Rt Hon Christopher Luxon
Prime Minister

Ka nui te mihi kia koutou.

Kia Ora, good morning, talofa lava, malo e lelei, bula vinaka, da jia hao, namaste, sat sri akal, assalamu alaikum.

Can I thank some incredible people who do some fantastic work to keep our party fighting fit. President Sylvia Wood and our newly elected Board. Party General Manager Jo de Joux.

Our outstanding Deputy Leader, Minister of Finance, and my good friend, Nicola Willis. Thank you for the work you’re doing to rebuild our economy.

All of our fantastic Ministers and MPs, who are with us here today. Thank you for your sacrifices – the long hours and the time away from family working to make this country a better place.

I also want to acknowledge all the partners and families who support our team and make so many sacrifices to allow our people to succeed – including my wife Amanda, thank you.

And to all of our members and supporters that are here this weekend – who knocked on doors, got on the phones, waved signs in the rain, and did the hard graft to get 49 fantastic National MPs elected last year.

Thank you. New Zealand is more confident, more ambitious, and more resilient thanks to your drive and your determination.

Your efforts were a vote of confidence on the campaign trail in our team and our plan to prove that New Zealand’s best days are ahead of us.

What an exhilarating time it’s been since we came together last year.

You know – because you went out and sold it – that we campaigned on an ambitious programme of change.

The country wanted change, the country needed change, and the country voted for change. And now National is delivering that change.

It’s all about getting New Zealand back to basics. Rebuilding the economy. Restoring law and order. And delivering better health and education. Getting New Zealand Back on Track.

And what did that mean in practice?

Take Law and Order. We are cracking down. If you’re a criminal – we are coming after you.

Yes – it’s still early days – and too many Kiwis are still victimised by violent offending and retail crime.

But I am proud that our government is ending the era of lawlessness ushered in by Labour and the Greens.

I will speak plainly - New Zealanders have a right to feel safe.

And that right trumps any interest in giving violent and repeat offenders an early release just so they can continue to prey on our communities.

I’m sick of being told that the real victims are the people who smash into a shop, or peddle meth, or brutally assault Mums and Dads working in the dead of night.

It couldn’t be further from the truth.

I get it: too many Kiwis still have a difficult start in life.

And Sir Bill English’s lasting contribution to our party’s philosophy, social investment, should be the guiding light for making those critical interventions we need to turn lives around and create opportunity.

But don’t tell me the guy brandishing a knife or smashing into a jewellery store is the real victim.

And don’t tell me the answer is putting them back onto the streets to continue their campaign of violence, fear, and misery.

No one gets a license to abuse, intimidate, and assault your fellow New Zealanders.

So, We. Are. Cracking. Down.

More cops on the beat, with teams dedicated to shutting down retail crime in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

We’ve ended funding for cultural reports, and now we’re bringing in tougher sentences for violent and repeat offenders – with guard rails on judges to prevent soft sentencing discounts.

And we’re going to put gangs through the ringer. The last Government funded gangs and we’re going after them.

Yes, banning their patches – but also giving police the tools they need to disrupt every single layer of gang operations.

Shutting down their lines of communication, breaking up their public occupations with dispersal notices, and forcing judges to take gang membership into account at sentencing.

There’s a reason the Mongrel Mob campaigned against National last year. It’s because we are going after them – and I make no apologies for that.

We’re also taking action to improve health services on the frontline, after years of neglect from the previous government.

I’m proud of the decisive action Dr Shane Reti is taking to fix the system and deliver the care Kiwis deserve.

I was shocked when he told me that there were 2,500 more people in the back office at Health NZ.

I think it’s become obvious to everyone by now that the last Government’s health mega-merger went the same way as Te Pukenga or Three Waters.

A total shambles. But we don’t do excuses in the National Party, do we? We don’t sit around waiting for someone else to fix the problem. We get on with the job.

We’ve removed the board, appointed a commissioner, and we’re getting the focus back on patients not paperwork. And on the frontline, we are making the investments that matter. More nurses. More breast cancer screening. More counselling services through Gumboot Friday. More security at emergency departments. And more funding for up to 26 cancer drugs, and other medicines that will help 175,000 Kiwis.

On the economy, I can confidently say that our government is getting New Zealand back on track. I’m not saying life is easy. Times are tough. High interest rates have swamped family budgets, even while wages have struggled to keep pace with inflation.

The recession that began more than a year ago continues to grind on, with rising unemployment the latest sign of an economy struggling to grow.

But there are encouraging, early signs that we are starting to turn the corner. Inflation is falling fast – down to 3.3 per cent from 7.3 per cent.

Food prices are falling in annual terms for the first time in six years. Mortgage rates are beginning to soften – down 30 basis points in the last six months. None of that is an accident.

Now when your mortgage rate begins to come down, or you see inflation return to normal, remember the tough choices we campaigned on together to make that happen.

