Prime Minister Appears on First Independent Podcast

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I'm not a career politician and I think that's a great thing.

Prime Minister, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Great to be with you, mate.

You've almost been in there a year. So what are you most proud of?

We have a big campaign around getting kids back into school. Four out of five of them are not really where they need to be at the standard they need to be going to high school. Let's do structured literacy. Let's get structured mathematics in place. Whether it's being principals, parents or kids themselves, they're actually really grateful to take control on that stuff.

Quick fire questions. 5 times 5.

25.

7 times 8.

42.

56.

56. Sorry, 56. You're right.

It's very easy for people to criticise and just give you hell reading what people have written.

You sort of don't get. If you're gonna get bounced around by that, that's not gonna be. You're not gonna do well on the job. Being someone who's come through politics really fast. If you think about my journey, and I've been there for almost four years, I inherited a party that was in pretty bad shape as fifth leader in five years and I had to renew the party.

What's the hardest thing about being Prime Minister?

Sometimes the hard to your desk. If it's easy, other people will make those decisions.

12 times 12.

144. Good job. Thank you. I'm glad you got that. He's a very talented 8 year old, your son. He's great.

So good to see you.

Thanks, mate.

This episode of the Lead On Purpose podcast is proudly sponsored by NZ Mortgages. You can check them out at nzmortgages.co NZ Prime Minister, a huge welcome to.

The Lead On Purpose podcast.

Great to be with you, mate. It's, I think the second time I've been on your podcast, so it's fantastic. So.

Well, I'm so glad you're back this time. Before you weren't Prime Minister. Now you are, and I believe you lead on purpose. Now, leading on purpose doesn't mean that you lead to be popular with everyone. It means that you lead with conviction around what matters most.

Yeah.

So over this last year, I've almost been in there a year. So what are you most proud of?

Oh, look, well, firstly, I would say I agree with you. I mean, my whole motivation for coming to politics just four years ago was to actually say, you know, my mission and purpose is this is a fantastic country, it's got amazing potential and I want to make sure that we realise all of that and that's why I've come to work on that. So I agree with you. You've got to lock in on mission and purpose big time, because otherwise, when you're under fire and getting out of bed at 4:30 each morning, ready to go, you better know why you're doing it. And I've always lived life that way and I think it's really important that you do. But I sit here a year down the road going, man, it's a fantastic country. We've got so much potential. I feel very optimistic and very positive that, yes, we've got some tough decisions to make and yes, we've got some difficulties and turbulence ahead of us, but actually there is no reason why New Zealand can't do exceptionally well. But look, over the last year, you know, really proud of the fact that I've been able to put the right people on the right assignments. We've forged a really good team. We've talked always about doing it as a, you know, seeing politics as a team sport, not an individual sport, which I think is typically how people may have done it historically, but actually, you know, getting the ministers all on their right assignments with their passions, with clarity about what they're there to achieve, what their legacy's gonna be when they leave. Those kind of conversations have been a lot of what I've been. Firstly, over the last three years as we re energised and turned the National Party around, and then now coming into government in 2023 and building a coalition government and a cabinet and a set of ministers with different personalities and strengths and development areas and getting the right casting, I think, has been a really important thing.

Yeah. Not easy to do and it's very easy for people to criticise and to just give you hell. And I've seen it and I usually switch it off because it's very awful to look at. What I love about you is that you take it and you keep a smile on your face.

And you focus forward always. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. One is the social media environment means that you can get very consumed by it. So I'm always informed about it, but I'm not consumed by it at all. And I think that's actually a much healthier way to navigate all the social media keyboard warriors. And the second piece is because you do need to listen to make sure that you're capturing any feedback or any things that you think, ah, actually there's a point in there that's somewhere that I need to do better at. But then I think, you know, the other piece for me is again, if you connect just that mission and purpose to a point, you know, what the pundits, what the commentators, media to some degree think and, or say. When I go back, even over the four years I've been in politics, and you sort of think about what people have written and how it's moved around and when you go back with a bit of hindsight, reading what people have written, you sort of don't get. If you're going to get bounced around by that, that's not going to be. You're not going to do well on the job.

Take it with a pinch of salt.

Yeah, you got to always listen, I think always listen out for genuine points that actually you should be reflecting up feedback. But equally you've got to know why you're there and I know why I came to politics. I choose to do this job. I, you know, I'm, you know, I've come back from overseas, I've had a fantastic experience, you know, working in New Zealand. I love this country, I want it to do better and that's what I'm here to do. So as a result, you know, full steam ahead, great clarity and signed up to the mission.

Keep the main thing. The main thing.

Exactly, exactly. It's interesting.

There's a lot of people say to me, what's the Prime Minister like? What's he like? You know, when there's not all the cameras there? I said, what's he like? He's like a normal bloke.

Yeah. I mean, I'm a big extrovert and it's. And you don't always get to see all of that stuff because you get the 3 to 6 second sound bite at night or often a lot of our focus and sometimes in the conversation in the media is about what I call the Beltway or the bubble of Wellington. But, you know, obviously I'm a big extrovert, love. People always have and that's also how I like to lead, is, you know, you've got to go to the front line, hear what people are saying, what are their concerns, you know, and the concerns that New Zealanders have, in my conversations with them have been pretty clear, you know, and it's like. And as a result, you'd be very choiceful about where you put your energy and where you put your effort, which is they want us to sort this economy out, remove this cost of living. That means we've got to tackle inflation and deal with that issue. That's hard, you know, because that's economics and there's a rule of economics that's been broken unfortunately in the last six years that we have to go back to the root cause to deal with, get spending under control so that we can lower inflation, so we can lower interest rates, get the country out of recession, into growth, and then with growth comes more employment. So, you know, they're the immutable law of economics that unfortunately we forgot after 35 years of having learnt them pretty well and we're having to relearn them with this generation of political leadership, unfortunately. And that's caused sadly huge pain and suffering for working New Zealanders. And that's what the tragedy is if you don't. It's very easy to take economic management and good economic management for granted.

And management competency for granted, but it's so important because the people that have been losing their jobs because businesses couldn't get through with high interest rates, high inflation costs and they had suppressed demand because the economy's been in recession is working New Zealanders and that's just not right. So you want good economic management. That's how we keep, you know, lower middle income people and work. Yeah.

And it's interesting, as you say, that I always, I think common sense isn't always common practice. We've probably seen that for a number of years now. Yeah, I recently heard someone interview and again it was another one I just switched off and they absolutely nailed you because you started talking about Air New Zealand and what you'd done there and they kind of framed you up and set you up for failure and you said the word customer and. And this guy went off and I thought, God, this is ridiculous. But I want to talk about the positives, Right. What did you learn at Air New Zealand that you've been able to actually bring across when you're running a country?

Yeah, well, look, on that interview, what I was trying to say, and it was in the context of being someone who's come through politics really fast. You know, if you think about my journey and I've been there for almost four years. In the first year, at the end of the first year, I was the leader of the National Party. I spent half of that first year in COVID lockdown in Auckland. I inherited a party that was in pretty bad shape. It's fifth leader in five years and I had to renew the party. So I did that process over that two year period and then we had to win. And winning meant that we had the biggest sort of turnaround in MMP history, really. So it was a fantastic set of results. And so the point is that, yes, I'm not a career politician and I spent 30 years in business. And so yes, I sometimes get accused of my corporate speak or jargon or whatever it may be. But the point is I was trying to make the point that actually a lot about leadership is very transferable. And so when we're talking about our public services, I am using the word custom very deliberately with the heads of the public service, because actually how we get, how we treat our patients in New Zealand as customers and how do we get them to be able to get faster access to their gp, faster access through quicker wait times, through eds, through getting first specialist appointments? A customer mentality and a mindset actually is very much what our public service needs to hold. And the bigger point I was trying to say was, look, whether you're a business that loses its way, it's because you've lost the voice of a customer. Whether you are a politician or a political party that loses its way, it's because you've lost the voice of the public and the voter. It's the same principle as what I was trying to allude there. But yeah, I appreciate others may want to seize on a piece of it, but if you watch the whole thing in context, it sort of made sense. But I think that's the point is that, you know, the reality is, no, I'm not a career politician and I think that's a great thing.

