Luxon rules out an ACT finance minister
National Party leader Christopher Luxon says Nicola Willis will be his finance minister, not an ACT MP.
But he refused to engage on ACT’s radical budget it proposed on Monday, which includes raising the superannuation age to match life expectancy, removing KiwiSaver subsidies, dismantling several ministries and selling off parts of NZ Post.
National is extremely likely to need ACT’s support to form a Government, even with the party’s polling on the up lately. It has no other natural coalition partners in Parliament, with the Māori Party taking a far more left-wing view than it did when working with National and the Greens essentially ruling out working with National.
In a somewhat tense standup with media on his way into caucus yesterday, Luxon refused to discuss the ACT budget – either to endorse any parts of it or to distance his party from them.
‘‘At this stage I’m not interested in the ACT policy ... those conversations will happen much further down along the road.’’
Asked if he could rule out scrapping the Ministry of Māori Development, as ACT is proposing, Luxon said that was ‘‘not our policy’’ but would not elaborate.
Luxon was also asked about ACT’s policy to progressively raise the superannuation age to 67 from 2023, with the age of eligibility then indexed to overall life expectancy.
He said it was still National’s policy to raise the super age to 67 in 2038, but again did not want to engage on ACT’s proposal.
‘‘We’re going to be talking with ACT at some point next year when we’re doing election calculations, and that’s a long way away.’’
Luxon said he was focused on the National Party and its policy for the time being.
While he declined to discuss the
policy of his potential coalition partner, National have regularly used the policy of Labour’s coalition partner the Greens to attack Labour.
Willis put out a press release earlier this month suggesting Labour was going to take on the Green Party’s wealth tax policy, which was the basis of several days of campaigning by former leader Judith Collins at the last election.
Luxon was then asked if he would insist that Willis be his finance minister in any potential coalition with ACT – something John Key did with Bill English.
At first he said he was ‘‘not going to entertain any of that’’, but soon promised Willis would indeed be finance minister.
‘‘Nicola Willis will be our finance minister. I am giving a concrete promise about the finance minister. No doubt about that,’’ Luxon said.
Willis was asked for her overall view of the ACT Party budget.
She said National’s proposals for the Budget – inflation-adjusted tax cuts – were ‘‘quite different’’ from what ACT had proposed.
‘‘In addition, they have identified some things that they think would allow the Government to not spend as much. At a general level, we agree that this Government has implemented a lot of wasteful spending, that’s not getting good enough outcomes.’’
Asked how much influence ACT would have over a National Government budget, she said that would depend on the will of voters.
‘‘. . . I’m not interested in the ACT policy . . . those conversations will happen much further down along the road.’’
Christopher Luxon
National Party leader