Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Monday, 10 November 2025

Well, kia ora, good afternoon everyone. It's good to see you all. Yesterday, as you know, the Government announced several actions to combat and crack down on the harm that methamphetamine is causing in New Zealand. Meth is a scourge on our society. It fuels organized crime. It leads to more victims of violent crime, and ultimately, it destroys lives. Although we're seeing a number of positive trends under this Government's law and order agenda, meth use has not declined. In fact, consumption doubled last year. This is a problem that comes with an estimated social cost of $1.5 billion in 2024, and that is utterly unacceptable. Gangs and international criminal organisations are profiting off inflicting misery on our Kiwi communities. And that's why I tasked Paul Goldsmith with leading a Ministerial task force to look at the issue from all sides of government to land a series of actions that we can undertake to get on top of this issue.

The focus has been on developing a plan to disrupt international supply, to sharpen enforcement, and to reduce demand. We've immediately kicked this into gear, starting with increasing our network of intelligence and law enforcement postings abroad to better connect with New Zealand's law enforcement partners overseas. We're directing Customs, the Defence Force, and the GCSB to undertake maritime operations to disrupt organised crime networks operating across the Pacific. Police are receiving more tools to intercept communications and search evidence stored electronically. We're working with the maritime sector to beef up security and eliminate criminal threats at the ports.

In addition to the enforcement measures I've mentioned, we're allocating $30 million to increase services available to communities hardest hit by meth. This, alongside targeted media campaigns, we think, can have an impact on at-risk communities that move us in the right direction to lower demand. As I alluded to before, we are seeing a number of positives in our fight to restore law and order in New Zealand. Meth is a challenge, but if we get this right, the flow on effects should be genuinely meaningful when it comes to keeping Kiwis safer. Police data is already showing us a number of positive trends when you look at the first six months of this year compared to 2023. Burglary is down 7%, traffic and vehicle offences are down 17%, ram-raids have decreased 82%, and police foot patrols are up nearly 60%.

On a separate matter, I just want to acknowledge all of those working in response to the vegetation fire in Tongariro National Park. I know this is a very distressing time for local communities and for anyone who has a connection to the national park. Fire and Emergency, DOC, councils and iwis, Civil Defence, police and other government agencies are working together to coordinate resources and support the locally led response efforts. Minister Mitchell and Minister Potaka have also been on the ground. A recent update had the fire spanning roughly 2,800 hectares. Some welcome good news is that cooler weather conditions and light rain have assisted firefighting conditions today. There are incredible pilots operating 15 helicopters and five fixed-wing aircraft, and multiple firefighting ground crews working from first light each day to bring the blaze under control. Their effort, coordination, and bravery in some really difficult conditions has been truly outstanding.

At this stage, no critical lifeline infrastructure is at risk, and most evacuated residents have been safely accommodated. A small number of people are being supported by the Emergency Operations Centre to find temporary housing. Obviously, the response is ongoing as efforts to contain the blaze continue, and the government is ready to provide assistance to affected communities. And with that, happy to take your questions.

Look, as I've said this morning, we have a very positive relationship with the Cook Islands people. It's a very special relationship. As you know, they're New Zealand citizens, they are a New Zealand family, and they have made a great contribution to this country. Our issue is with the Cook Islands government. We have serious concerns, which we've traversed before. We have a responsibility to protect security, intelligence, and defence for the realm of New Zealand, of which the Cook Islands is one of those countries. Trust has been broken, as we've talked about before. Our officials continue to work and, as you've seen, we feel the next step is to pull some of that budgetary funding.

Well, I think there needs to be progress, and there is some little progress, but we want a lot more of it, and we want trust restored, and we want clarity and mitigations to the questions that we have answered. Until we see so, we'll pause our budgetary support. But of course, that doesn't preclude a lot of other money going into key parts of supporting the people of the Cook Islands as well.

No, he has. We're actually as a full court press between himself, myself, our officials, but at this stage, what we've said is we want our officials. We're very clear about what the asks are and what we need reassurance around, and we need to see a response from the Cook Islands to restore that trust.

