National leader Christopher Luxon says we should ‘have more babies’
National Party leader Christopher Luxon has encouraged people at an infrastructure conference to have more babies in an effort to reverse the nation’s declining birthrate.
Luxon earlier unveiled his party’s five-point infrastructure policyand touched on the shortage of workers to plug the infrastructure deficit and build for the future at the NZ Building Nations Conference in Christchurch on Wednesday.
In a question and answer session after the announcement, Luxon encouraged more people to have children.
“We need people,” he said. “Here is the deal – New Zealand stopped replacing itself in 2016. I encourage all of you to go out there and have more babies if you wish, that would be helpful.”
Ummmm, Luxon demanding women have more babies isn’t helping with the Handmaids Tale memes is it?
That said, isn’t it a tad flippant to ask women to have more babies in a user pays society that permanently damages women financially for having kids?
At the centre of the Gender Pay Gap is the biological reality women carry the babies. If we as a liberal progressive society want to ensure everyone has equal agency, then surely recognising biological reality is a starting point?
The first 12months should be maternity leave – or paternity leave, either one, but one of the parents should be paid to stay home with the infant for its first year of life. Who else do you want to look after an infant other than the parent?
Meanwhile, ECE should be nationalised and made completely free for 2 year olds to 5 year olds while all after school care should be free.
Childcare costs fall unevenly and unfairly on women, so why not eliminate those costs altogether?
Playing the Gender Pay Gap Game even when implemented, doesn’t lead to the outcomes desired.
If women having babies is stunting their pay careers, then subside the cost of having that kid with 12months maternity/paternity leave, Nationalise ECE and free after school care!
Also implement a 4 day working week for all state employees so that people’s quality of life is lifted rather than just wage growth.
The promise of Democracy is you can look in your kids face and know they will have a better deal of it than you.
Allowing a parent to stay home with their kid for a year, provide free early education care and free after school care would do more to live up to that promise than anything else.
We need to start fighting for tomorrow because none of the politicians are.
All we need to do to fund this type of universal upgrade of the social infrastructure is tax the rich!
Luxon calling on women to have more babies but does nothing to make that process easier highlights how useless he is and how quickly David Seymour will out negotiate him in any post election negotiations.
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Don’t worry Mr Luxon. I am sure the “bottom feeders” are spitting out children at pace.
If Mr Luxon had ever been present at birth of one or two babies, he would be much more circumspect about suggesting that other persons have them.
If Mr Luxon had ever given birth to a baby, he would be showing far more respect to women than he does, but he’s sounding as glib as National’s hair-pulling John Key, and as misogynistic as breeder Bill English.
Suddenly, the reason why the politicians and the media all joined in distorting and lying about the reason why New Zealand women invited pro-women campaigner Kelly-Jay Keen to come to New Zealand becomes clearer. What is still not clear about the disgraceful occurrences at Albert Park, is why the police allegedly said it is not their job to protect women. If Commissioner Coster does not share the view of the Auckland boys in blue, then I suggest that it would behove him to say so, loud and clear, rather than leaving many mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunties, daughters and nieces, wondering if they can count on the police to support them in the way that they support the transgender extremists seemingly given carte blanche to bully and bash us, 21/3/23.
We give up more than most blokes ever realise when we have children, and most of us willingly sacrifice much of our own lives for our beautiful children, but if the state expects us to do the same thing for it, then it has to start performing a hell of a lot better than it thus far seems willing or able to do, for women.
This ‘bloke’ recognises and respects the sacrifices that the women of NZ (and by that I mean people with a womb) make when they decide to have children and that of course includes you as well Snow White.
A NZ without children has no future and unless these children are born and raised in NZ by NZ mothers we also risk losing our collective culture.
Funnily enough James, as a reluctant electrify user, I’d just saluted my dead mother having a family of bed wetters, with no driers, a mangle washing machine, and a daily wash with sheets freezing on the clothesline, flapping like ghosts in the shadow of the Alps. Going to sleep to the never ending sound of her treadle sewing machine.
