RODNEY HIDE: I asked AI to find Christopher Luxon's worldview

Every politician has a worldview. Most don't know it. They pick it up from parents, stories, church, lecturers, workmates and friends. But it's there, and it drives what they do.

I know mine. I started in Parliament as a libertarian. My experience led me to think the government could never be kept in a box. I concluded the possible good would always be far outweighed by the bad. I ended up an anarchist. I'm now a Christian conservative. I had to think my way through both.

So I set my AI research assistant a job. Do a deep dive on Christopher Luxon. Read his maiden speech, his interviews, his speeches as Prime Minister. Work out what he believes about truth, human nature, purpose, government and markets. Tell me where it comes from. Quote him exactly. Keep what he said separate from what you think it means.

My aim was to detach myself from the analysis. It took minutes. Here's what it wrote.

Christopher Luxon keeps his beliefs in two separate rooms

The first holds his Christian faith. In his maiden speech in March 2021 he said it "has anchored me, given my life purpose and shaped my values." His heroes are William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King and Kate Sheppard.

The second holds the CEO: "I have entered politics because I want to make a difference, to solve problems and to get things done."

He keeps the door between them shut: "My faith is personal to me. It is not in itself a political agenda. I believe no religion should dictate to the state."

His working political philosophy is management. "I understand, of course, that a country is not a company. However, New Zealanders look to the Government to get things done." Hence the nine Government targets, each with a minister and a chief executive held to account, because "spending more money will not in itself deliver better results."

[He doesn't always remember: Our publisher pointed out that last week, in his weekly chat with Mike Hosking, he called the country 'the company' before quickly correcting himself.]

He describes his values as "limited yet better government," and the weight falls on "better." The same speech says governments "must make powerful and targeted interventions." He cites no economist, not Hayek, Friedman or Adam Smith. His named reading is leaders' biographies and Viktor Frankl's “Man's Search for Meaning”, which he made compulsory for new Air New Zealand staff. His business creed was that "a business could do well by doing good," which at Air New Zealand meant family-violence leave, the Rainbow tick and the Climate Leaders Coalition.

There is one clear tension. In 2021 he told Newshub, "I'm a pro-life person." Asked whether that made abortion tantamount to murder, he replied, "That's what a pro-life position is." The next year he pledged: "These laws will not be relitigated or revisited under a future National government." His own heroes did not work that way. Wilberforce did not treat slavery as settled, and King did not treat segregation as settled. Both entered public life to change the law on moral grounds.

He says he is not an ideologue. My reading is that this is itself an ideology. It assumes outcomes can be measured, that growth is the master good, and that values belong in private. It is technocratic liberalism, a worldview that does not name itself.

I found nothing in his own words on property rights as a principle, or on the Treaty and co-governance.

That's about right. And it explains a lot. It's why his Government can't make the moral case for what it's doing. It doesn't think it has to. It thinks it only has to hit the targets.

Was the AI right? Mostly. It was careful about what it could prove and flagged what it couldn't. The gaps tell you something too.

I'll be running the same exercise on other leaders. I've already done Chlöe Swarbrick. She's a critical theorist, and she says so. At least she knows what she believes.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader