Christopher Luxon: Prime Minister on the trade relationship with the UK, Pope Francis' death, meeting with King Charles

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has met with King Charles III at Buckingham Palace in London, just hours after the death of Pope Francis.

Luxon confirmed he spoke to the King about the death of the Pope during his meeting, but would not divulge further details.

A spokesperson for the Prime Minister said Luxon “enjoyed discussing New Zealand issues with the King”.

Luxon said discussions with British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in coming days will revolve around the Ukraine-Russia war and trade.

He and Starmer will travel to meet New Zealand soldiers who are training Ukrainian troops.

“I certainly welcome any efforts around just and lasting peace for Ukraine … we’ll keep discussing options about being involved in peacekeeping support once the conflict concludes.

“We, as a small country with limited resources a long way away, aren’t going to be the ones to end that war, obviously … but, regardless, we stand beside our set of values which we think Ukraine, Zelensky, embodies.”

Luxon said trade would also be a hot topic given the UK had recently become NZ’s seventh-largest trading partner.

“We just need to keep pushing forward on it and keep pushing food and beverage and tourism.”

King Charles had a busy few days ahead of Luxon’s arrival, with various Easter-related events.

Late last week, he attended the annual Maundy Service, during which he awarded gifts to individuals in recognition of outstanding Christian service. Maundy Thursday takes place on the Thursday prior to Easter and commemorates the Washing of the Feet and the Last Supper of Jesus Christ.

On Easter Sunday, Charles was joined by other members of the royal family at St George’s Chapel in Windsor for a traditional church service.

In his Easter message, the King said: “The abiding message of Easter is that God so loved the world – the whole world – that He sent His son to live among us to show us how to love one another, and to lay down His own life for others in a love that proved stronger than death.

“There are three virtues that the world still needs – faith, hope and love. ‘And the greatest of these is love’. It is with these timeless truths in my mind, and my heart, that I wish you all a blessed and peaceful Easter.”

Luxon met with the King for the first time at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa in October.

The Prime Minister gave away little about what the pair discussed during that meeting, but said it was obvious King Charles had a “deep, deep affection for New Zealand” and was “very knowledgeable about a number of issues”.

“It was a very natural conversation; it was just the two of us sitting outside and having a chat on a couple of seats.”

This is Luxon’s first visit to the UK as Prime Minister. He touched down late on Sunday night (NZT).

Ahead of the trip, Luxon highlighted that trade was likely to be a key talking point.

“New Zealand is a champion for free trade, and I look forward to talking to Sir Keir Starmer about what our countries can do together to support the rules-based trading system,” Luxon said.

“The UK is one of NZ’s closest and most trusted partners, and, for many Kiwis, it is where they base themselves on their OE. The UK is also important to NZ’s prosperity. Our exports there grew by more than 20% in 2024 and are still growing.”

Two-way trade with the UK, which NZ signed a free-trade agreement with in 2022, was worth $7.27 billion in the year ending December 2024, making it our seventh-largest trading partner.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Meantime, the Prime Minister. He is to be found this
morning in London as he meets the King as well
as the Prime Minister's a kis Starmer. You'll visit our
training of the troops in Ukraine, of course, and travel
to Turkey for Zac Day, and Christopher Luxant is with us.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
A very good morning. Good morning, Mike, how are you today?

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Very well? Indeed, I know you can't tell us what
you talk about, but the King is well and healthy
and it was a good meeting.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yeah. Look, it is actually a long standing convention. We
don't share those details those conversations, but suffice to say
he's always very interested in what's going on in New
Zealand and he's pretty informed about what's going on in
the world. And we actually just spent a bit of
time talking about Pope Francis, because obviously that news had
come through literally an hour or two before we met.
So no, it was good to see him, and I've
met him a couple of times and he's always very engaged,

(00:43):
very interested in lots of issues, but certainly in New
Zealand as well.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Good when do you meet Sokia that's.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Tomorrow morning or evening your time and I'm looking forward
to that. He's given us a huge amount of time actually,
and we'll travel down together and actually meet both British
and America and New Zealand troops, also Ukraine troops. And
obviously I'm proud of the work that we've done there
because we've got a one hundred defense Force personnel that
we're actually extending out until the end of twenty twenty six,
working with the Brits and training I think we've trained

(01:10):
about fifty four thousand Ukrainian soldiers so far, and so
we want to I want to see our guys in
our troops and talk to them and also talk to
the Ukrainian soldiers that are being trained, and then we'll
come back to Downing Street and do our formal bilateral
at number ten, which will be good and it's a
good relationship, Mike, as you well know. So it's a
good chance to say, well, how do we deepen and
strengthen it further.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Let me come back to that in the moment regards Ukraine.
So the announcement you made overnight, the extension to descender
twenty six, the thinking behind that is what the war
goes on until twenty six, What happened to the peace deal.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yeah, well, look, I mean we're obviously following closely any
potential ceasefire negotiations. We certainly welcome, as I've said before,
any efforts around a just and lasting piece for the Ukraine.
But and we'll keep discussing options about whether we would
get involved in peacekeeping support once a conflict concludes. So
there's ongoing conversations. We clearly, as a small country with

(02:03):
limited resources a long way away, aren't going to be
the ones to end that war. Obviously, that's for you know, Europe, Ukraine,
US and Russia to work towards. But regardless, we stand
very strongly with our set of values, which we think
Ukraine embodies and Zelensky and bodies very very strongly. It's
important we play our part and stand up for those values.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Over the weekend, as you'll be well aware, the Ukrainians
signed the so called minerals Deal, or part of the
minerals Deal at least, you know, to extend it out
to something more permanent on the ground, there is there
a peace deal to be had? Is there a war
to end here?

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Is there?

Speaker 1 (02:36):
I mean, what's your vibe?

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, I mean I think my observation is that, you know,
it's up to you know, Russia really hasn't taken that
the avenues that have been laid out by the Americans
and also the Ukrainians, and you know, the pressures on
Russia really frankly, if they want to step up and
actually progress cease fire negotiations and conversations, the balls in
their court. And I think that's how certainly, you know,

(03:00):
how the European countries here feel about it. And again
we have a chance to talk about that again tomorrow
as well with Sakia Starmer. But yeah, there is a
you know, this is an illegal, unprovoked invasion from Russia.
They can choose to end it at any point in time.
Zelenski and my view as a hero, he's standing up
for values that we believe in as a small country
we identify with Ukraine. I'm proud of the support that

(03:22):
we've been able to offer. But ultimately we know we
want to you know, we're following closely and we welcome
any efforts to sort of get this war ended.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
How much discussion with Sakira is going to be about
free trade tariffs the world as we.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Know it, I suspect, I mean it'll be more focused
on our bilateral relationship, and obviously the defense.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
And security is a big part of that.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
The Ukrainian peace we just talked about, but we're also
participating with the UK Carrier Strike Force in twenty twenty five,
which will come down through our part of the world.
We have other things like the five Power defense arrangements
which we have in Southeast Asia with the UK, and
obviously with our step up in defense spending, we want
to be into operable. But also there's areas of collaboration
around innovation. There's New Zealand companies that are actually providing

(04:08):
the British military with UAVs and stuff like that, which
is interesting. But I think the second but mic is
that actually trade and investments growing tremendously.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
So our exports to the UK.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
From New Zealand just in the last twelve months is
up twenty one percent. It's now our seventh largest trading
partner's about seven billion dollars. So there's lots of opportunities still,
We've got all the architecture we need. We just need
to keep pushing forward on it and keep pushing food
and beverage and tourism that obviously there's emerging sectors like
advanced aviation and renewables and tech as well.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
So there is a lot of upside because of all
the free trade deals we've signed of late. Maybe the
UA's good and it's got upside, but the British one
seems to be genuinely gold standard.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
I think.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
So I think it's a very good quality agreement, and
I think there's a lot of opportunity, and part of
it is just encouraging. You're now seeing, for example, a
lot of British firms and VA sting and renewables in
New Zealand, solar farms and things like that, and I
think there's a lot of opportunity for and the fact
that our exporters are onto it right. I mean, our
exports are up twenty one percent in a year when

