told Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan to “go back to your own country”<\/a> \u2013 comments Luxon himself has described as “racist” and “offensive”.<\/p>\nNZ First leader, who is also Foreign Minister, made the remark responding to heckling during a speech in the House.\u00a0 (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
Luxon confirmed he had spoken to Peters, but would not detail what was said.<\/p>\n
“My conversation will stay between Winston and me,” he told reporters. <\/p>\n
Pressed on whether he had effectively issued Peters a warning, the PM said: “I’m just not getting into it. That was a conversation between him and me.”<\/p>\n
Luxon returned repeatedly to the looming election, saying voters unhappy with the rhetoric had their own remedy. “We’re 90 days out from an election,” he said. <\/p>\n
Asked whether Peters could keep his foreign affairs role in a future government, Luxon would not be drawn, calling it a “hypothetical” and urging voters to “party vote National” if they objected to the rhetoric ahead of the November 7 election.<\/p>\n
Labour has called on Luxon to sack Peters from his role after the comments drew international condemnation and comments from China.<\/p>\n
Lawrence Xu-Nan has spoken to Breakfast after he was told by Winston Peters to “go back to your own country” in the House yesterday. (Source: Breakfast)<\/p>\n
Luxon railed against ‘parent-child’ small business <\/p>\n
The apology followed the exchange at the Rotorua Business Chamber breakfast event, where the chamber’s chief put a business pulse survey to the PM, asking how long members could “hang on” as costs rose and customer numbers fell. <\/p>\n
The Prime Minister responded that he thought it was “a negative view”. According to a transcript of the exchange provided by his office, Luxon went on to tell the room that “if you’re not retooling and radically disrupting your business, you ain’t doing the job”.<\/p>\n
He drew on his own corporate background, saying that as a chief executive based in the States he had never looked to the government for help.<\/p>\n
“The last person I wanted to ever talk to as a CEO was the government,” he said. “I didn’t sit there in Chicago saying I wonder what the government thinks … Can I get some grant money to do something? No, no, I’m a business person. I’m building a kick-ass company.”<\/p>\n
Luxon told the chamber there was “a parent-child mentality” in Kiwi boardrooms, and pressed those present on how many were using AI tools in their businesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has apologised to small business owners for remarks he made at a Rotorua event,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11508,111,137,43,139,69,135,136],"class_list":["post-557791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-christopher-luxon","tag-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand-first","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics","tag-winston-peters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557791","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=557791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Christopher](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/christopher-luxon-speaks-to-media-on-march-3-2025-file-XCTEBFFICBAPFDTILLP4MOF3DM.jpg\")
<\/p>\n