Well, our officials have been meeting and actually been conversing about these issues. We need to see a recognition from the Cook Islands side that these are real concerns. We want them taken seriously and we want them to be mitigated ultimately.

Well, we've seen agreements signed with other countries that we actually want to make sure that there is mitigation plans in place dealing with some of the risks that we see as a government as it pertains to security and defence.

No, I'm not going to do that. I think our officials can continue those conversations, but until they can, we're suspending more of the budget money, as you know, up to $29.8 million at the current point. But there is other monies going into other places, like education and health care, to continue to support the people of the Cook Islands.

Well, it's both. We, having responsibility constitutionally, as I said, for defence and security, take that responsibility incredibly seriously. The Cook Islands has certain rights under the under the free association model, but they also have responsibilities to engage with us on those issues. As we've seen from the beginning of the year, that hasn't been the case, and it certainly hasn't been to the standard that we need it to be at as well. So until that happens, that budget money will be suspended. That budget money is given on the basis of trust and trust has been broken, it needs to be restored.

Well, I'm confident that they will take this pretty seriously, which is that they need to come to the table, they need to demonstrate to us that they understand the obligations and what they need to do to reassure us that those risks are being managed and mitigated.

No, what I've said is that there will be no asset sales this term, which has been a longstanding position of the government. What I said is we also haven't yet determined our election policy for 2026. We want to make sure that every government asset is well managed and performing well. As I've said before, we're the fourth worst in the OECD at managing our assets and actually 50% of our big capital intensive agencies haven't even got basic asset management plans in place. So we expect the assets that we do own to be run incredibly well and to be managed very well.

But also what I was alluding to this morning was just saying, look, we have to take a step back and I think actually have a bigger, bolder, braver conversation, and a sophisticated conversation, about asset recycling in the sense of you don't just own the asset forever without questioning why you're owning it. Particularly when you look at places like Singapore that can actually—the assets they had in the early 70s versus is the assets they have today, they have sold assets in order to buy new assets that actually have more advantage, better returns for their citizens and for their people. That's a legitimately good question for us to ask, other than getting into the politics of, actually, are we using the government's balance sheet well and smartly for the benefit of New Zealanders, rather than just getting into the dirty politics of asset sales.

Look, I'm not going to go into that because we haven't worked through as a party our own policy around that. As I said, we'll have more work to say about that as we go into the election campaign. But all I'm just saying is, as you take a step back and think about a portfolio of assets that the government owns, it's not unreasonable to ask the question of, should we own those assets forever unchanged? Your KiwiSaver account, the Super Fund, they will cycle assets in and out. We have other governments that do it in that way as well. There are assets that you could ask, what is the purpose of the government owning that? Are we better to liberate those funds and put them into new assets for the public of New Zealand that would be more beneficial? So all I'm saying is, at some point, we're going to need to have a more mature conversation, that I've observed happen over the last 15-20 years, than what we've had.

Yeah, look, each of the assets that we own has different challenges or different opportunities associated with it. It's not one-size-fits-all. I'm just saying to you, as a principle, I think we need to have a higher order conversation and debate in the country at some point about owning assets and not just locking and leaving and owning them forever. Certainly, I'm sure the car that you owned as your first car is not the car that you still own today. You don't have to own it forever. That's all I'm saying, is there's a pool of capital, there's a pool of cash that can be deployed in different ways to get better returns for New Zealanders.

Look, again, I'm signalling that I'm open for that conversation ultimately, but we haven't yet, as a party, determined our own thinking on that, and we will do that as we go into the election next year. But I'm just prompted by your article and the Treasury report, I think it was a good provocation to say, hey, listen, is there a more sophisticated conversation or a more mature conversation we can have about the assets that the government owns, and are we genuinely getting a good return for New Zealanders in terms of, is that the optimal place in which capital should be sitting versus doing other things with it? And that's not an unreasonable conversation to have, I think.

