Plane sailing: Luxon pitches to fix things

At his State of the Nation speech, Christopher Luxon promised a tax rebate for families using early childhood education services. (Image: Dileepa Fonseka/BusinessDesk)

Dileepa Fonseka

Mon, 06 Mar 2023

The best line of National party leader Christopher Luxon’s State of the Nation event didn’t belong to him, but to his co-leader Nicola Willis, who described Luxon as the man “who made the planes run on time at Air New Zealand”. The line simultaneously captures what everyone is feeling about air travel right now and Luxon’s Wayne Brown-esque pitch to voters: everything is broken, and I have the skills to fix it. His pitch is not a unique one. Benito Mussolini was famously credited as the man who “mad...

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