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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Maybe he could give away a few of his houses to help some couples along. Surely he doesn’t want bottom feeders to have more progeny… that would not end well for the propertied class or their own children.
I thought you would have been all for the call to have more NZ babies as it would lessen the need for the immegrants you do not like
What are you talking about? Perhaps you can explain why more than 25,000 of the migrants brought in in the last twelve months were aged 65+? *crickets chirping* You can’t even spell, so it might be a stretch.
I realize my spelling is not great but I can read .Migrants over 65 need to invest $750000 in a NZ business and to stay need to have $500000 on call and an income of $60000 .-
. If there are 25000 of these people it would be good for the economy as they have disposable money which many NZ do not have especially after 5 years of a Labour government.
I agree to a certain degree but chicken before the egg here. Build the infrastructure then bring in those that contribute to the tax take. We have poor infrastructure which is the result of a 9 year Nact government.
But we need their investments. Or is there another motive that labour has not shared with us.
By the way I doubt Fidel has his facts straight.
But we need their investments.
Not before infrastructure is built, that’s where you comment is flawed.
Don’t take it personally, Trev, you’re not that bad a bad bloke for a Pom, and Nicola says that Luxon never says what he means and is a joke.
Right. The demographic cliff must be avoided, but no party wants to pay the plebs enough to actually have a large family (even though there used to be bi-partisan support for the Award System, which specifically outlined such a level of pay).
Martyn – Agreed
Don’t worry Mr Luxon. I am sure the “bottom feeders” are spitting out children at pace.
In the river of filth?
Bob opened his mouth and the river of filth came pouring out.
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.
And women all across NZ are out hunting for males to mate with, as instructed by Luxon. Yeah, right!
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 ?
It was a joke. A bad dad joke. Not as bad a joke as this current govt though.
Bahahahahahahahahahahaha
Well said KH.
Bahahahahahhaha
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) . .
I think that demographic shift you’ve predicted is already happening James.
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.
Warning to all men and whoever else can mate with real women.
Women across NZ are searching the streets for men to mate with.
By abandoning the catastrophic policies of Labour that created it.
BtF, what exactly are you accusing Labour of creating this time?
Everything that’s bad that they caused.
BtF, you appear to be down a very deep rabbit hole. There is plenty J’m not happy about with Labour, but none of it would make the rich or the right unhappy.
Left who enjoy being miserable.
Right enjoy being happy.
I think he was joking.
Yes Tom the same as John Key was joking when he constantly pulled a woman’s ponytail against her wishes, the same as Bishop was joking when he snap chatted teenagers and when he said he had no relatives in law’s), the same big Gerry was joking when he stormed through airport security gates ( do you know who I am ). Michael Wood house was jokingly holding a toilet seat with Clare Curren’s face on it, oh and he also joked about a homeless man in the middle of a pandemic. Uffendell didn’t really mean to bash a fellow schoolboy with a bed leg , the big bully said it was a joke. Plus the Venus de. Collins wasn’t really praying in the chapel for the press she was only joking along with her rent a crowd in a walk about . The rotarians were only joking when they laughingly had a photograph of Jacinda Ardern on a toilet seat that was a real big laugh. Luxon was only joking when he said have more babies because abortion is murder, now that has got me in stitches .
Queens I guess that Ardern was joking about child povidy too, and when she talked about having a transparent government with no secret agendas, and when asking the United Nations to support global censorship of free speech, and expand the power of the WHO over our sovereignty, and advocating for a republic then saying she was humbled by her mates in the Beehive giving her the King’s Damehood ?
GA Your interpretation is a joke ?? same as women paying for contraception a joke ?? Or is quote “ abortion is murder “:the actual joke ??
Your comments are rather hysterical.
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.
Actually i think it is good that that point was raised.
We have a declining birth rate pretty much anywhere in the industrial world due to the high costs of having children. We shame human females for wanting to many children or not enough, but froth at the seems at the picture of a ‘man’ giving birth – in essence a human female minus their tits and a bit of beard thanks to testosterone injections – if that testosterone harms the infant while gestating, who cares. We prohibit pictures of human females breastfeeding and patrol the food these human female consume lest they harm their child with a sip of wine of a cup of coffee, but we applaud a male ingesting a chemical cocktail to ‘induce’ laction that then can be ‘chestfeed’ to a newborn, cause we actually don’t give a shit about the health of babies.