That's why a lot of people voted for you.

Yeah, we have a team that actually has a real mix of skills that have come from all sorts of backgrounds. And so, you know, we've got a massive diversity of experience in our group. Whereas sometimes I felt on the other side it was of a certain type where in a very much narrower sense of experience in some ways, to be honest. And so the question is, yes, we're playing a different sport here, being in politics versus being in business. But the principles of leadership and how you get the best out of a team and how you re energise a culture that was and make it high performing. All of that is completely transferable. Whether you're working in a community organisation, whether you're working in a business, whether you're working in a government. It's about the principles of good leadership and good management and good organisations of what type they are and everything rises.

And falls on leadership. If you look at countries, companies, organizations.

And they're not operating well, no, you.

Looked at the top, but it's generally.

Yeah, they've either lost the voice of the person they're trying to serve or they, and, or they have, you know, weak leadership. 100%. And you know, I'm proud of what we've achieved because, you know, it has been a big turnaround, you know, big turnaround in the National Party from our fortunes not that long ago when I came in, in 2020 to where we got to in 2023 and then to form a coalition government in the way that we have, that has been very constructive and had good formation and been very focused on what it's there to do.

Can I ask you. So got a young son who's 8 and fast forward 10 years he will be an adult here in New Zealand. What's your 10 year vision for our country? What do you think are the key things we need to focus on?

Yeah, look, I mean I, 11 months into this job feel more excited than ever before about a great future and that's why I came here, that is my mission and purpose is to help New Zealand realise its potential, its fullest potential. And so yes, we've got some financial jobs to do to clean up the books and to get things sorted and some discipline and some good management back in place. But the really exciting work is how do we realise that potential that we know that we've all got and that will be a community and it will be business and government working together on that. But you know, when you boil it down, there's five things that we have to do to be able to create a great future for your son. And the first is we have to be able to build out a world class education system. When we can do that, we then can embrace more science, technology and innovation. We also need to make sure we've got modern, reliable infrastructure. We keep this a great place to do business and create more competition and get rid of Red Tail and then importantly, strong international connections. Those five things will drive, if we work on those fundamentals More economic productivity, meaning people will work hard but they'll actually make more money and as a result have higher wages and salaries and therefore the quality of life goes up for all New Zealanders. And that has been in essence our economic challenge over the last 30 years under successive governments is that we're all working really hard in New Zealand, but actually we haven't been able to generate enough wealth that has lifted our own quality of living and standards over that period of time sufficiently. And so that's the big thing that we have to transform. But in order to do that you have to have a great education system because how are our kids supposed to access those higher paying jobs if four out of five of them are not really where they need to be at the standard they need to be going to high school. If one out of two are not at the standard, they need to be on reading going into high school. You know, if only 45% of them are showing up at school regularly, you know, that is not shocking. Yeah, that's where we are. And so that's the reality of it, that's the problem. And therefore what's the common sense solutions that we need to do that? Right, let's do structured literacy, let's get structured mathematics in place, let's make sure we have a big campaign around getting kids back into school. Let's make sure that we're building out world class curriculum, supporting our teachers. We've got amazing teachers, but the systems let them down. So how do we make sure that that works in a much better way? So they are exciting challenges and opportunities and problems to work on. I think you've got to have good definition and then have really good common sense solutions. And I think too often what we've seen in government or my observation coming in from outside is very, very poor problem definition, lots of ideology roaming around in search of a problem to attach to rather than actually our kids are getting cyberbullied, our kids are not distracted and actually they're not engaging well enough with each other. So let's ban the mobile phones. And that's what we did. So two and a half thousand schools now where kids don't have to worry about mobile phones and lo and behold, less cyber bullying, more rugby balls going through windows around the country, kids actually talking to each other physically rather than through their devices at a lunchtime, looking down at their phones and a lot less distraction in the classroom. So, you know, whether it's been principals, parents or kids themselves, they're actually really grateful we take control on that. Stuff, but that's not an ideological thing. That's just a common sense action that we can take to deal with some of the challenges that we've got in the education sector. Love it.

