Luxon is in a challenging position politically and diplomatically. He wants to protect his political reputation in New Zealand from some of the claims made about him in Samoa, but without offending his hosts and causing a diplomatic incident. <\/p>\n
La\u2019aulialemalietoa was speaking in Samoan at a state dinner in Apia last night, attended by Luxon and other Government ministers. His speech was translated by a Herald journalist. Luxon and a delegation of about 80 people are visiting Samoa and Tonga as part of a three-day Pacific trip.<\/p>\n
The comments continue the days-long debacle surrounding Luxon\u2019s new matai title that began after the Samoan leader told local media that New Zealand\u2019s Prime Minister had requested he be given such an honour.<\/p>\n
Since then, Luxon\u2019s office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have denied the claims, and the Samoan Government issued a statement confirming Luxon had not asked for a matai title.<\/p>\n
Luxon has tried to move on from the issue and told media it was \u201cfinished\u201d in his mind. At a media stand-up in Apia on Tuesday, Luxon repeatedly refused to confirm or deny the Samoan Prime Minister\u2019s latest claims. He instead stressed how productive and positive the previous 24 hours had been.<\/p>\n
At Monday night\u2019s state dinner, La\u2019aulialemalietoa told guests that about 3am on the day of the matai ceremony, he was told by New Zealand officials the bestowal would not go ahead.<\/p>\n
He said he asked the officials \u201cwhy?\u201d and said he was told that Luxon felt it should not go ahead because of the negative responses he was receiving or seeing being shared on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cI prayed to God at that time,\u201d La\u2019aulialemalietoa said in Samoan.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we know that darkest of times happen just before dawn,\u201d he continued, becoming visibly emotional.<\/p>\n
Sir Michael Jones is travelling with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon as part of his delegation. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
La\u2019aulialemalietoa said he was asked who was in the delegation visiting Samoa with Luxon and was given the name of All Blacks legend Sir Michael Jones, who holds the Samoan chief titles of Savae and La\u2019auli.<\/p>\n
\u201cI called [Jones] and said, \u2018La\u2019auli, what has happened? Tell the Prime Minister of New Zealand not to worry about a thing. All of Samoa has prepared for his special event on this day\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Herald understands Jones relayed some of Samoa\u2019s positions to the New Zealand Government.<\/p>\n
Switching to English, La\u2019aulialemalietoa told Luxon not to worry about the \u201cnuisance\u201d he was getting on Facebook and to let the village of Apia address those who felt negatively about him getting a matai title.<\/p>\n
He said New Zealand and Samoa were more than just friends, they were \u201cfamily\u201d and whatever was \u201cgood for New Zealand, was good for Samoa\u201d.<\/p>\n
The pair had a Cabinet meeting earlier on Monday where they addressed joint ways of cracking down on transnational drug trafficking, and how their respective Customs and police forces could share information to be more effective at targeting the criminals.<\/p>\n
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luxon is in a challenging position politically and diplomatically. He wants to protect his political reputation in New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,13916,34596,168,16426,19061,4731,80050,6097,6381,7237,692,13490,2176,27983,177475,1073,5494,6722,35937,111,43,139,69,1523,415,766,5902,20153,312,8466,8485,1361,2563,61,80],"class_list":["post-334038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-asked","tag-calm","tag-ceremony","tag-christopher","tag-confusion","tag-days","tag-diplomatic","tag-down","tag-erupted","tag-governments","tag-he","tag-hosed","tag-jones","tag-luxons","tag-matai","tag-media","tag-michael","tag-minister","tag-nerves","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-prime","tag-reports","tag-samoa","tag-samoan","tag-says","tag-second","tag-sir","tag-that","tag-title","tag-to","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334038","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=334038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}