'No intent to cause offence': PM clarifies comments made at Rotorua business meeting

Author: Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2026, 8:50am

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Chris Luxon's standing by his comments telling struggling business owners to take more responsibility for themselves.

The National Party leader told a Rotorua business function on Friday to not rely on the government and "be adult, be adult, be adult", responding to a question about the city's struggling economy.

He says the previous Labour government had treated business with a "parent-child mentality" - and that he didn't wait for the Government when he was a business leader.

Luxon told Mike Hosking that his government's trying to empower businesses.

He says they've partnered with businesses through the fuel crisis, which is different to Labour's approach of dictating to businesses through Covid.

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Below is the transcript of the prime minister's full response to the question at the event, provided to Newstalk ZB by his office.

"I think that's a negative view, to be honest. Like we're entrepreneurs and business people, and I get it. You know, if you're not retooling and radically disrupting your business, you ain't doing the job.

"You know, you have to disrupt yourself aggressively before you get disrupted by global events, and if you keep thinking you want the same business model, the same customer mix, the same margin structure, you know you've got to be retooling and refinancing and rehoming, and that's just the reality of business people all around the world.

"So, my job is to make sure I'm setting up the conditions for you to be able to go create that growth. And I think some of the subtext and assumption in your question is that...I think in New Zealand I'll be honest with you as a business person who was... I sat in Illinois for six years in Chicago, and the last person I wanted to ever talk to as a CEO was the government. I didn't sit there in Chicago saying I wonder what the government thinks and I wonder what they're doing to help me for my business? Can I get some grant money to do something? No, no, I'm a business person.

"I'm building a kick-ass company that actually has commercially superior returns, great customer experience, and awesome internal culture. That is the job of what makes a great company, not a good one, a great one. And so that was my mentality.

"Come home to New Zealand, and there's a parent-child mentality. I have literally sat in boardrooms across New Zealand, and the conversation goes: 'I wonder what the government's going to do? I wonder what the government's going to think?'

"Who cares what the government thinks or does? Our job is to be adult, adult, adult. The business leaders, the political leaders, and the community leaders working together, doing things differently. I set up the operating system. You go out there and smack it and go create the road, and the community leaders see the pain, the hurt, the need, and the frustration, and the three actors do different things but complementary things to deal with the challenges and the opportunities.

"So I still think there's a little bit of.... okay, so in this chamber, how many of you are actually using Claude or Claude code? Okay great. How many sessions has the chamber run to help you understand that? Is that your number one focus right here, right now? Because that is going to disrupt your businesses, and it's a huge opportunity for you to do exceptionally well off the back of it.

"So how do we collectively lift our SME literacy on something like AI as a result? So I'm just pushing back to say my job is to set the conditions up. We're getting spending under control. We're getting inflation back into the band. We're at 2.9 percent, strip out the fuel pieces. We've got growth coming in. And that creates opportunity."