![\"Christopher](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4JU59S4_PM_Statement_2026_11_jpg.jpeg\")
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\nChristopher Luxon delivers the 2026 Prime Minister’s Statement.
\nPhoto: VNP \/ Phil Smith\n<\/p>\n
Parliament’s first week is the 2026 election campaign writ small, from departing MPs, to the week’s 13-hour long debate over whether the government should continue.<\/p>\n
The departing MPs announced during Parliament’s first week back are not the only taster of the election to come. Parliament’s primary business is formally reaffirming its confidence in the current government.<\/p>\n
MPs vote on this after a lengthy set-piece event called the Debate on the Prime Minister’s Statement. It takes 13 hours of intense political bomb-throwing but is already a foregone conclusion. The three coalition party leaders have all spoken and affirmed they are – surprise, surprise – keen to stay in charge.<\/p>\n
The debate is an early taste of election rhetoric as MPs and parties warm into election season. So what were the approaches?<\/p>\n
National’s leader, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was first. This speech is the point of the debate and the vote. Few leaders’ speeches were very fresh and Luxon’s had a well-worn feeling, much like an AI compilation of his recent speeches and talking points. The core message was ‘look how much great progress we’ve made’, along with finger-pointing across the aisle about anything not going well. The economy was a key focus.<\/p>\n
“But I feel more confident than ever that the recovery has now arrived and that Kiwis can look forward to a year which is brighter than the last few have been, because we have reined in wasteful spending, keeping inflation down, although we’d like to see it fall even further. Interest rates have dropped considerably, with families saving hundreds of dollars a week as they refix onto lower rates and now, after last year’s two-speed recovery, we’re seeing real momentum, real momentum.”<\/p>\n
![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4JU5908_PM_Statement_2026_02_jpg.jpeg\")
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\nChris Hipkins speaks in the 2026 Debate in the Prime Minister’s Statement.
\nPhoto: VNP \/ Phil Smith\n<\/p>\n
Labour leader Chris Hipkins was second to speak. His message was the antithesis of Luxon’s, focusing on missed targets and backwards movement.<\/p>\n
“Before the election, the New Zealand Treasury was forecasting that our economy would grow 1.7 percent in 2024. After Nicola Willis got hold of it, what happened? The economy shrank by half a percent. They were forecasting the economy would grow by 2.3 percent in 2025. After Nicola Willis and Christopher Luxon got their hands on it, it shrank by a further 0.6 percent. In fact, the economy today is at least a percent smaller than it was before they decided to fix it.”<\/p>\n
Tying failures to individuals may be an election taster of things to come. MPs are less generic than their party and often less popular, so they make effective targets.<\/p>\n
For the Greens, Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick’s speech had a strong focus on climate, which – given recent events and policy moves – made sense for a Green leader. The repeated, underlying message riffed on advice attributed to Maya Angelou.<\/p>\n
“For many people living in Christopher Luxon’s New Zealand, the power is out, the water doesn’t run, the roads are closed, the hospital is overwhelmed, and the jobs are gone because the mills and the factories have been shut down during a vicious recession driven by this government’s so-called year of growth. \u2026Two hundred New Zealanders leave the country every day in search of a better life. This is the country that the government wants. We are living in it, and the future that they are promising us is more of the same. So when they tell us their plan, we need to listen to them.”<\/p>\n
ACT leader David Seymour began as a chatty story teller, but eventually switched to a common refrain for him: highlighting ACT ministers’ actions.<\/p>\n
“We’re also systematically dismantling the red tape and the regulation, such as the significant natural areas. We’ve got rid of the climate policy that would have driven sheep and beef farmers out of business so production could happen overseas to the benefit of foreign farmers who emit more than hard-working and efficient New Zealand ones. We’ve also ensured that you’re going to be able to work as a contractor and have clarity about how that contract works – again, Brooke van Velden, making it easier to do business.”<\/p>\n
New Zealand First’s leader Winston Peters gave a freewheeling speech that wasn’t obviously structured or thematic, but revelled in responding to interjections. Between distractions he swiped at the Covid-19 response of a government that he was a part of and highlighted his favourite recent policies.<\/p>\n
“It’s not been easy because there have been massively serious, inherited problems in so many areas, and we did it on the back of a huge pandemic that we had to get on top of, having paid the price for rash decisions and lockdowns that didn’t work. That’s the record analysis of the rest of the world. So why aren’t we saying it at our time in history right now? There have been a number of major achievements, though, that we’ve made over the past two years and there are many more to come over the next 12 months.”<\/p>\n
And finally, Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa Packer began like this\u2026<\/p>\n
“What kind of leader stands in front of a nation that is hurting worse than it has ever hurt before, that stands in front of te iwi M\u0101ori, which has pleaded with it to stop doing what it’s doing, to the point that we’ve had record submitters, record protests, unprecedented pleas – a Prime Minister that declares that recovery has arrived? Well, I don’t know who the heck this Prime Minister and this government are talking to, but it’s not the people in our electorates. It is not the people on the ground. It is not those who are choosing between whether they can afford kai on their table or power in their houses.”<\/p>\n
*RNZ’s The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament’s Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christopher Luxon delivers the 2026 Prime Minister’s Statement. Photo: VNP \/ Phil Smith Parliament’s first week is the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-256721","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}