We make pre-school unaffordable. We hire the dumbest teachers that we can pay at the least amount. We build hovels that will become fire traps for people who can’t afford housing. We don’t have a functioning health care system, human females die giving birth in NZ in maternity wards, if they can find a hospital that still has a maternity ward and that has that ward staffed.
We expect people to play gig economy for the rest of their working life because we are unable to even grow just one sustainable industry.
And here we are making fun of the bloke who said, have children if you want too…………..
Or import foreign labour to make up the shortfall of humans in this country.
What shall it be lefty? Unless of course you are one of those that think robots/ai will do the work and you will get a several hundred dollar UBI per week so as to not starve in a ditch unhoused.
Guy game is “attaining” the girl and girl game is “retaining” the guy “after sex” which is the key
If a guy lies and cheats after sex more than likely she was useless. Just hung out, smashed. She probably didn’t make no food, didn’t clean up, didn’t get a glass of water. That’s fundamentally why guys don’t wife up hoes.
Woman around here always complain about men being macho the point is more than likely that you’re fucken useless.
All that is quiet sad.
Agreed RB. This is desperate stuff from Martyn – he must be quite worried that Hipkins is going to lose the election.
So Luxon “demanded” women have more babies, did he?
Pope P No, but the message is the same. One of the God squad exhorting females to go forth and multiply, just when they’re scrapping battery hen farming too.
Well i guess he can’t demand that males have them?
No he suggested.
Really Bob??? He suggested that males have babies???????
Hahaha hahaha!
You’re such a joke.
2nd that Justine Kase
Silly boy.
The Chipster cannot define “woman.”
exactly. some pathetic comments here imo. The sociologist on 3 this morning confirmed that many countries are experiencing large population drops over time. Why should we care, well the less people we have the less tax take and less for the beneficiaries and for the countries development in general. But on this site we just like to take Luxon the wrong way with mindless criticism.
new+view, “the less tax take” really sums up your view of life. Yes, the first world has long relied on the third world to provide labour for the services the rich think they deserve – a modern version of the slave trade. What about all those on the job seeker (job avoidance) benifit – I want to see some policy about addressing that, and housing unaffordability, not glib remarks to procreate for the neoliberal economy.
Don’t be a twat Peter. We need people and way more than what we have at present to generate the money for services that the likes of you demand. The Left always demand what they have never earned. Maybe you support immigrants to develop our country. Maybe you just want the rich pricks to pay for it. Unfortunately not enough rich pricks in NZ. Only half of what’s left do anything except front up for the pay they don’t work for.
N+W, what exact services am I demanding, and what have I not earned? Seems you know things about me that I am not aware of myself.
PK We all demand hospitals roads, superannuation pipes in the ground, medical drugs. They are paid for by taxpayers. You and me. We can’t keep up now, try having this stuff on a shrinking population, many of whom don’t work.
new+view. “ Mindless criticism “ Not really. This is very much a community issue, and in particular a women’s issue. Women put in the hard yards, and it is not unreasonable for any child producers to be concerned about something which impacts so directly upon them and the children for whom they are responsible.
Luxon isn’t demanding anything. He’s pointing out we need more people and that’s one way to do it. If people want to. To make it into a woman’s issue Is Woke imo.
New+view “ To make it into a women’s issue is woke”. Why? Nobody chooses to be born a biological woman with all that that entails, and nor should other persons have control or a say over what women do with their own bodies, woke or not. We’ve moved on a bit since the tyranny of Popes or 17thC Massachusetts. Next there’ll be males wanting to share women’s private spaces and places.
Or less for the old folks that got lots of things for free but can’t pull up the ladder quick enough.
you speaking about your parents/grandparents?
Did he say his “own” parents/ grandparents?
It was generalization, fuck you’re thick.
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.
more ‘white’ babies or immigrants the results are the same for our infrastructure lets fix that before we think about the size and compositioin of our population…you can’t squeeze a gallon into a pint pot.
Really – we needed “white”.
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?
No we have declining infrastructure at the behest of Nationals immigration ponzi scheme. And that is why our country is fucked!
I don’t listen or watch politicians but I assume from this post and the comments that Luxon once again tripped all over his tongue while trying to make a good point.
The good point being that all our systems – not just capitalism but communism also – rely on the fact of a never-ending increase in the human population. Of course to the “JimmyJazz’s” of the world a declining population would be a good thing (I assume you don’t want a collapse via starvation), certainly for Climate Change, and we are going to get that this century, with a peak of 9 billion in 2050 (mid-70’s projections were for 25 billion), and who knows what by 2100.
