Analysis by Keith Rankin.
Role: Economic historian.
Keith Rankin, 8 September 2026 – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has a complicated relationship with historical truth. His reputation is that he has little sense for history; this can make him come across as more tone deaf than he means to be.
A deeper problem may be that his generation (X) and the two following generations (Gen Y and Millennials) – the generations which predominate in the corporate media – are generally weak on historical nous; this means that New Zealand’s politicians tend to get away with egregious historical and statistical gaffs.
Part of the problem is that two humanities’ disciplines – languages and history (especially world history and economic history) – have been increasingly undervalued in the New Zealand education system. Too many New Zealanders in the media come across as culturally and factually sub-literate.
Communist Russia in the 1990s?
Three News from 7 September: (8′ in; originally from a Newstalk ZB interview with Mike Hosking) reports Mr Luxon saying: “It’s sounding a bit like Communist Russia isn’t it; I mean some of us lived through the 1990s or grew up in that era; it sounds very Soviet to me.” (The story was in relation to the Green’s proposed KiwiMart; see this from National and this from Green.)
Now Mr Luxon could have chosen the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, or the 1980s; when ‘Communist Russia’ (aka the Soviet Union) actually existed. But he chose the 1990s, when Russia was arguably the most capitalist country in the world! That was the decade, after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Russian oligarchs emerged and plundered Russia’s public infrastructure; subsequently they bought up London’s Belgravia and the nearby Chelsea Football Club.
And, if Communism is or was a problem for him, why was Mr Luxon cosying up to the Communist Party leader of Vietnam, just last month. (And see RNZ: Vietnam’s ‘most powerful leader’ since Hồ Chí Minh visits New Zealand, 13 August 2026.)
I accept that Mr Luxon probably meant to say the 1980s rather than the 1990s, but the parts of the 1980s which he may have remembered were the years of glasnost and perestroika; not the years of Josef Stalin, or even of that ‘cosy’ Russian Bear, Leonid Brezhnev. (Brezhnev, with US President Richard Nixon, ushered in the brief Cold War détenteof the early-mid 1970s.)
I am nearly 20 years older than Luxon, but I clearly remember (ie not just from books or docos) the difference between the 1960s and 1970s; the decades when I was the same age as Mr Luxon was in the 1980s and 1990s. (Maybe I’m a memory nerd? I still clearly remember shaking Walter Nash’s hand at the 75th Jubilee of the Paekakariki School in 1961. Maybe I wasn’t actually there, because I do remember the 1960s!)
Trans-Tasman Migration: facts, but not the whole Truth
This is RNZ’s Jo Moir and Ingrid Hipkiss reviewing an interchange with Mr Luxon relating to Trans-Tasman migration:
Hipkiss: “… National’s policies, he says, will keep people in New Zealand. So do you think this will make more Kiwis stay; because they’re still leaving?”
Luxon: “No, that’s wrong, I’ve said to you many times; we’ve had a 14% growth in Kiwis coming home from Australia … and Kiwis’ leaving is declining.”
Hipkiss: “So we’ve got 19,000 coming back; 47,000 still leaving though.”
Luxon: “I’m happy to send you the detail, but we’ve had a 14% …”
Hipkiss: “But net migration is 28,000.”
Luxon: “I’m happy to send you the numbers.”
Hipkiss, after Jo Moir enquired with his office. “What has the PM said?”
Moir: “You were both right … but the important number was the net migration … which shows an [ongoing] significant loss … he obviously made the comment that you were wrong [well he didn’t, but he sure gave the impression that he rejected Hipkiss’ figures] … I went back and asked what is it that he thought he was responding to? … I got a statement back saying ‘the point the PM was making is that it’s wrong to assert that the number of Kiwis leaving New Zealand is growing’; now that’s a point you didn’t make, but the spokesperson said that that’s how the PM interpreted your question … a few people commented that they were a bit surprised at the tone from the PM…”.
Hipkiss: “So, if none of the numbers were wrong, what is the strategy behind what Christopher Luxon was saying?”
Moir: “So basically he’s answering the bit of the question he wants to … and ignoring the rest of it … now this isn’t a new strategy … it doesn’t suit the government’s narrative to be talking about [a net] 28,000 Kiwis ditching New Zealand for Australia, so it’s a case of finding a way to only talk about [bits of the issue, not the nub of the issue] … which leads to obfuscating and evading other questions.”
The famous quote attributed to former United Kingdom Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was: “There’s lies, damned lies, and statistics“. Indeed this reputation is why the quoting of facts is commonly interpreted as the equivalent of a damned lie.
The factual statistics presented by Mr Luxon were clearly intended to deceive; so Mr Luxon (or his office) were being dishonest. The method of deception is to tell a bit of the truth but not the whole truth. Mr Luxon’s apparent guilt was accentuated by his perception that Ingrid Hipkiss was playing the same game; his office argued that he interpreted her statistical facts as being deceptive in the same way that politicians know they are routinely deceptive. But she wasn’t; her fact was the more important one. She just wanted the Prime Minister to respond to that core fact, which was the 28,000 net emigration figure.
The whole episode revealed the deceptive intent of the Prime Minister’s office; and showed that Mr Luxon has a rigidity about him; a preference to double-down rather than to fess-up when he discovers that he’s been caught out being ‘economical with the truth‘.
Congratulations to RNZ for their follow-up in this instance.
Making Sense of the point that Mr Luxon was trying to make
Yes, it’s true that there has been an increase in one-way travel by New Zealanders who were residing in Australia. But that need not indicate that New Zealanders in Australia are increasingly dissatisfied with life there. All it says is that there are now more New Zealanders in Australia; which means that, say, 5% of New Zealanders moving from Australia to New Zealand must be a bigger number than it was before.
Likewise, Mr Luxon’s mention that the number of New Zealanders going to Australia is decreasing doesn’t necessarily mean that the desire on the part of (especially young) New Zealanders to go is decreasing.
There are two issues here. The first is that emigration has both push and pull explanations. If the New Zealand push factor does not change but the pull factor from Australia diminishes, then that will see fewer emigrants, despite an ongoing high desire to leave New Zealand.
The second issue is that a single emigration follows something like a ‘bell curve’ over time, rather than a uniform pattern. Imagine the four years from 2023 to 2026; and a certain cohort of young New Zealanders coming to perceive that they would rather be making a go of life there than here. The actual departures start with a trickle, then accelerate as people make the various necessary adjustments and arrangements. Eventually, most of those with the greatest motivation to go have already gone, meaning that – after a while – that emigration impulse becomes less intense. Fewer people leave when most of those most wanting to leave have already left.
Conclusion
Our present generation of political leaders seem to find the known truth – the known knowns – a source of political tension and defensiveness. The reason that they don’t have the skills to negotiate facts when challenged is probably because the corporate media has hitherto done a particularly inadequate job of challenging them. Good on RNZ, this time, for ‘stepping up to the plate’.
About the writer:
Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.