Well, we are improving it. What I'm saying is that since we came to power, what we've discovered is we have a lot of assets. We are the fourth worst in the OECD at managing them, as when we now, through our Cabinet Committees, look at actually our quarterly investment reports and the analysis and some of the analytics that we've put in place around the management of those assets. We started with a place where 50% of capital intensive agencies don't even have an asset register. Well, that's a pretty basic sort of response. You need to know what you own, where it is, and some of those things. So that's the work that we, as a government, have been pushing quite hard on the agencies to understand.

It's getting better. It's still not at the standard that I want it to be at. Yeah.

Yeah, look, again, as a Party, we haven't had the conversation amongst ourselves, and we will have that to form our own policy for the election. But I think that is a good example, where, you know, what is the purpose of the government owning Pāmu or those farms? It may well be that they're needed for Treaty claims. It may well be that it's used for R&D, for model farms. There might be a real rationale for it or there may not be a rationale for it. We know that there's a massive drive for protein over the next 10 years or so, a shortfall around the world. Are we the best people to run those farms? How do those farms perform relative to farms that aren't run by government? All of those things are legitimately good questions to be asking to make sure that we are maximizing the capital that the New Zealand Government has tied up in that investment to the benefit of New Zealanders, so that we can actually do things with that capital and those returns.

Each and every single asset that we have, we should ask those questions of them, and question the government's purpose for owning those assets and, more importantly, how are they performing, how are they delivering, how well are they being managed, and recognising that there is a range of assets that the government has. Not everything can be sold, not everything should be sold, but all I'm just saying is we need to move to a more mature conversation about asset recycling than what we've had historically in this country, which has been sort of a very simple political conversation about selling assets, and I think when we take a step back, and we think about the needs that we're going to have for this country over the next 10 to 20 years, and the investments we need to make in capital, we need to make sure that every asset that we own is optimally deployed, optimally managed, and that we can honestly look at the New Zealand taxpayer and say that's a good use of your funds tied up in that asset, rather than doing something else with that money that might be more beneficial to New Zealanders.

No, I mean as we go into our policy, we'll work our policy through over the course of the year, as I said, going into the election, but I'm trying to have a more strategic conversation and a higher order conversation, that I think we'll need to have over the coming year, about asset recycling.

Well, again, I think that's a necessary precursor to make sure we get a sense of the relative performance of the management of that government asset. More importantly also, how well is it being governed, how well is it being led, what is the importance of why the government must own that or actually is there a different way you can think about the ownership of that asset. I think the Crown Purpose Statements, as we're calling them, that we're trying to work our way through the different assets with, is a good way for us just to take stock and to think about the portfolio of assets that the government has and what the role of those are in our portfolio and, more importantly, a question about how well are they being managed and what returns are we getting from them?

Obviously, a lot of our questions with the Chairs and CEOs of some of these entities has been, we expect them to be really well-managed because those dividends—if you think about it, I think it's something like $25 billion, it's something like 30,000 Kiwis employed, and then I think about $700 million worth of dividends that comes off. Well, that's $700 million worth of dividends that comes from our asset base of $25 billion that ends up paying for health and education. So we just want to make sure that - we should have a view that everything should be optimally managed and maximised.

I think it's just about us sophisticating the conversations that we have around this topic. It's no different to me that the conversation we have, for example, on gene tech legislation that we had in 1999 and 2001, has evolved over the 25-year period that we find ourselves in in 2025, with 45 other countries having done it, the huge health benefits around T-cell research, huge environmental benefits, obviously, for agriculture. We've been able to have a much different conversation as we've introduced that gene tech legislation than what we would have had in 2002, for example.

So all I'm saying here on the asset sales and asset recycling, it's the same thing, right? We should actually make the case for, if we think there's a change, or if we think actually having some flexibility to recycle assets so that we can deploy capital to its highest use so that New Zealanders benefit from that, that's all I'm saying.

Yeah, look, at this point, I mean, we're still doing that work of building out those Crown Purpose Statements, but all I'm foreshadowing is at some point, yes, we will have a conversation about our asset portfolio and actually have - in a sense of, is it optimally organised? Are there candidates that you could say, we could recycle that in order to get this investment or this asset away?

