The New Zealand Herald‘s Mood of the Boardroom has been released, with Luxon and Finance Minister Nicola Willis out of the top-10 Cabinet ratings.
The survey is made up of responses from 150 chief executives and business leaders. Luxon was ranked the 15th best minister in his own Cabinet, while Willis ranked 13th.
Luxon scored on average 2.96 out of 5 where 1 is “not impressive” and 5 is “very impressive”. Willis’ performance scored an average 3.09 out of 5.
At a media briefing at Auckland Airport today, Luxon also defended his record of engaging with business leaders, after some claimed he did not take constructive feedback well.
The Prime Minister said he would not be standing down.
“We’re going through a very difficult recovery and there’ll be a range of opinions across all of our society around that.”
He rejected the idea he wasn’t engaging enough with business leaders, saying he came from a corporate background as a chief executive and tried to listen to those views as best he could.
“But my job as Prime Minister of New Zealand is to to create the conditions for growth and to actually think about the five million people that are in this country, not just the 150 that are filling in the survey.”
Asked why Erica Stanford was ranked at No 1, Luxon responded: “We’re actually a team”, and spoke of rebuilding the National party after “our period of dysfunction”.
After the “disaster” of 2020, he said, the party decided they would “play as a team.” He was “captain” but he couldn’t be the “winger or the prop as well”.
“My job as the Prime Minister and as the leader of the team is to make sure I’ve got the right people in the right positions on the team at the right time, with enough clarity and support to go off and do the task they need to do.”
He was proud of all the National Ministers performing “exceptionally well” and proud of the fact they had made a “coalition work” and given “strong and stable government” to New Zealand.
He told reporters the country was going through a tough economic recovery, and people want it to happen faster. The government needed to create the right conditions for growth, but it was also up to businesses to create that growth, he believed.
Luxon was attending the opening of Auckland Airport’s international airfield expansion, which is part of its 10-year, $10 billion upgrade plan announced in 2023.
Earlier today, Willis told an audience she was the “face of finance and economic growth” and until that recovery was broadly felt and sustained she expected people to challenge her, “as they should”.
“We’re having an ugly recovery, and people are feeling it.”
She was also asked whether Luxon was “safe” in his role, responding he was “completely safe.”
“The thing that really struck me when I read the report was how invisible it is to many the coalition management that he deftly does behind the scenes to create stability out of three quite different parties,” she said.
“He’s doing that extremely well.”
Willis said it was underestimated how Luxon had put the “right talent in the right places” in Cabinet, and had backed those people to succeed, referencing Ministers Mark Mitchell, Simeon Brown and Stanford.
‘Resentment can grow’
Labour’s finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds told businesses she is worried that people are losing hope.
Edmonds was Labour’s top performer in the Herald‘s Mood of the Boardroom survey, with an average score of 3.2 out of 5.
She said people were doing everything right by turning up to work, working long hours, and running their businesses – but it was still not enough.
“When that happens resentment can grow and when people lose hope they stop imagining a better future.
“They drift away from their communities, from the institutions, from the clubs, even their democracy.
“Our jobs as leaders in this room are to rebuild those connections.”
Labour would not rely on overseas investors or house prices to solve the economy’s problems, Edmonds said, and wanted to see more use of New Zealand’s talent, savings and capital.
