{"id":556799,"date":"2026-08-02T23:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T23:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/556799\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T23:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T23:45:10","slug":"election-2026-steel-worx-director-chris-barrett-says-labour-destroyed-economy-national-failed-to-fix-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/556799\/","title":{"rendered":"Election 2026: Steel Worx director Chris Barrett says Labour destroyed economy, National failed to fix it"},"content":{"rendered":"

He said his company spent $37 million re-tooling and building new factories. \u201dWe invested heavily in [automation]. We looked very carefully, strategically, about where we wanted to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did everything he said that they should become adults and do. What I didn\u2019t do was destroy the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrett said the Labour Government destroyed the economy and people voted in National to go in and fix it \u2013 but the party had failed to do so. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m disappointed in National and I voted for them my whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrett said he will not be voting National in the next election. Asked which way he\u2019d vote, he said that with the two main parties, \u201cyou\u2019ve got dumb and dumber\u201d, so he feels \u201cthe smartest thing people can do\u201d is to give smaller parts of the coalition more power.<\/p>\n

\u201cI turned 64 last weekend. In the last three years, when I should have made a ton of money, I didn\u2019t. At my age, you don\u2019t get another chance. We can\u2019t stay until we\u2019re 80 or 90 to rebuild what someone externally did to our business, so I guess you get a bit annoyed about that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The manufacturing boss says his is not a unique view in the industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just me, it\u2019s everyone in our industry. We\u2019re all … at that level, there\u2019s no one at 30 who\u2019s got a brilliantly large company. We\u2019re all in our 60s. We want to pass it on to someone, we want to have someone to sell it to. In an economy where you don\u2019t have that opportunity and your business is worth less than you want it to be, then how do you live the rest of your life?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rotorua business leaders spoke to Luxon about the city\u2019s economic struggles during a visit on Friday, and the Prime Minister suggested businesses needed to \u201cbe adults\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Luxon said if businesses were not \u201cretooling and radically disrupting\u201d their business, \u201cyou ain\u2019t doing your job\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"PrimePrime Minister Christopher Luxon at a Rotorua Business Chamber event on Friday. Photo \/ Michelle Cutelli Photography<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister said he knew the \u201creality\u201d of running a business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last person I wanted to ever talk to as a CEO was the Government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luxon never wondered whether he could \u201cget some grant money to do something\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cI was building a kick-arse business\u201d like an \u201cadult\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He said his company spent $37 million re-tooling and building new factories. \u201dWe invested heavily in [automation]. We…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,20437,4282,3276,14167,3936,219,5903,12513,3597,702,6721,424,5836,1428,3556,111,43,139,69,4762,312,1620,2846,61,11744,22052,24688,1533,273833,80],"class_list":["post-556799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-barrett","tag-boss","tag-chris","tag-destroyed","tag-director","tag-economy","tag-election","tag-failed","tag-fix","tag-it","tag-labour","tag-life","tag-lost","tag-manufacturing","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-party","tag-says","tag-steel","tag-them","tag-to","tag-upcoming","tag-voted","tag-voting","tag-will","tag-worx","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556799","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=556799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}