Stopping wasteful spending, eliminating red tape, and reducing costs on business – getting government back to basics so Kiwis can succeed under their own steam.

It starts with spending your money as carefully as you would. Reducing wasteful spending, shifting money from the back office to the frontline, and getting the books back under control.

And this week we are delivering personal income tax relief to 3.5 million New Zealanders.

Next, it’s about creating opportunity – because it’s only through a strong economy that we can lift incomes and fund the health and education Kiwis deserve.

So that means, yes to roads and rockets. Yes to dairy farms and wind farms. Yes to granny flats and student flats. Yes to tourists coming here and Kiwis exporting over there. Yes to everything we need to get this show on the road.

Rebuilding New Zealand’s economy will be a big job.

In the short term, yes, we need to beat inflation, get the books back in order, and create the conditions for interest rates to fall.

But we know that even once the dust settles, we need to bolster the long-term drivers of growth and prosperity.

Modern, reliable infrastructure enabling urban and regional growth. Better connections with the world to enable trade and investment. A stronger focus on research and technology, attracting innovation and driving productivity. Sensible regulation and robust competition, to reduce costs on business and improve consumer choice.

And finally – the area I want to focus on today – a world-leading education, equipping young people with the skills they need to succeed and live amazing lives, doing whatever they want to do.

Last year we campaigned together on a basic principle – that to turn New Zealand around, we need to teach the basics brilliantly. Because for too long, the basics had been ignored.

We have a bureaucracy in Wellington distracted from their core responsibilities and teachers let down by a vague curriculum.

The result: our kids weren’t being taught the basics, leading to falling educational achievement, and a shocking decline relative to previous generations and kids in other countries.

Something had to change and National – all of us – campaigned on the solutions.

Now I’m proud to say we are taking action. Fast.

We’re removing distractions, lifting student engagement, and driving down classroom bullying – by banning cellphones in school.

We’re giving every child in every classroom a grounding in the basics, by making sure they get an hour of reading, an hour of writing, and an hour maths. Every. Single. Day.

We’re re-writing the curriculum, shifting to a clear expectation of what a child must know in each subject, each year at school. We’re rolling structured literacy out across the whole country, so young people will learn to read the same way so many of us did when we went to school – with phonics.

The evidence shows that’s the most effective way to teach. And here’s what that means in practice.

Thousands of teachers are being equipped with those skills right now, ensuring they have the best possible tools to use in their classrooms.

It means parents can have confidence their kids will get the best possible opportunity to become great readers when they walk through the school gates each day.

Under Erica Stanford, all state schools in New Zealand will be teaching students how to read using structured literacy from Term 1 next year.

The same way, the right way, every day – based on data and evidence to get the best possible result.

It makes me proud – and it should make you proud – to be a member of the National Party.

But it has become clear in recent weeks that we must do more.

Today we can tell you about shocking new data on student achievement in maths last year.

Looking at kids who are about to go to high school, this data shows that just 22 per cent of students are at the expected standard for maths at year 8. That means 4 out of 5 are falling behind.

The results are deeply concerning, but I suspect not a surprise for many parents who I know are frustrated and despondent about the progress of their own children in school.

And it gets worse: 3 out of 5 are more than a year behind.

Translated into a raw number, that means that last year around 50,000 children getting ready for high school were not at the curriculum benchmark for their age.

And if we’re honest – and we have to be straight-up when we talk about results like this – there will be 50,000 more next year, if nothing changes. And another 50,000 the year after that. Imagine Eden Park completely full each and every year.

There’s no way to describe those results as anything other than a total system failure.

Let me explain to you why these numbers are so shocking.

Until now, New Zealand has assessed students in broad multi-year bands where a child could be years behind where they should be, yet are still considered to be at curriculum.

This is the first time we have assessed our kids showing where they are at compared to the year they are actually in.

Essentially that means many parents were being told that their children are doing just fine when the reality is they could be years behind.

It is abhorrent to me that by failing to properly use assessment the true state of failure has been masked and the interventions that have been required, have not happened.

Unpacking the data shows a very sad story.

Just 8 per cent of kids in our lowest decile schools are at curriculum in maths at year 8 and 79 per cent are more than a year behind.

For Māori, just 12 per cent are at curriculum in year 8 and 76 per cent are more than a year behind.

If we are to close the gap and raise achievement, we must have a knowledge rich, year by year curriculum that is explicitly taught and consistently measured against.

And that’s exactly what we’re doing.

I want to be clear. I don’t blame parents, I don’t blame teachers, and I don’t blame young Kiwis trying their best in classrooms up and down New Zealand.

And as politically gratifying as it would be to blame the other lot – and they definitely haven’t helped – this issue is bigger than politics.

This is the product of years of drift and decay by a system that has become utterly distracted from the values we all care about in this room: achievement, opportunity, and success.

