Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon took several calls from the public during his interview on Newstalk ZB's Kerre Woodham Mornings. These were the questions he was asked by the people of New Zealand. 

Rob:

"I've had the privilege of working for two days [with] help from Task Force Green with benching repairs which was amazing. It put me ahead by a month. I just heard from the supervisor that the funding is going to be cut in six weeks time. With all the talk about the ready-to-work people, these young people are learning skills. It was great for me because I got ahead and it allows my farm to get back into production. Why would you [cut] something like that when it's a no-brainer?"

Christopher Luxon: 

"Thanks Rob for calling in and for that perspective. Obviously Task Force Green does a range of things across the country, the funding will have been time-limited funding that under the previous Government would have come to an end.

"We're going through a budget process, the budget comes out at the end of May and the general rules are we're not allowed to talk too much about the budget two months out from it because decisions are being made about that. But it's good to hear you got value from [Task Force Green].

"The problem we're trying to solve here is there's a lot of programs across Government with a lot of funding going in for lots of activities, and some of those activities are very expensive when [it] comes down to a per-person cost and what it's delivering.

"So the question for us is where programs aren't delivering a good return, we need to stop them and power up the programs that are working well and getting great results. It will be a question for the right ministry to say 'is that program with all that investment actually delivering enough value in outcomes and money for the taxpayer or is it better to put that money into other programs that are making a difference'."

Mike:

"I live in Drury and I've just driven past the motorway and the roadworks...what checks have we put in place to make sure we're getting good bang for our buck? I've driven past and counted fourteen machines parked up doing nothing. And the taxpayer is paying for that."

Christopher Luxon:

"What I've tried to do with the ministers is to get them onto their passion subjects and have them really know their stuff. And I'm telling you, Simeon Brown is an outstanding Minister of Transport and already, he's laid out a plan to say 'I'm sorry, we're gonna be making sure we're doubling down on investment on our roads - we've got the 62,000 potholes to fix up'.

"But one of the things about him is he's very hot on road management and cone management and a lot of health and safety bits. He's trying to get a very specific figure so that the Government departments have to declare how much they're spending on that stuff to make sure it adds any value. We don't think it does add a lot of value, you need to make sure everybody is safe, the workers are safe and vehicles are safe, but actually the money being spent can be up to 20%, 30% of a total budget or a build.

"So got a whole big programme on roads. We've got fifteen big roads of national significance, we're saying where we've got good roads of high quality - think about from Puhoi up to Warkworth, Transmission Gully - those roads should be like the Waikato Expressway at 110kms. 

"The problem with the New Zealand roading system has been under successive Governments, the project has been turned off, turned on, and then because nothing happens, the costs of building those roads just goes through the roof - often two to three times more expensive than if we'd done it earlier.

"But we want to build a four-lane freeway network from Tauranga through to Hamilton, to Auckland, to Whangarei. And you'll start to see some of that ambition...but we will put a big emphasis on reinvesting in our roading network because it's how Kiwis get around."

Ryan:

"Myself and my wife made the conscious decision that when we had kids, she would stay at home and get them to school, then be at home when they'd get back - and I'd focus on my career. I've done relatively well. When I look at it now, if I was to cut my salary in half and my wife was to go back to work, we'd be actually be better off...Have you looked at a different tax threshold for a single-income family? We're taxed higher for having one person in the household working.

Christopher Luxon:

"It's an interesting thought, I haven't actually thought of it at that level around the single-income family per sey. There is a real need [where] you highlighted which is where you have New Zealanders working incredibly hard - what I call the squeezed middle - they work hard and can't get ahead.

"There's quite a few things we're doing, one of the things that might have relevance to your situation, the week before last we announced our Family Boost policy which is to help families up to incomes of $180,000 in household income, to defray those early childhood expenses. Because we have some of the most expensive early childhood costs in the world and we know we can get up to $75 a week support for families and their kids who are going through early childhood education.

"So that's a really good policy that can make a big difference to one hundred thousand households in New Zealand. The second thing, something I've talked about two years, we haven't had tax relief for middle-income workers for fourteen years, and we need to adjust the tax thresholds.

"As inflation and wages have gone up over the years, all of a sudden you have people on minimum wage - that last bit of money is taxed at our second highest tax rate. So we've got to deal with those thresholds, so we will have tax relief in the budget in May."

Jo:

"I'd like to know how you feel about the Youth Vaping Policy in the national house manifesto being thrown out by Casey Costello"

Christopher Luxon:

"The bottom line is that all we're doing is going back to what existed before the election. Essentially, with legislation that's driven our smoking rates down from about 17% down to just about 6.8%, we're still on track to deliver our smoke-free target of 5% in 2025. So there's a lot more work to be done in that space, but that legislation has been world leading and is actually very good and drives a good outcome.

"On the vaping side, you will have seen three weeks ago we announced what we're going to do around vaping - vaping has been critical to get smoking rates down with adults, but the problem is the under 18 vaping that's taking place and if you talk to teachers and parents, it's a big distraction inside classrooms, kids are addicted and the products are quite full on.

"So, what we're doing is banning the disposable vapes, we're making sure that we've cranked up the penalties big time - so up to $100,000 fine if you sell to under 18s - there's a whole bunch of work around presentation and packaging, and actually the presentation of vaping stores as well.

"We're gonna pass all that by September this year and we want to see how that goes and making sure it's really cracking down on underage vaping - that the penalties are big, we've gotten rid of the disposables which are cheap and easy for kids to access, we've got rid of the flavour descriptions and all the sexy bits that makes it all attractive and putting massive pressure on vape retailers as well.

"Vapes are critical to get adults off cigarettes but they need to be much more strongly regulated to avoid the youth vaping scenario that we're seeing."