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“Hair, Tariffs, and Handshakes” - 30 October 2025

When Corporate Luxon Met His Neoliberal Daddy

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Ltn

30 Oct 2025 — 14 min read

Mōrena ano,

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/577236/christopher-luxon-has-one-on-one-meeting-with-donald-trump-in-south-korea

The smoking gun arrived wrapped in pleasantries about hair. While Christopher Luxon—former Air New Zealand CEO turned Prime Minister—beamed alongside Donald Trump at an APEC dinner in South Korea on October 28, 2025, exchanging compliments about follicular aesthetics, the colonial playbook was being executed with surgical precision. Trump called Luxon “a good friend of mine” and declared New Zealand a “nice place,” adding “I like your man from New Zealand” as cameras captured the exchange(RNZ, 2025). What the cameras didn’t capture was the trail of devastation both men leave in their wake—Luxon dismantling Māori rights at home while Trump punished New Zealand’s economy with a 15% tariff designed to extract maximum pain(Todd McClay, 2025)(EMA, 2025).

This wasn’t diplomacy. This was two CEOs of corporate white supremacy celebrating their shared project: the systematic transfer of wealth and power from the vulnerable to the elite, dressed in the language of “efficiency” and “growth.”

Whakapapa of Harm: The Economic Violence Before the Handshake

Let’s establish what Luxon brings to this meeting. Since taking power in November 2023, his coalition government—bankrolled by Atlas Network-aligned think tanks and billionaire donors—has waged war on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Māori wellbeing with methodical cruelty(PSA, 2024)(Bryce Edwards, 2024).

The numbers tell the story. Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority established after decades of advocacy and Waitangi Tribunal findings, was disestablished via parliamentary urgency in February 2024—gutted before it could draw breath(Buddlefindlay, 2024)(RNZ, 2024). This wasn’t reform; it was execution. For context, Māori women die seven years earlier than European/Other women; Māori men die eight years earlier(Ministry of Health, 2024). Ischaemic heart disease rates are twice as high for Māori adults(Ministry of Health, 2024). Lung cancer registration for Māori females is over three times that of non-Māori females(Ministry of Health, 2024). The Māori Health Authority was designed to address these grotesque inequities. Luxon killed it anyway.

The Waitangi Tribunal found the Crown breached Te Tiriti principles of tino rangatiratanga, good government, partnership, active protection, and redress in the disestablishment process(Waitangi Tribunal, 2024). The Crown did not act in good faith, did not consult Māori, and did not gather substantive advice from officials before making the ill-informed decision that Te Aka Whai Ora was not required—despite knowledge of grave Māori health inequities(Waitangi Tribunal, 2024).

Then came Oranga Tamariki, where 419 specialist jobs were axed, including over 60 roles in the Māori Partnerships and Communities team(PSA, 2024). This matters because two-thirds of all young people in state care are Māori; three-quarters of those in youth justice custody are Māori(Salvation Army, 2025)(The Spinoff, 2025). Tamariki Māori are five to six times more likely to be in state care than non-Māori(Salvation Army, 2025). The government responded to this crisis by cutting the very people tasked with culturally responsive care. Community providers—190 had funding completely eliminated, 142 saw funding reduced(1News, 2024). These were organizations keeping kids out of state care through whānau-centred intervention. Gone.

Across the public service, approximately 10,000 jobs have been cut(Waatea News, 2025). This includes $30 million slashed from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori, the programme training teachers in te reo(NZ Herald, 2024). It includes 620+ jobs at Kāinga Ora, disproportionately affecting Māori and Pacific workers who brought cultural competence to housing services(PSA, 2025). At Health NZ, cuts to Māori and Pacific health services will harm communities already facing stark inequities(PSA, 2024).

Every one of these cuts violates tikanga. They breach whanaungatanga by severing the connections between communities and culturally competent support. They mock manaakitanga by abandoning our most vulnerable. They destroy kaitiakitanga by dismantling the structures meant to protect our people’s wellbeing. They attack rangatiratanga by systematically removing Māori decision-making power from every level of government.

