Luxon\u2019s office told the Herald the Prime Minister had initially planned to stay the night in Whanganui and fly to Auckland the next day on a commercial flight. However, the funeral of former National MP Bill Birch required a last-minute change to his schedule.<\/p>\n
Hipkins accused Luxon of using the NZDF like a \u201cprivate fleet\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaxpayers should not be paying for Christopher Luxon to travel from swanky National Party fundraising events at golf courses,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Hipkins said Luxon should not be using the planes while campaigning.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you start doing campaigning and fundraising events for your political party, that\u2019s a bright line, and Air Force resources should not be used for that under any circumstances,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Former Prime Minister John Key was quick to defend Luxon today. Speaking on Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive on Newstalk ZB, Key said the \u201creality is that successive PMs \u2013 all of us have used military assets\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said they were practical, given how busy it is being Prime Minister. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s virtually no cost \u2013 the pilot is already being paid for by the Air Force, the plane is being depreciated whether you use it or not,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Key said a Prime Minister\u2019s time was spent getting to as many meetings as possible rather than \u201cin the back of a car\u201d driving between centres. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to be one of the only developed countries in the world where the leader doesn\u2019t have a fulltime plane,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Former Prime Minister John Key has defended Christopher Luxon over the use of an NZDF plane. Photo \/ Jason Oxenham<\/p>\n
Key led Luxon\u2019s National Party between 2006 and 2016. <\/p>\n
The Herald asked Luxon\u2019s office for further details of the flights. The office said Luxon flew out of Whanganui airport and that Luxon travelled to the airport in a Crown car, as is normal for Prime Ministers, given their security requirements. <\/p>\n
The nearest base for Crown cars is Wellington. <\/p>\n
Luxon\u2019s office said through a spokesman that \u201cthe PM was originally due to stay overnight in Whanganui on the Thursday before traveling back to Auckland on the Friday morning via Air Chathams but had to change plans to represent the Government at Sir Bill Birch\u2019s funeral on the Friday, which in turn meant an event he had committed to with Simpson Grierson in Auckland was brought forward to 7.30am\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe flew back with the NZDF to ensure he could attend these Auckland events in the morning. He attended a range of ministerial events in the Whanganui region on Thursday until the early evening before attending the National Party event,\u201d the spokesman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luxon\u2019s office told the Herald the Prime Minister had initially planned to stay the night in Whanganui and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,806,89,51,16426,1403,99524,3039,6562,5760,71,40371,5275,5126,4277,6721,16427,27983,6722,3556,111,43,139,69,90,4762,15026,415,275558,4758,223,1883],"class_list":["post-559920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-as","tag-attack","tag-auckland","tag-christopher","tag-defence","tag-defended","tag-defends","tag-flights","tag-force","tag-from","tag-fundraiser","tag-goes","tag-john","tag-key","tag-labour","tag-luxon","tag-luxons","tag-minister","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-party","tag-plane","tag-prime","tag-sixseater","tag-taking","tag-the","tag-whanganui"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559920","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=559920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}