Yeah, I think that is. I mean that's what I'm talking about and saying that's a very simplistic political conversation on a very serious issue, which is New Zealand has a great future ahead of it, but one of the things we have to do is, if we're really going to lift our collective living standards, is obviously invest in infrastructure, make sure that we're getting great capital returns from assets being deployed. That's what I'm trying to get beyond. Now, I know by talking about this today, that's the risk, because it's very easy politics to say, look, you're flogging off the family silver. We're not talking about that. We're just talking about the fact that there is $25 billion that this government has in assets. Some of those assets shouldn't be sold, can't be sold, would be inadvisable to sell. The government's got a critical role to play in that. But there may be other things that actually should be recycled and optimised so that we can go off and do some other things that actually New Zealanders would prefer that we do and use that capital to do.

So, yeah, I get it, that's the easy politics of this, but I'm just asking for us to think a little more intelligently in a more strategic sense to say, how do we benefit New Zealanders by making sure that that capital is optimally deployed? It's money that we have available. In the same way we think about the optimal deployment of operational expenditure, we should think about the optimal deployment of capital as well and investments that we have in assets.

Look, I've just seen their results in passing. I think they had a strong result on the back of actually accounting and hedging policy changes. My only wish to the banks and message to the banks is pretty clear, which is I expect you to pass on OCR cuts incredibly quickly to the customers.

I think all banks can do a much quicker job and a better job. I think the second thing I'd say to all New Zealanders is shop around, because when I'm looking at some of the rates that you can see from some of the second-tier banks across New Zealand, there are some very, very good interest rates going. Ultimately, the consumer's in charge and, in New Zealand, sometimes our consumers are a bit reluctant to change their banking arrangements. But actually, if you can get a better deal, you should go for it.

Look, I don't know. I mean, Te Pāti Māori's a joke, to be honest. They're completely irrelevant in this place. I have not seen a single policy idea about what they're doing to lift cervical screening rates with Māori, immunisation rates for under twos, let alone academic achievement for Māori kids. So I'm just imagining a new world where Chris Hipkins is trying to form a coalition with Labour, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori, and our two new independents. So good luck.

I wouldn't have thought it's a good use of taxpayers' money, particularly when people don't take this place very seriously.

Look, with respect to Gumboot Friday, I saw that, I'll just say that's a commitment I made in November 2022 on the Rock radio station, with Bryce Casey in particular, and I'm very proud that we managed to get that up and running and out the door in November 2023 when we came to power. That's been a longstanding commitment of ours, a longstanding belief, that's a great organisation, and whether you're New Zealand First or National, we would both say isn't it fantastic that 14,000 kids have been helped with 40,000 free counselling sessions.

It was very much in our, you know, just remember for us, our coalition government to be formed, both ACT and New Zealand First had to sign up to the National Party Agreement and our agenda. We've got most of the things we wanted to get done away, with the exception of two, which was the foreign buyer ban and also lifting the superannuation age to 67. On the foreign buyer ban, I think Winston and I got to a really good place where, actually, it was a better outcome, in some ways, than what we had proposed as our policy. But very much a very strong part of our system. As I said, I made the statement in November 2022, I met with Mike King, I was so impressed by the organisation and the work that they're doing. I actually met with kids that had benefited from the organisation. Yes, great that New Zealand First is on board with that too, but so was National. We campaigned very strongly on that idea.

Look, I don't go into the meetings I have with leaders but, to be honest, the meeting and engagement I had with the new Samoan Prime Minister was actually really a welfare check on his health. It wasn't a formal bilateral meeting. We're going to do that in the New Year. I would like to try and visit Samoa, in particular, and or he can come and visit us here in New Zealand and we'll have a proper meeting with all of our officials in attendance on the bilateral relationship and the opportunities that we have. I was coming out of other meetings on my way to some others, and I wanted to drop in and see him, given he's been dealing with some health challenges while he's been here in New Zealand.