Not so good for our Ponzi scheme pension systems though, plus our pay-as-you-go healthcare systems; there’s only so much that productivity can compensate for as the ratio of retired to workers declines.
In other bad news it seems that nobody knows how to fix this. The South Koreans have spent about $US 200 billion over the last sixteen years to boost their birth rate – and it went down.
Excellent point you make Reactionary Bratwurst.
We need to grow New Zealand’s population, but only the right type of people should be allowed to breed.
We need to prevent people on benefits from having babies, so compulsory birth control for beneficiaries should be implemented for anyone who doesn’t contribute to the tax system.
You are right .It would be good if the benefituries found a good job and saved some money then have a planned baby .This way we avoid more children growing up in the poverty trap.
Trevor you are so right ,righter than right I think its called eugenics practiced by a certain person who shall be nameless in the 1930/40’s . He was right too very far right.
Ok Trevor work on getting that very practical social system that you have noted. Unfortunately neither gummint really wants that; it is always good to have feckless fertile mothers and fathers to blame for the slide that NZ has taken from our erstwhile peak of greatness. We’re like the starlet who confided – ‘I used to be Snow White but I drifted.’
Entire families can come to NZ and have more children on the back of a student visa or minimum wages job. It is not just those living in NZ who are creating poverty conditions to the masses here, lazy immigration is a big factor and why so many with no or little incomes are rushing to NZ now – then the rest of NZ can easily end up paying for their lifestyle and legal costs as they fight to stay in NZ!
If they come as refugees, I think they’re entitled to more than home-grown taxpaying New Zealanders’ children are, including tertiary education unburdened by student loans and whatever else we agreed to at the UNO.
That could be ok if they didn’t trade on their refugee status, lecture us about their idiosyncratic wants, and if our population base was big enough to easily accommodate increased multiculturalism and diversity which it is not, especially with lack of responsible input from governments who use them the way that they use everybody else.
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.
Luxon opens mouth and Bomber twists his words.
Pakeha families have stopped having babies but I think everyone else is going nuts for kids and don’t forget the rise of immigration of pensioners who needing looking after, well above the baby rate!
I’m all for reducing world population – the countries with the smaller populations and smaller immigration seem to be doing better in terms of well being, like Scandinavia.
Large populations seem to have high poverty and high wealth like China, India and the US.
The world is better when there is difference aka small populations in some countries and big populations in others. African nations like Nigeria are having a massive rises in population growth but do not have the money to support it. Not sure that is a good thing.
I don’t think NZ needs to emulate other countries, they have been trying to be part of Asia for a while and driving the NZ down the toilet with their ideal low wage, low skill, economy.
NZ seems to be going more in the wrong direction. I’d like to see government cut of child benefits after 2 kids especially with the rise of places like Gloriavale which receives around 4.5 million in benefits. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/475085/gloriavale-receives-millions-in-government-payments-ex-leader-tells-employment-court
You are better off not working in NZ like the UK.
‘Working is not worth it’ Benefits mum rakes in £70,000 in welfare
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/387308/Working-is-not-worth-it-Benefits-mum-rakes-in-70-000-in-welfare
A MOTHER of 12 who gets annual state handouts worth more than £40,000 is set to rake in extra benefits — after falling pregnant again.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/2893634/mum-of-12-cheryl-prudham-is-set-to-boost-her-current-40000-state-handouts-after-falling-pregnant-with-number-13/
Most people were better off when NZ had 3 million people, including those on benefits and those needing health care – it is a myth that more people are helping the aged population – we now have more aged people settling here needing care, that nobody wants to do when they can be on a benefit.
Sadly well educated and working parents are having less children while those with alternative lifestyles can pay for it with government taxes via having children.
I’m for benefits for children but with common sense limits of creating a functioning and fair society where people who can work, need to actually contribute to more than just themselves and their families.
“ Cut off child benefits” ? A bit brutal, but way back, Chinese friends in Singapore, spoke of their government reducing tax benefits or similar, after having more than two children. They had the two. Educated people, a lecturer in engineering, University of Singapore, undergrad Otago, PhD UK. After his adopted mother died, and only then, they realised their life’s dream, and emigrated to the good old US of A.
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.
The interviewer thinks he was joking.
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