Christopher Luxon is New Zealand’s new Prime Minister. What his coalition government will look like is yet to be decided, but we know it is guaranteed to feature the ACT party and most likely NZ First. Here we reflect on Your Ex’s recent interviews with Chris Luxon and ACT leader David Seymour and what they promised Rainbow communities that their leadership would look like?
Next time Your Ex interview Prime Minister Chris Luxon, it needs to be a gay bar, as he revealed in our June interview that her had never been to one, “But I’m not adverse to doing so!”
One of the rainbow communities’ biggest concerns around Christ Luxon stemmed from his Christian faith and whether it would impact decisions he would make around LGBTQ+ rights if he came into power.
In June, Luxon indicated to Your Ex that some of these concerns had been stirred but the media, who he felt had been determined to ‘label’ him and his family. “They make judgments and stereotypes about what you are or what you’re not,” he told us, highlighting a plan to ‘prioritise diversity and inclusion’ was key to his leadership of the National Party.
“I want everybody to feel that they can be themselves, at work, at home, in their community, and feel safe to do so. I came from a business world where diversity was really valued because it actually made good economic sense and made the businesses infinitely better,” he told us in June.
One of The National Party’s parliamentary seats will now be filled by openly gay MP James Christmas and Chris Luxon was adamant that a government that truly represents all of New Zealand’s diversity was the direction National needed to head in.
“When you go back through the 80-year history of this party as a centre-right party, it’s had conservatives, liberals, rural, urban, and people of all identities associated with the party. We’ve been at our best when we have that combination of moderate-liberal and moderate-conservative, with the operative word being moderate!” he asserted, adding, “I’m determined to recreate that in my era because when we haven’t done that, we haven’t been at our best.”
While the question of a need to collaborate with Winston Peters’ New Zealand First party is still in question, working with David Seymour’s National Party is not.
When Your Ex spoke to Seymour pre-election, he was determined to connect the values of the ACT party with the values of Aotearoa’s rainbow communities.
“People often mix up social conservatism with economic conservatism. The ACT Party is a party that wants the government out of the bedroom and out of the boardroom. Some people assume that because we like low taxes and less government regulation, that we must be morally conservative, but nothing could be further from the truth. We’re the party that legalised euthanasia. I voted for the most liberal version of abortion, and I would have voted for marriage equality,” he told Your Ex, adding, “Our commitment to universalism, to fundamental human dignity, that is a better bet in the long term than perhaps some of the politics that may be popular one decade to the next.”
One area of policy affecting LGBTQ+ Kiwis that ACT seems keen to tackle is our Adoption and Surrogacy laws which currently don’t allow couples to pay a local surrogate, and require parents to adopt babies carried by a surrogate even if they are biologically already that baby’s parent.
“It’s time for New Zealand to get to the Modern Age,” he enthuses as we raise the topic of surrogacy. “The reality is right now, that the wealthy go to the States or some other country where these things are legal. While people who are not wealthy are stuck in New Zealand, hoping for a miracle. If you’re someone that cares about equality, you might as well let it happen here.”
After special votes have been counted on Friday 3 November we will have a clearer idea of what’s New Zealand’s parliament will look like.