Grandmother seeing four sons off to war, and a taciturn husband dying young of lung cancer, leaving her growing spuds and harvesting apples into her 80’s.
The splendid women manning school and church fundraisers and making most of the produce themselves. Ma-in-law groaning learning of her third pregnancy knowing she’d be back on another school committee.
The post- WW11 mothers without men, in ill-paid 9- 5 jobs, worrying about kids home alone, and as single women, not slotting easily into our narrow social patterns. Today’s single parents, harshly dumped on and judged often for no good reason, when being a parent now, isn’t as simple as it used to be.
Helen Clark was scornful about the effect of child- bearing on women’s lives, but they do add another dimension which she has not had the pleasure of enjoying, and a responsibility greater than that of party-focused politicians.
Extremely well said Snow White.
The world is on the cusp of demographic collapse due to the rise of the middle class and their lack of fertility. Lot of aspects of modern western style life discourages child rearing and we need to reverse those.
As a consequence, the world is swinging into a situation where, instead of trying to stop people from the 3rd world moving to western nations, there will be a bidding war to get the best.
Luxon is correct.
Andrew. Luxon is correct is he ? Then why has his woman deputy stated that he doesn’t mean what he says ?
In countries such as NZ there will be the gradual shift towards only the poor benefit dependent and the rich having children – with anyone else in the ‘middle’ no longer able to make having children work due to the ever increasing financial and time restraints.
Another example of everything going to shit and the pressing need to reimagine completely the society we have created for ourselves (or had foisted upon us) . .
However I am not sure Luxon is in to fixing why birth rates are dropping. You know things like working your arse off to stay afloat.
Jesus christ Andrew do you actually believe the crap you write?
“The world is on the cusp of demographic collapse due to the rise of the middle class and their lack of fertility.”
You can’t make this shit up!
Seems YOU can Andrew.
Luxon can’t help himself; the reason he wants prescription charges on contraceptives becomes clear.
The most important requirements for having children is for the parents to actually want and afford them; not as economic units for a National government. Parental home ownership of a healthy home being an important consideration in providing family security and community for their children – how does Luxon intend to provide that?
Peter Kelly Yes, I often thought that privileged Bill English saw other people’s children as economic units in much the same way that’Key saw them as fodder for fighting other people’s wars. Labour abolishing the much needed Commissioner for Children is no better, again prioritising protecting government over the interests and very fundamental wellbeing of all of our children. The distressing reappearance of third world illnesses among New Zealand children should have provided Luxon with a salutary check that all is not well in their young world, but seemingly not so, or he just doesn’t care. The toll it takes on the health service is irrelevant when they want to privatise it.
I think he was joking.
The world has been destroyed by feral humans, we are like a bacteria on the planet. The last thing we need is more of us. Time to let the human race die off until sustainable levels are reached. Besides, the future is so bleak, it’s not fair to inflict it upon anyone. The best thing that could happen now would be a virus that leaves most of the population sterile. Stop breeding is the solution.
Martyn: “isn’t it a tad flippant to ask women to have more babies in a user pays society that permanently damages women financially for having kids?”
Exactly!
And it damages women especially, if they are single mothers, for whatever reasons, and also damages the smaller amount of single fathers. And single parents who are beneficiaries get the worst of it.
Luxon is so weirdly out of touch on people’s basic reality to make a living and survive.
Great you called this out Martyn.
Well done and thank you.
So a bit of an unbuttoned politician joke makes this shit news event. Oh how context has shit dived in media.
R+E, it’s actually those types of comments that expose the true self. Comming from someone aligned with christian values I find it intersting he thinks the need for children is to fuel the economy.
What has Christian values got to do with the comment. Because he didn’t say the opposite on abortion – what a stretched personal agenda. I don’t really connect with Luxon myself but this conservative Christian bashing agenda is being linked to everything he does – personally attacking faiths is wrong.
