Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said King Charles was interested in how New Zealand was “handling things economically” when the two met in London.
Luxon is in London to meet with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer before heading to Türkiye to mark the 110th anniversary of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli.
Speaking to Breakfast this morning, Luxon said he wouldn’t go into detail about his meeting with the King, but said the monarch had a “great amount of time” for New Zealand, and was interested in what was happening in the country.
“There’s a long standing convention we don’t talk about the detail of those conversations. But suffice to say, as you would expect, he’s got a great amount of time for New Zealand, and was interested in what was happening back at home.”
Luxon added: “We covered a number of topics… I won’t go into too much detail around that. He was also very interested, frankly, in New Zealand, and how we are handling things economically. He’s someone who genuinely cares a lot about the country.”
The PM will meet with Starmer on Tuesday (local time), and he said his priorities would be “deepening our commitment around defence and security” as well as trade.
“We’ve made tremendous progress around trade. Our exports to the UK are up over 21%, I think in the last year, and it’s been really important,” Luxon said.
“And there’s more opportunities for us in that space, particularly in emerging sectors around renewables and other technology areas.”
The PM added that “we’d never take this relationship for granted”.
“You think about the fact that we’ve been working together for so long in places like Gallipoli, obviously, but also now today, actually working together training Ukrainian soldiers in a very unjust war.”