Yeah, look, I'm proud that we've actually done a number of things to make visa and travel with the Pacific a little bit easier, if you think about some of the things that we've done over the last two years. But, look, we're open for further conversations, as we are all Pacific Island nations and friends and partners, but ultimately that'll be led by MFAT and Minister Peters.

No, it's just coming from a principle, as a former business guy, that you just don't want lazy balance sheets, right? So you want to optimise your profit and loss statement, it's strongly connected to your balance sheet, and you want to be thinking that you're actually maximising your balance sheet really effectively. That's where it's coming from. To say, look, New Zealand has, as I said, I think it's roughly $25 billion worth of assets that are tied up in that. The question is a legitimate one of just asking, are we getting a good return for that?

Yeah, look, the government running its books has a whole range of things that it's trying to balance and the trade-offs that it has to make, as you know. I mean, we have a fiscal track that we've committed to, which is really important, you know, and the balance between debt and our ability to do capital investment, and then how we deploy the assets that we've got and make sure we get optimal return from them. We're just coming from a place of, you know, you've seen it with the way that we've tackled things like classroom costs, through good managerialism, we've been able to actually halve the cost of a classroom by doing more standard classrooms, and for the same budget, deliver twice as many classrooms to New Zealand kids and families. That's a good example. I just expect everything to be optimally maximised to the very best of its ability, whether it's the assets, whether it's the operating expenditure, capital expenditure, that we should be doing everything we can, in fairness, to make sure we're running this economy really optimally for New Zealanders.

Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying. All assets aren't equal, right? All assets, there is a different purpose for why the Crown owns them today, and that's why we're saying, let's get clear on these Crown Purpose Statements because actually, that's exactly the point. There will be assets that actually are doing a public good, that actually the government should own. That's quite a legitimate question, but it's not a one-size-fits-all. Actually, there will be assets equally that you say, are we the best natural owner of those assets? Should we not recycle that asset into another asset that actually New Zealanders would get greater benefit from? So I'm just, again, in the spirit of trying to have a more mature, sophisticated, strategic conversation about it, that's exactly the point, Thomas, that I think you've raised, about each of those assets is different.

Yeah, look, part of it has been that we've had a lot of change under the previous administration around the scheme and lots of fiddling with it and we need to let it be pretty stable and pretty understood by the market so there is certainty there. Our options are still not clearing consistently and we need to make sure that we actually - one of our commitments is that we don't really want to change or muck around that too much.

With respect to the Climate Change Commission efficiency changes that we want to make?

Yeah, I get that point, but I just say to you I think the reality for us is that we actually have - we're trying not to interfere and muck around with the ETS too much, and I appreciate that may well be the market's response to that, but I'm not going to comment on that given the market.

Not at this point. We haven't had a broader conversation about it. Some of the ministers will have been talking about some of that. But again, what we're trying to do here is just a recognition that the meth challenge that we're facing has changed a lot, I think, in the last two to five years. We are seeing prices for meth in New Zealand greater than what you see in other parts of the world. As a result, it's become a very attractive market, the Pacific, to the drug cartels in North America, in particular, and we are seeing things that we haven't seen before, boats coming out of South America, in some cases, submarines are bringing drugs into this part of the world. It's a problem that's a scourge across, not just New Zealand, but also in Australia, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and we need to lift our game and be much more intentional and have more intensity to what we're doing across all our agencies.

Look, again, I'm just not going to go into it because I'm not the leader of Te Pāti Māori. There's a couple of leaders, or many leaders, from what I can work out. All I'm trying to say to you is, for me, I'm trying to sort this country out. I'm trying to turn it around. I'm focused on that task and all the shenanigans of Te Pāti Māori, who I just haven't seen here in this place offering any serious solutions to the challenges and opportunities that this country has. So, to me, it's just a sheer soap opera. I don't want to work with them. I won't be working with the independents. I won't be working with Te Pāti Māori. I'm pretty clear about that. Chris Hipkins, he does.

Just because, again, honestly, we're coming in here every day, working 20 hours a day as a government trying to fix the joint, and I haven't had one single substantive policy conversation with Te Pāti Māori at all. It's all performative, it's all drama, it's all soap opera, so I've just got no interest.

