zealand bureau chief Matthew Brockett, who remembers Luxon as the man whom he worked alongside at McDonald’s and played squash with in Christchurch as a 17-year-old.
They waste no time getting into the thick of it: banking, GDP and New Zealand’s “productivity disease”. Luxon makes a point about economic education, and how new generations seem to have lost it. It sounds anecdotal but I can confirm it’s true, as I’m now desperately trying to Google words I would already know if I hadn’t chosen art history over business studies in high school.
He can’t help but make quips about the previous government, won’t reveal his position on who won the Kamala Harris v Donald Trump debate (“my job is to work with whoever the American people will vote for”), and blames heightened interest in the Treaty Principles Bill on the media.
The final 15 minutes are reserved for audience questions, submitted anonymously through a QR code on the tables, meaning they can be vetted before they’re shared. The system keeps order and control, which also takes away the fun of having an open stage to question our prime minister.
One asks whether Luxon is worried “about our domestic tensions, with Māori challenging our standing in the world, and making those connections harder to build?” A strange question, one that could loosely be interpreted as, “prime minister, what are your plans to stop Māori ruining our reputations and business deals?”
Luxon takes it on the chin. “My observation is actually, Māori businesses have done a very good job – if not better job – of actually building business and international investors,” he tells the crowd. “Māori can do well internationally on a trade agenda, as can all of New Zealand.” At this, a suited man in the audience silently shakes his head.
Asked how he’ll measure his success at the end of his term, Luxon says he wants a New Zealand “that is actually much more ambitious and more inspirational, and celebrates excellence and goes out into the world with confidence”. Before he leaves the stage, he asks Brockett, “would you like fries with that?”