The Mike Hosking Breakfast
Christopher Luxon: Prime Minister chats fees free and retirement age changes
10 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of discussion with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon?
The Prime Minister is with us. A very good morning to you. Good morning, Mike. Isn't it great you've got a fan in Freddie? It's great. Just for the listeners, Mike's invited an 11-year-old in who's a big fan of Hosking to shadow him for the day. So we're signing Freddie up, I think, to ZB in the next 10 years or so.
And unfortunately what the Prime Minister has done is try to convince Freddie that I'm some sort of weirdo. Anyway, it wasn't as bad, I must tell you. What was the breakfast we put on for Freddie and his mum?
Well, listen, as I come into this show, I'm never even offered a glass of water. I come in this morning and there's very healthy fruit and very posh yoghurts and all sorts of things for Freddie.
That's how we roll. The boss wanted McDonald's and McFlurries. And you went healthy on them. We had to tell him to pull his head in. Right, let's deal with some business. First of all, the fee's free. Does this irk you that it's out?
No, not really. Look, it was going to be a pre-budget announcement. The backstory here is that we've moved New Zealand First to quite a good place. I mean, it was part of the coalition agreement to move it to last year fees free. And actually, all credit to them, they've actually seen that it's a huge monumental policy failure and a huge waste of taxpayer money.
And whether it was under Labour as a first year fees free or under the coalition as a last year fees free, the bottom line is it hasn't delivered on any of its objectives. hasn't driven more kids into tertiary education, hasn't put kids from poorer backgrounds into education, and certainly hasn't supported lifelong learning.
So to be honest, Mike, we're not in the business of untargeted subsidies. We already underwrite 80% of university education, one of the highest in the world. And so let's knock it on the head and do something else.
Could you take some criticism that as much as you want to criticise year one, next year's on me famously from Jacinda Ardern, you didn't fix it in the sense you put it at the back end, which at least made more sense in year one, but still didn't work.
Yeah, still didn't work. And I think, you know, it was important to New Zealand first. They actually sort of believed in the policy. And as I said, you know, some credit to them because at the end of the day, they saw what we could see and we talked about it for some time. And I think we've got to a good place.
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Chapter 2: Why was the decision made to abolish fees-free study in New Zealand?
Do you tell whatever you're taking out of university, you're putting into trades dollar for dollar?
We'll reveal all of that in the budget. Reveal means you're saving some, so
You take 100 out and you'll save some. We'll be saving some money. Okay, fair enough too. Retirement. Yep. What's your assessment of the political risk? Given Key, for example, wouldn't want to touch it. Yeah. What's your assessment of the political risk of telling people, vote for me because I'm going to make it harder for you to retire and get money?
Yeah, well, look, I think the bigger question is what's the problem we're trying to solve? And when you look at it, we've gone from seven workers to one retiree, I think very shortly in the next few years. I think we're at four to one today. We'll be at two to one very quickly. Very big proportion of government spending going forward with an ageing population.
I think it gets up to sort of 18% now. I think it gets up to 25% pretty quickly. and particularly in the next few years, it really starts to accelerate on us. So the problem is the system is essentially going to become unworkable and unaffordable, and it just means that that's money we don't put into health and education, or we end up loading up our kids with a hell of a lot of debt.
So if you take a step back, you've actually got to say three things. One is, I think one of the things we're really quite hot on, and you've seen the National Party policy from November last year, we've started some of it in government, but we've got to step up the contributions to match Australia 12% by 2032. The second thing, I think there is a genuine question about age.
If our peer countries like Canada, the UK and Australia found a way through it, surely we can do it in a very sensible, graduated, lots of signalling of time to deal with it. But that is, people are living four years longer than they were in 2005 now. And I think the other bit was, I've seen your conversations around means testing.
I think you've got to be quite careful with that because people need certainty going forward. And you could see future governments changing thresholds
So in other words, it's still an entitlement. You either get it or you don't.
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Chapter 3: What are the expected outcomes of funding trades training?
So, you know, I appreciate there are some that want to play politics with immigration, but it's just a very different story here. And I think that's because we've made it linked to infrastructure and economic growth.
All right. Where'd you get your six million from? Oh, party donations. Yeah. Yeah, look, I mean. Not yours, unless you want to tell us where you got your own six million.
No, no. I'm sorted. I get it.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of the Youth Guarantee program?
Yeah. Oh, don't go there. So where'd you get the six million?
You're such a tall, poppy knocker. Sorry.
Where'd you get your six million from?
Look, it's actually really encouraging. There's a lot of people out there who actually support our values of our party. And a lot of people are going to say, oh, it's just wealthy donors, as it was in 2023. It's actually a lot of small donations when you look at the numbers.
Because they're good numbers.
Yeah, there's a lot of support out there for what we're doing, actually, despite some of the media narrative at times. Freddie's changed his mind. Has he?
He wants to be Prime Minister? He may well want to be Prime Minister. Does he want to ask it on air or just through me? All right, what's your favourite subject at school, is his question.
My favourite subject, Freddie, was history. Because I actually think, and I loved it, and I loved it. And my first book I got into was at the Cockle Bay Primary School. I would go down to the library,
and I read about this guy called Winston Churchill, and I got the Usborne Guide to World War II, and I studied all the missiles on different sides, and I just loved military history and history in general. So that was my favourite thing.
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