Look, from what I've seen, I just think they're actually just not serious, any of them, about actually wanting to deal with issues that confront Māori, let alone all New Zealanders. And we're a government there that's determined to get improved outcomes for Māori. I appreciate - we're very focused on that and I just don't have any engagement from them on that.

There's two tracks in place at the moment. So, as you'd be aware, Catherine Wedd's Members' Bill has been pulled from the tin and so we can progress that. But in parallel, I've also asked Erica Stanford to go off and look at work of what would be required to generate a good Government Bill. Obviously, that would need the support of all of Cabinet, and we'd need to have that conversation, which we haven't had yet. Once we've got a Bill or a policy in front of us, then we can have that debate and discussion. But there's two pathways at this point.

That's right. There hasn't been a proposal. As I said at the time, Catherine's got her members' bill. We can progress the members' bill. Equally, we've asked for government work to be looked at, when that work comes together, it'll be brought back to Cabinet, there'll be a good discussion there, and we'll see where there's a pathway through that route as well.

Yeah, it is, actually, because there's quite a lot of detailed policy thinking. It's a really frontier piece of work, in the sense of, you're seeing different countries having slightly different approaches to it. We're obviously watching very closely what's happening in Australia as they haven't still yet implemented their legislation. They do that, I think, in December before Christmas. But, again, our position, when we take a step back is to say, look, we have constraints on our kids in the physical world, we want to see them in the virtual world. We're very attracted to the idea of a social media ban for under-16s. The devil is in the detail, and that's why the policy work is important.

No, we want to have two tracks in place. We've got a great members' bill, but that would go through a normal process of being built on and improved upon through the Select Committee process and through an engagement process with all parties in Parliament. But, equally, we also have a government bill that we want to ideally generate as well. So there's a lot of detailed policy work. I mean, Erica is doing that work on policy and getting the thinking straight, and then once we feel we've got it in a good place, we'll bring it to Cabinet for a discussion.

No, we're doing it the way that I've talked about right from the beginning, which is that Erica will look at some policy work and ultimately bring some proposal before Cabinet.

Look, again, there's lots of different pathways. As I said, there's two at the moment. I would hope that there would be other parties that would want to come on board in Parliament to actually strengthen the protection for our kids. I think many parties would say that's a New Zealand issue, it's not a party political issue. So let's see where we get to. But at the moment for now, we've got a members' bill out of the biscuit tin, which is great, and importantly, we've also got some policy work underway. I'll take the last question, Boyd.

Yeah, yeah, look, I mean, but I also support what they did. I think making the case for the offers that they have been trying to present to the unions is actually a good thing. Yeah, I'll just say on the unions front, the unions need to get back to the negotiating table and bargaining table. I spent the weekend, on Saturday, I was in Hamilton and I had this couple come up to me, really awesome couple, hardworking New Zealanders, probably earning a lot less than teachers and nurses, frankly. They had a nine and 11-year-old, and I said, how's it all going? She said, Chris, I want to tell you a story. She says, I've been trying to work really hard through this year to save up my leave so that I can use it over the long summer break. She said, because of the teacher only days, because of all the strike action, I've actually had to take time, because I don't work from home, I don't get to work from home. I have to show up at the office, at her workplace, and I don't actually have a lot of family support around me.

So she has to take leave days every time there's a strike or every time there's a teacher only day across the system. Now she's going into a summer period and she said to me, I'll have to take unpaid leave in order to get through the summer period, which she had been working so assiduously at trying to save her leave and bank her leave to do exactly that job. Well, that, to me, is unacceptable and that's why I keep saying to the unions, get back to the table and get into good faith negotiation with the negotiators.

No, I'm quite comfortable with the way I approach Question Time and, in relation to that particular question, we do want to make sure we clean up downtown Auckland CBD.

Aucklanders expect us to do it. We've got big investments with cruise ships coming, we've got big investments with convention centres, CRL. We are working with multiple agencies, NGOs, local government, and when the Minister of Auckland has something to say about it, we'll say something about it. OK, thanks, team.