Whether it’s our curriculum, our teacher training, our resources, or our priorities within the education system – for years, we have not been setting kids up for success.

This is the time to work together to turn these statistics around.

I’m standing before you as Prime Minister and my promise to you today is that it’s time for change. The system must change. The results must change. And we will deliver that change.

We have to deliver that change for two reasons. First, because we owe it to the next generation. New Zealand should be a country with abundant opportunity.

And I believe that the spirit and the promise of New Zealand is that if you work hard, you can get ahead. And that means everybody. Wherever you grow up, whatever your parents did, and no matter where you’re going and whatever your aspiration in life. You deserve a shot.

So, for every kid walking into school tomorrow morning, backpack on, ready to take on the world, my message is simple. I cannot change the choices you make, or the home you were born into, but I will move heaven and earth to give you the best possible start in life with an outstanding education.

That’s the promise. That’s what we believe in. And that’s what’s so heart-breaking about those results. We aren’t living up to our potential. We have to change. We have to do better. It’s time to act.

Second, because it’s critical for our economic future.

If we want higher wages and better public services, then we need to deliver an economy that can pay for it.

And the only way we can achieve that is to build a pipeline of homegrown talent across the country, with the skills and talent businesses need to fuel their growth, investment, and innovation.

Let’s be realistic. We won’t be the world leader in agriscience, or advanced aviation, or artificial intelligence, if our kids can’t do maths.

And designing new expressways in Northland or windfarms in Taranaki will be pretty tough if our kids leave school without mastering the basics.

Allowing those opportunities to wash away because we can’t take hard action to make sure our kids are flourishing, would be nothing short of negligent.

I will not allow New Zealand to be left behind, while the rest of the world races on. If we care about our prosperity, we have to turn those results around.

So, in light of the recent results and thanks to the outstanding work of Erica Stanford – our incredible Minister of Education – I can announce we are making three immediate interventions.

First, we are accelerating the shift to a new maths curriculum – bringing forward its introduction by a whole year.

What that means for parents is that from Term 1 next year, your child will be learning maths based on a new world-leading, knowledge rich maths curriculum – bringing us in line with countries across the OECD like Singapore and Australia.

The expectations for what children must learn each year will be clearly laid out.

Parents deserve to know exactly what their kids will be learning and what they can do to help them – and from next year they will.

We will roll out student workbooks, detailed teacher guides, and other top-quality resources aligned to the new curriculum and available for every school, every teacher, and every child, in every classroom in New Zealand

Second, we will deliver targeted professional development, focused on structured maths for primary and intermediate teachers.

We know from a range of studies that too many teachers sadly do not have the confidence to teach maths to young people.

Teachers deserve our support – and we’re going to deliver.

That’s why we’re shifting funding for professional development towards the basics – with $20 million becoming available to train teachers in maths.

This policy and these tools mean we will use every single one of those daily hours of maths as effectively as possible.

But to build a pipeline of great teachers we also need to lift the standard for new teachers.

Earlier this week the Teaching Council met urgently to review the entry requirements for teacher training.

I can now confirm that they have agreed that anyone that wants to be a teacher must have NCEA Level 2 maths (the old Form 6), as a pre-requisite.

It’s a simple, but necessary change – and good on them for the Teaching Council driving this through.

Parents deserve to know that the person responsible for teaching their child maths has the confidence to do so.

Third, and finally, we are taking assessment and support for kids who need it seriously.

That means – alongside our new curriculum – there will be twice-yearly assessments for maths in primary schools starting from 2025.

We can’t know – and parents can’t know – if students are sinking or swimming, if we aren’t checking their progress.

We have to make sure every child has a record of their achievement as they move through school, so we know what’s going right and what might be going wrong.

Our responsibility is to support them if they need it – whether it’s an accelerated program if they’re thriving, or extra help if they’re falling behind.

And if kids are really far behind, we will provide targeted support in small groups, using structured maths, to give our kids the best chance to catch up and succeed.

Ladies and gentlemen, education matters.

Every young person growing up in New Zealand today should only be constrained by their drive, commitment, and perseverance – not where they came from or where they’re going. And if we’re serious about an equality of opportunity, then we need to get this right. All of us.

Parents, teachers, principals, government, iwi, business and community all have a part to play in lifting our game and delivering a transformational shift from where we’ve been to where we need to be.

I’m confident we will deliver. We campaigned together last year on a basic premise.

That our country’s best days are ahead of us and that our potential is unlimited.

Yep, we’ve got tough problems. But we’ve also got tough people. Brilliant, inspiring, passionate people obsessed with making a difference.

Kiwis hungry for a future they can be a proud of.

For a future they can create and shape – for their kids, their grandkids, and their community.

Whether you’re a teacher, a parent, a principal – or you’re a kid still working out what your future will hold.

We have your back. I have your back. The country has your back.

Let’s go get education back on track!

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