Really clear. I like your clarity. You've got a clear sense of purpose, of why you're doing it. And I just want to honour your time. I know it's been a very full on day for you today.

No, that's been great.

Yeah. I'm glad that we could get the reconnect. Yeah.

I appreciate your time for making time for me.

Oh, absolute pleasure. There's a little boy that wants to ask you some questions.

He's a great little chap too. Yeah.

So thank you.

Very talented 8 year old, your son. He's great.

So good to see you.

Thanks, mate. Appreciate it. Good to see you, James.

It's great to be with you.

Likewise, Finn. It's good to be with you and your broken toe. Yeah.

Thank you.

Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?

You can fire ahead. Let's go.

If you could be invisible for the day, what's the first thing you'd do?

I'd probably head to a McDonald's store and order a quarter pound of large fries and chocolate shake. Yum. And being invisible would mean that my wife Amanda wouldn't know that I've been there. That'd be pretty cool, guys.

What's the hardest thing about being Prime Minister?

Oh, the hardest thing. Well, sometimes the hardest problems come to your desk. Right. If it's easy, other people will make those decisions. So the real really difficult, complex decisions that you have to make come to the Prime Minister's desk. So that's probably the hardest part of it. It's just making sure that you make good decisions. But often they have to be quite tough decisions and you're going to upset some people when making those decisions. But you've got to make a decision still at the end of the day because you're the guy where the buck stops with you. So that's why you've got to make those decisions.

Cool.

These are great questions, Finn.

Awesome. If you could wear anything to the office, what would it be?

T shirt, shorts. And, and, and, and, and jandals. Nice. Yep.

What's the snack you eat that you know you shouldn't?

Probably custard squares. Nice. Yeah. Or the odd McDonald's trip that I shouldn't be doing. But I do love McDonald's. Yep. Yum.

Do you like to sing in the shower?

I love music. So I actually have a waterproof speaker that my daughter gave me for Christmas a few years back, that is, I put on it and it's a Bluetooth speaker. And so I always have lots of music playing. So I even in the office, working late at night, from morning when I first get up, I always have music pumping. Cause it's really cool.

What's your go to song?

Oh, there's so many of them. So many of them. Yep. I love at the moment, I love a guy called Post Malone.

Oh, I love Post Malone.

Yeah. And he's done a really good collaboration going into country music and he's got a show, he's got an album called F1 trillion. Oh yeah. And that's a great, great, great, great album to listen to. Yep.

What's the best part about being the Prime Minister?

Oh, the best part, without doubt, is you get to see all these amazing people doing incredible things across New Zealand. And they're often people that are in the community and they're thinking about other people and they're working really hard to try and see help, people who really need support. And that's been pretty awesome. You see incredible people taking risks with lovely business ideas and they're trying to think about how they can build a company that can employ people, that gives people money and helps support lots of families. And you see lots of really smart, intelligent people trying to do the right things to make sure they move New Zealand forward in a positive way. So no, it's very inspiring seeing amazing New Zealanders doing incredible things and often doing really hard things, you know, but they're doing it for the right reasons. Cool.

Quick fire questions. 5 times 5.

25.

7 times 8?

42.

56.

56. Sorry, 56. You're right, sorry.

12 times 12?

144.

Good job.

Thank you.

I'm glad you got that shivers.

I'm glad too, mate.

Thank you for having us and thank you for coming here.

Pleasure. Look, it's been great to see you and I ran into you in the lounge once and going flying through and it's been awesome, mate. And I want to say congratulations on conducting a very, very good interview. You did a really great job. You're a natural at it. Thank you. Good to see you. Very good. Awesome, brother. Well done you. Very good.

This episode of the Lead On Purpose podcast is proudly sponsored by NZ Mortgages. You can check them out at nzmortgages.co n.