What a great country we live in.
I hear the Muslim Society have protested against the Rainbow Week at school – do we focus on them – of course not, as we have victimized their faith as well as the good people of CHCH.
What about indigenous which is mostly the Maori party members who would vote against abortion – do we look at them at all?
We have Hindu in parliament now as well – anti abortion again – do we focus there at all?
Out of context and personal agendas that we add make for weak assessments.
So if I went down the same route I now would say you hate religious people who stick to their faiths or indigenous cultures & dis any humour they might have.
But I respect people more and don’t really think like this.
Except Luxon didn’t demand we have more babies. He said for those who want to it would be helpful. He is right we have declining population growth
And you think the world needs more people Anker – what number of people do you think we need to make the neoliberal economy work?
Thomas. They’ll be lucky. Chinese males are so misogynist sexist that they make Kiwi males look like knights in shining armour.
No we have declining infrastructure at the behest of Nationals immigration ponzi scheme. And that is why our country is fucked!
Excellent point you make Reactionary Bratwurst.
The world is on the cusp of demographic collapse due to the rise of the middle class and their lack of fertility. @Andrew
This is the problem in a nutshell. People who talk about human mothers and babies, and the family, referring to it in a scientific term – fertility. Women and men as animals being assessed for their value to the farm (nation) is dehumanising.
This thinking in a highly technical age that places manufactured wealth and stocks ahead of natural processes and life, takes us below old primitive attitudes which didn’t have advanced philosophies and modern moralistic attitudes to ‘show them the right ways’. To pull ourselves up to a real modern, civilised society, women, babies and their ‘significant others’ should be at the foremost of consideration.
Good animal welfare results in a well-functioning farm; if following that precept with humans the United Nations would not give us a thumbs down. Grow up NZ before it is too late and we descend further leading to barbarism. Give t respect and help to all young women and especially when they are pregnant, and follow through with assisting all young people develop their personal skills and character to make the best outcome for them, their children, and their society.
We need strong, good, smart, positive, co-operative people who can cope with life and find enjoyment and humour even in working in difficulty. We won’t be helped by attitudes that are mean, disdainful and uppity; by types who judge and despise others different from them as seems the case now in society.
That doesn’t build the strong, cohesive, flexible and humane society we need now to face the harsh future. So bloody well get going and find and go forward together with those who will stay committed to working for, not just talking about, an involved, sharing humanity.
It’s now at the point Luxon opens his mouth and Wayne Brown comes out.
Bomber thanks for the laugh, I hadnt considered his comment in Gilead terms. What a hoot! Poor hapless Luxon.
But I also think his comment points to what is wrong in ‘the West’ for many reasons as others have pointed out.
I dont believe any country should be actively promoting population growth. The world is facing an existential crisis and all any one is thinking about is more growth.
I understand that population drives our lifestyles but I think we have a real opportunity to allow the world to grow sustainably. We are at the cusp of a technological revolution so why sweat it? With AI and robotics, mass production and innovation is closer than ever so why not choose now to let a bit of the steam out of the radiator.? People are not having kids because they dont have the time or the money and we cant afford to keep families in the way in which they have become accustomed. So what is the answer – natural attrition, long term strategy on reverting to a technologically advanced but more local society. Then I think what would happen is people would eat better, be less stressed, be more part of a community and organically families would start to grow again.
I’m crazy about shopping and am captured by anything new. Truth is, I dont need at least 50% of it. Just like massive amounts of air travel, travelling its great fun but I question why so many of us are doing it so regularly when most everything is available in high def at home. Its time for us as a people to be discussing the way forward and educating our young about future solutions and about the decisions we are making when we are just living (not making a decision).
To me this is what government should be about – future planning, economic managment and education. Let people make their own choices but let them be educated and potentially, incentivised choices.
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