“I want this country to realise its potential.
“I’m a Kiwi kid, with a regular upbringing. I was well-served by an education system that enabled me to do well in life and I want that for every single Kiwi kid.”
New Zealand had been taken off track by economic mismanagement “on a scale we haven’t seen before in New Zealand”, he said.
“Under this Labour Government they are spending more money, they are taxing more and they are borrowing more.”
The sum of those policies had created inflation, which had created high interest rates which had in turn caused an economic recession, he said.
“We are the only country going backwards in the Asia Pacific region and with that comes the risk of rising unemployment.”
The Government’s centralisation of the tertiary polytechnic system and district health boards and the territorial authorities having water assets “stolen and confiscated”, was also criticised.
“We in the National Party believe local democracy can make their own decisions.”
Mr Luxon’s indictment of what he said was the Government’s focus on identity politics brought murmurs of approval from the crowd.
“The Government has pitched groups of New Zealanders against other groups of New Zealanders, whether it has been rural folk against the city folk, whether it’s employers versus employees, landlords versus tenants or Māori versus non-Māori.
“The reality is we are one country. We are all Kiwis.
“That’s why we say we have one system, one country, one system of public services. Those public services are made available to all New Zealanders on the basis of their needs, not their ethnicities. We are all equal under the law, one person one vote with equal citizenship.”
Mr Luxon said the party was “ready to go to work” should it win October’s general election, with both a 100-day plan and a six-month plan.
The party would focus on three main themes.
Fixing the economy, to reduce the cost of living and reducing the “$1 billion extra every week” being spent by the Government - 80 percent more than it used to spend.
In a reference to “the early '80s”, one the largely baby boomer crowd could relate to, he said he remembered his parents telling him there used to be 19 percent inflation rates that led to high interest rates and then recession and high unemployment.
“That’s the same sort of conditions we are skating to if we don’t get it sorted very quickly.”
Law and order was another focus, tackling gang numbers, stronger sentences as well as a commitment to military style boot camps with community organisations embedded “from the get go”.
On health, Mr Luxon said over the past six years every health indicator had worsened.
“When we left government there were less than 1000 people waiting more than four months to get their first specialist. Now there are 53,000.
“What we need to do is get the money out of the centre and get it out to the doctors and nurses and health providers.”
National would also invest in growing the health workforce by “bonding” graduate nurses and doctors to provincial practices with the promise to take $22,500 off their student loans.
National would build a third medical school, in Waikato, with a focus on regional New Zealand.
”So those people who come out of that four-year programme, out of Waikato, come into regional, provincial New Zealand.”
Mr Luxon was at his most passionate when talking about education.
“That is probably the thing that has alarmed me the most during my two and half years in Parliament.
“Our education system is so important because it’s the thing that helps kids get from one place to another — it makes the difference, in my view.
“Yet, 40 percent of our kids are not at school regularly; 75,000 kids are chronically absent from school. Just think about that in the context of Gisborne — that’s huge.
“A 15-year-old today, knows a year-and-a- half less maths than their parents. That’s why we are going to go back to the basics, teaching an hour of maths, an hour of reading, an hour of writing every day from primary to intermediate.
“Some of you would have seen (the Government’s) science announcement recently, that didn’t mention physics, biology or chemistry in the science curriculum for high school. As the university folk said, ‘this is appalling. We’d have to teach science from scratch at year one of university’.”
National would introduce a “world class” curriculum and ensure six-monthly monitoring of students’ progress.
“We have a great country. You get to choose how we go forward from here but I think we have a great country. I think we have huge potential but we now have to go to work and face up to some of the challenges we have got. We have to turn things around, we have to rebuild the economy, we have to restore the rule of law, restore education. If we do that, I think we have a shot at realising all that potential that’s sitting there.”
