Under Pressure Luxon Resorts to Lying | The Jackal


15 Aug 2025

Under Pressure Luxon Resorts to Lying

The art of political spin has always existed in the corridors of power, but what we're witnessing from Prime Minister Christopher Luxon represents something far more concerning, a systematic abandonment of factual discourse in favour of outright fabrication. When a leader begins peddling untruths with the casual confidence of someone ordering their morning flat white, we must ask ourselves: what does this say about the state of our democracy?

The most egregious recent example came during a media standup after parliamentary question time, where Luxon falsely claimed that former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had been summonsed to appear before the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry. This wasn't a slip of the tongue or a misunderstanding, it was a deliberate mischaracterisation designed to paint Ardern as somehow legally compelled to participate in person.

 

On Thursday, Stuff reported:

Luxon claims Ardern was ‘summonsed’ to Covid Inquiry. She wasn’t

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has claimed Jacinda Ardern and three other former ministers were summonsed to appear at public hearings for the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19.

“To be clear, they summonsed them,” Luxon told reporters today. “They refused to show and I think that's not right”.

Problem is, he’s wrong. Those running the inquiry chose not to use powers under the Inquiries Act to force the former Prime Minister as well as former Covid Minister Chris Hipkins, former Health Minister Ayesha Verrall, and former Finance Minster Grant Robertson to appear at public hearings.

Inquiry chair Grant Illingworth explicitly said yesterday that he chose not to use the summons powers.


 

The reality is that Ardern was invited to provide evidence, a standard practice for such inquiries. She accepted willingly, as one would expect from someone with nothing to hide.

This fabrication serves a dual purpose for Luxon: it attempts to weaponise the inquiry process against his predecessor whilst simultaneously creating the false impression that there's something sinister about Ardern not attending in person. It's textbook deflection from a Prime Minister whose own government is struggling with credibility issues across multiple portfolios.

The pattern continues with Luxon's bizarre claim about his mountaintop meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. According to the Prime Minister, their $27,000 helicopter-assisted pavlova photo-op was well received across the Tasman.

Yet a curious thing happened, or rather, didn't happen. Australian media outlets, typically eager to cover bilateral meetings between leaders, remained conspicuously silent. No photographs emerged in Australia of this supposed diplomatic triumph, no video footage of the Prime Ministers atop New Zealand's scenic peaks.

One might charitably suggest that perhaps the Australian press simply missed this momentous occasion, but in an era where every political gesture is photographed, tweeted, and analysed to death, such an oversight seems improbable.

The more likely explanation is that Luxon's definition of well received bears little resemblance to observable reality. When your diplomatic achievements require you to speak for foreign media outlets that didn't report them, perhaps it's time to reconsider your communications strategy.

 

On Thursday, Stuff also reported:

Two helicopters, two prime ministers and a pavlova. Was this $27,000 lunch worth it?

Assuming they were charged the normal amount, a ballpark cost of a trip like this would be at least $27,000 for the two helicopters. Stuff asked Luxon’s office and Department of Internal Affairs to confirm if that was the bill. They did not respond.

Luxon told Stuff he didn’t know the details. But he hailed the visit as a success.

“I just say to you, I think my feedback I got from that Sunday night from people in Australia was like, ‘Man, what a fantastic trip. New Zealand looked fantastic.’ And it played really well back into the Australian media,” he told Stuff, after he returned to the capital.

But in Australia, almost none of the news websites and television bulletins used photos or video from the mountaintop.


These lies might seem inconsequential to some. However, it's Luxon's recent fear-mongering about a capital gains tax that reveals the most troubling aspect of his relationship with truth. The Prime Minister has repeatedly claimed that implementing such a tax would trigger an exodus of wealthy New Zealanders, leaving the country economically bereft. This tired trope has been wheeled out by opponents of progressive taxation for decades, and it remains as factually bankrupt today as it was then.

Research consistently demonstrates that concerns about "capital flight" are grossly overstated. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in the United States has extensively documented how "millionaire tax flight" is a myth with no evidence to support it. Similarly, research by Stanford sociologist Cristobal Young found that claims about wealthy individuals fleeing high-tax states amount to "searching for a crisis that does not really exist".
The OECD's own research on capital gains taxation shows that most OECD countries successfully tax capital gains upon realisation, often with exemptions for housing and small businesses. These nations haven't experienced the economic apocalypse that Luxon suggests would befall New Zealand should we dare to ask wealthy people, like himself, to contribute their fair share.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy notes that tax-related migration is "grossly exaggerated", while the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities has demonstrated that claims about tax hikes driving rich households away are "unproven". The pattern is clear: countries that have implemented capital gains taxes haven't witnessed mass defections by the wealthy, and those that have moved their wealth have often done so for administrative reasons rather than due to capital flight.

What makes Luxon's fearmongering particularly galling is that it represents a betrayal of the evidence-based policy approach that New Zealand has traditionally championed. We're a nation that once prided ourselves on pragmatic governance, on looking at what works rather than what sounds good in a focus group. Yet here we have a Prime Minister who appears more comfortable trafficking in discredited talking points rather than telling the truth.
The concerning trajectory of Luxon's relationship with truth raises profound questions about the health of our political discourse. When leaders feel they need to make demonstrably false claims without consequence, when they substitute their own alternative facts for reality, we edge closer to the kind of post-truth politics that has poisoned democratic institutions elsewhere.

New Zealanders deserve better than a Prime Minister who treats truth as an inconvenient obstacle to his political messaging. We deserve leaders who understand that governance requires grappling with complexity, not retreating into comfortable fictions. The mounting evidence of Luxon's casual relationship with factual accuracy isn't just concerning, it's a warning sign that our democracy's immune system against misinformation may be weaker than we thought.

The question now is whether New Zealanders will hold their Prime Minister accountable for his numerous falsehoods, or whether we'll allow the normalisation of political dishonesty to continue its corrosive work on our democratic institutions?
Published by the Jackal