(05:11):
it's been pretty difficult trading around the world, you know,
pretty tariffs. You know, that's when it's been growing. So
you know, there's still lots of opportunity for US.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Okay, a couple of domestic issues. The Reserve Bank and
was mentioning this just before the news the twenty five
percent cut that Nicolas managed to at twenty five percent,
that reeks to me of waste. If you can slice
somebody by twenty five percent and they're still operating, somebody
was rolling around in money.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, look, our view and opposition was there was a
lot of money being piled into the reserve back.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
We also felt that they.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Had a very confused mandate. If you remember at the time,
one of the things we did in the first couple
of weeks was to just say you are one hundred
percent focused on lowering inflation.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
That is your job.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
You are not there to do any other stuff beyond that.
That is your primary responsibility. And I think that helped.
I think, you know, get moving what was called the
dual mandation and putting that in place was important. But yeah,
equally with you know, as we expect other government agencies
and crownties to be responsible for tax with taxpayer money,
we think that they also need to make savings and
praying back you know, what they're doing as well.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
How do you handle something And I asked this question
before the news. So you fund an organization and you
look for outcomes. Given there were three recessions, can we
call them in competent or can you not lay that
at their doorstep? In other words, how do you know
you're getting value for money.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Well, I mean, I think you know. What we can
control is what we can control, and that is saying, well,
we do have a decision around that mandate. Your job
as a reserve bank is to get inflation back under
the band. It had been in the band for a
long period of time. It had got completely out of
control with the printing of cash, as we talked about,
an opposition and also a government that frankly was wasting
a lot of money. So the fiscal and monetary settings

(06:49):
were completely out of whack. And then what happened was
a reserve bank woke up and decide to take interest.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Rates up and put the brakes on.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Mean while, you know, the labor government kept spending like
drunken sailors and and we ended up with a lot
of instability. And so you know, that's the mess that
we're cleaning up and working our way through now. But
from my point of view, there was a lot of
money being pumped into the reserve bank. They were doing
a lot of periphery things that weren't We're away from
their core mandate, which was to get inflation back under
three percent. They've now done that, which is helpful. We've

(07:17):
done that by also getting rid of wasteful spending and
fiscal and monetary policy, working together to get inflation under
control so we can lawer interest rates, so we can
grow the economy and get people in jobs. But equally,
we don't feel there's a need for them to with
the budget bid that we saw initially and what we've
proposed to deliver, it's quite rightly make that twenty five
percent cut.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Just before Easter, we had Summing and brown and twenty
billion dollars long term plan for health infrastructure. All of
that sounds good until I read Health New Zealand's own report,
which states, quote they cannot effectively plan for asset renewals,
replacements or optimize maintenance strategies. We do not have a
consistent understanding of asset related risks and its priorities for investment.

(07:58):
If they're that useless, would you entrust twenty billion dollars
worth of anything with them?

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Well, I think actually I would just say to you,
I think New Zealand in general does a very poor
job of asset management. I think it's been recognized globally
that we're amongst some of the worst in doing it.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
You've seen us with.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Respect to education actually pull out infrastructure and education as
a separate sort of entity within it, and that's led
to some good outcomes. We've actually been able to improve
the standardized buildings from twenty percent eighty percent of the
classrooms in New Zealand were bespoken done locally, and as
a result we're about one point two million dollars in cost.
We've managed to actually say, let's lift the standard rate

(08:36):
up to sixty percent of all our buildings now are
standard in classrooms and lo and behold, the cost has
come down to eight hundred thousand dollars. And it's the
same challenge frankly in the health estate as well. We've
got I think it's about twelve hundred and thirteen hundred
buildings I think across eighty six campuses or something, and
the average age is about forty seven years. So this
has been developing over multiple decades. But we've never ever had,

(08:57):
believe it or not, a single long term plan that
lays out a pipeline for health infrastructure. And that's partly
renewing that capacity, partly investing in new facilities. But you know,
as I've said to Simeon and Chris Bishop. I'm very
very open for us actually creating a separate health infrastructure
entity that actually manages infrastructure projects well, because it's a
different skill set. When you're in education, you're already focused

(09:20):
on curriculum and you don't have expertise and running the
assets of classrooms and schools, And the same happens in
healthcare with hospitals and other things.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
So there's a lot for us to do there.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
But I think the good start is actually what Simon
has done, which is, you know, try and comprehensively set
up a plan and then think about how we phase
this stuff and open it up to private capital too.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
You're looking forward to Gliberly.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
I am really Mica. I mean it's a pretty special place.
It's obviously as a kid growing up in New Zealand,
I've read a lot about it. I always love history
and being a history buff and read a lot of
stories about it. And yeah, I just think it's really
poignant this week to be here in the UK talking
defense and the work that we've been doing with the
Brits and then thinking one hundred and ten years ago,
you know, we're working with Brits as well, and Gallipoli

(10:01):
and it's gonna be very special, one hundred and tenth commemoration.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, year of commemoration.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Go well, appreciate you making the time. Christopher luxem on
the other side of the.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
World for for more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen
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Speaker 1 (10:13):
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