With speaking engagements intensifying in the run-up to October’s general election, National Party leader Christopher Luxon, flanked by party transport spokesman Simeon Brown and Coromandel MP Scott Simpson, held court in front of about 70 people last week at the Thames Civic Centre.

Luxon shared the party’s views on hot-button topics education, crime, agriculture and relevant local issues -including the repair of State Highway 25A.

He started by saying he was in favour of lifting incomes by investing in education and said National aimed to stop the drain of talent to Australia brought about by the high cost of living in New Zealand.

“Your kids have gone to study, and they’ve become an electrician, a carpenter or gone to university and done law or whatever it is - and worked hard. They have average incomes and good jobs. It’s still not enough to stay here and be able to make a future for themselves.

“We need our young people to want to stay here because they see it as a place of opportunity and not leave to go to Queensland.”

Luxon said he was “really worried about education in New Zealand because that’s the thing that gets you from bad circumstances to better circumstances, and if we can’t educate our kids better than us, how do we access higher-paying jobs and more income?”

He said statistics suggested core subjects were no longer being taught adequately in schools.

“Sixty-five per cent of our 15-year-olds last year failed the most basic maths, reading and writing test. In one of our schools, 98 per cent of kids failed the writing test and 90 per cent failed the maths test.”

He stressed concerns about school-aged children being at a lower point academically than their parents were at the same age, saying: “We are in a place where a 15-year-old today knows a lot less than their parents did 20 years earlier as a 15-year-old. They are a year and a half behind their parents in maths. Just 20 years ago we were in the top 10 for maths in the world, now we’ve got a report we are down to 27th.”

National’s policy idea to implement a part of the school day dedicated to learning core subjects was discussed, with Luxon saying, “We are going to have an hour of maths, an hour of writing and an hour of reading every day for our primary and intermediate-aged kids. We need our young people mastering the basics incredibly well.”

Discussing crime, Luxon took aim at the proliferation of gang activity, the enforcement of which was hamstrung by an under-resourced police department. “The police need powers and tools to be able to do their job and we need to tackle down on gangs. They’re not good people, they want the rights of being Kiwis but are not prepared to take the responsibilities, and we are gonna ban gang patches in public spaces.”

Luxon said National is in favour of giving police expanded search powers to take a bite out of organised crime. “We are going to give [police] warrantless search powers for illegal guns and illegal weapons because that’s what’s driving a lot of violent crime.”

He took a pot-shot at Labour, accusing them of losing control over law and order, and not implementing policy to reduce crime rates. “The only target this Government has had in law and order is a 30 per cent reduction in the prison population. That’s a great outcome if we’d had a 30 per cent reduction in crime - but the harsh reality is violent crime is up over 30 per cent, and retail crime 40 per cent. We’ve ended up with a ram raid every 10 hours in this country.”

Discussing his party’s support for the agricultural and farming industries, Luxon hailed the primary sector - which, he said, “got us through the GFC, and it’s going to be the backbone of the economy that gets us through any future recession. It employs 350,000 people, and we feed 40 million people around the world and generate $10,000 for every man, woman and child in the country”.

“So there is nothing better than agriculture for the country, and if we grow at 2 per cent per year up until 2050, we generate $30 billion in growth to the economy - nothing comes close to that.”

Luxon said he had been speaking with farmers, who were concerned their workday was being eroded by dealing with red-tape. “You’ve got water, fresh water, you got new taxes, you got everything coming at you. When I talk to farmers, [they say] 30 per cent of the week is now spent managing paperwork compliance and all the costs.”

The future of State Highway 25A is still in limbo until the transport agency, Waka Kotahi, decides whether to do remedial work or build new infrastructure at the site. Three options are being considered, and a decision is scheduled for May, but many in the community have expressed concern that another summer’s trade may be wiped out by the region’s teetering roading network.

A visit by Transport Minister Michael Wood to Thames on April 2 offered reassurance of Waka Kotahi’s commitment to getting an expedited solution to the gaping hole in the main access road, but Wood acknowledged he could not “give a guarantee we will be open by December, we need to be honest with people about that”.

Luxon wouldn’t be drawn on reopening dates but said, “Why don’t we set ourselves a big goal and say we want to be open by Christmas?” He used the Kaikoura rebuild as an example of a project meeting its fixed date and completing under its budget cap. Former Thames Coromandel Mayor Sandra Goudie, speaking from the floor, suggested the SH25A repair could be completed in as little as five weeks.

When the meeting was opened to questions, a local retailer spoke of his frustrations after enduring five summers of interference to his retail business when combining the impacts of lockdowns and road closures. He also expressed anger at Waka Kotahi’s SH25A project lead going on holiday at a time he considered inappropriate and challenged the prevailing opinion that the highway cannot be repaired until after December.

“Other countries are launching satellites to space in a year and we can’t even fix the road,” said the retailer.