RICHARD PREBBLE: At last, a serious speech from the Prime Minister

Christopher Luxon gave last week his most substantive speech as Prime Minister. Apparently, he wrote it himself.

Prime Ministers are usually too busy to write their own speeches. Their speeches are stitched together by advisers and shaped by polling and focus groups.

Luxon attempted something much harder. He set out a worldview and an agenda for the country.

In doing so, he is reorienting National away from merely promising better management.

The speech was about security.

“New Zealand stands in a more volatile world,” said the Prime Minister. We are “moving from a world ordered by rules to one ordered by power”. International relations are shifting from economics to “security concerns” and from efficiency to “national resilience first”.

Luxon claimed that “risks to our energy security, financial security, international security, and our social cohesion” now threaten New Zealand’s future “as a wealthy, inclusive and diverse trading nation”.

He says we are at “an inflection point in history”. The task is to ensure “how prepared we are, how resilient we are and how well we stick together”.

Luxon then set out how the government is responding.

First, by diversifying New Zealand’s trade and defence relationships. He cited closer ties with India, Singapore, NATO and Australia. A more dangerous world, he says, requires a commitment to double defence spending.

The second priority is energy security.

“New Zealand's energy vulnerability is no longer a theoretical risk,” Luxon warned. “It is a live crisis on full display in the Strait of Hormuz every single day.”

His proposed solution may be the most important part of the speech: “energy independence”.

The key sentence was this: “We will never compete on the global technological frontier without abundant, affordable energy.”

Christopher Luxon is right.

Cheap and reliable electricity made New Zealand prosperous. Energy scarcity will make us poorer.

The Prime Minister says achieving energy abundance requires a suite of measures: accepting environmental trade-offs, fast-track approvals, ending the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration, solar farms, strategic reserves and LNG capacity.

A memorable line in the speech was his claim that it is difficult to justify “backing the skink over the solar farm”. It will outrage some environmentalists, but most voters understand the point.

Luxon’s third priority is social cohesion.

Here the speech becomes less convincing.

The Prime Minister cites immigration becoming a divisive issue in Europe and America as a warning for New Zealand. Yet he simultaneously praises his own Botany electorate as an example of successful diversity — migrants who “work hard, volunteer, serve their community, and make a contribution”.

Maybe polling has identified immigration as a concern because all three coalition parties have promised tighter rules.

Social cohesion is an issue, but it is not recent migrants marching on Parliament.

Tightening immigration rules, including tougher English-language requirements, may improve the system. But it does not address what is driving emigration.

New Zealand is losing its own skilled citizens.

There is not a word in the speech about the continuing outflow of talented New Zealanders.

Nor is there serious discussion of the issues most corrosive of social cohesion: school truancy, welfare dependency and low productivity. These are the issues that will ultimately determine whether New Zealand prospers.

Absent too is any reference to serious constitutional questions.

Luxon’s refusal to lead on issues such as the Treaty creates a vacuum the public service is filling with its own agenda. Buried in the India free-trade agreement is a commitment by New Zealand to uphold the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Clark Government, for sound reasons, refused to sign it. India made no reciprocal commitment.

The speech was billed as a pre-Budget speech. Here it was weakest.

Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis say the right things about balancing the books while continuing very high levels of spending.

The operating allowance is meant to cover the unexpected. Reducing it is like balancing a household budget by cutting house insurance. Economists call it “project optimism” — gambling that the unexpected will not happen.

It will.

There is only one proven way to permanently reduce government spending: stop doing some activities.

That is a reform Luxon and Willis remain reluctant to implement. There are entire ministries that would never be missed.

Even so, this was a serious speech — a worldview and a coherent agenda.

Luxon is repositioning National around security: international security, defence security, energy security and social stability.

With the left promising higher spending and increased taxation, a National Party agenda focused on security could become the basis of a winning election campaign.

The Honourable Richard Prebble CBE is a former member of the New Zealand Parliament. Initially a member of the Labour Party, he joined the newly formed ACT New Zealand party under Roger Douglas in 1996, becoming its leader from 1996 to 2004.