The Money Behind the Carnage: Atlas, Billionaires, and the Death of Democracy

Here’s what the media won’t tell you about who’s driving this agenda. David Seymour, ACT Party leader and architect of the Treaty Principles Bill, has publicly acknowledged “my old friends at the Atlas Network”(Bryce Edwards, 2024). The Atlas Network—a global web of free-market fundamentalist think tanks funded by billionaires—has two official New Zealand partners: the New Zealand Initiative and the Taxpayers’ Union(PSA, 2024)(Bryce Edwards, 2025). Both pump out endless propaganda for deregulation, privatization, and the dismantling of collective rights.

ACT’s donor list reads like a who’s who of extraction capital. Graeme Hart—New Zealand’s richest billionaire—donated $100,000(NZ Herald, 2024). ACT’s recent fundraising drive netted almost $1 million from wealthy New Zealanders(NZ Herald, 2024). This is the money financing the Treaty Principles Bill, the assault on co-governance, the rhetoric of “one law for all” that erases indigenous rights.

Hobson’s Pledge—led by Don Brash, former National and ACT leader—campaigns against Māori wards, co-governance, and Treaty partnership(Wikipedia, 2025)(Bryce Edwards, 2025). They’re funded by undisclosed donors (no public disclosures required for lobbying groups)(Bryce Edwards, 2025). They register as third-party promoters during elections, spending on their own ads rather than transparent party donations. The Taxpayers’ Union, run by Jordan Williams, operates the Campaign Company that manages Hobson’s Pledge websites(Te Ao News, 2023).

Follow the money: billionaire donors fund ACT → ACT pushes Atlas ideology → Hobson’s Pledge amplifies the message → the NZ Initiative and Taxpayers’ Union provide “research” justifying cuts → the coalition government implements the agenda → Māori bear the harm.

This is not conspiracy theory. This is documented fact. The network is building global influence methodically, openly(PSA, 2024). In 2022, Atlas Network had revenues of US$20.2 million, awarding US$8.8 million in grants globally(PSA, 2024). These grants fund “individual liberty” projects that, in practice, mean dismantling worker protections, environmental regulations, and indigenous rights.

The Trump Connection: When Neoliberal Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Now we arrive in South Korea. Luxon, the former CEO who delivered profits at Air New Zealand(NZ Herald, 2024), meets Trump, the billionaire real estate developer turned President. Both men worship at the altar of the market. Both men see government as an obstacle to profit. Both men treat indigenous peoples and the vulnerable as expendable.

Trump’s “reciprocal tariff” policy slapped New Zealand with a 15% rate—higher than Australia’s 10%—because we had a modest US$500 million trade surplus with America(Todd McClay, 2025)(EMA, 2025). That’s pocket change in the context of the massive US economy, but Trump doesn’t care about proportionality. He cares about extracting concessions. New Zealand exports $9 billion annually to the US(Todd McClay, 2025). The tariff increase from 10% to 15% directly harms exporters—many of them in agriculture, wine, and horticulture sectors where Māori economic interests have grown through Treaty settlements(EMA, 2025).

And what did Luxon get for his fawning? Compliments about his hair(ABC News, 2025). Luxon, who is bald, mentioned that the South Korean president had teased him about his lack of hair, to which Trump replied “your hair is beautiful”(ABC News, 2025). No tariff relief. No deal. Australia negotiated better terms maintaining 10%(ExportNZ, 2025). Luxon’s “softly softly” approach—the approach he sold as pragmatic statecraft—failed spectacularly.

Meanwhile, Trump’s first administration attacked indigenous rights systematically. He reduced Bears Ears National Monument by 85%—a monument whose creation had been Indigenous-led(High Country News, 2025). He expedited the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines despite monumental opposition from Native nations(High Country News, 2025). He left leadership positions at the Bureau of Indian Affairs empty(High Country News, 2025). His second administration promises more of the same.

Luxon knows this. He doesn’t care. Because fundamentally, both men believe the same thing: that markets should rule, that regulations are tyranny, that collective rights—especially indigenous collective rights—are obstacles to “progress.”

The Ideological Rot: Dog-Whistles, Fallacies, and Borrowed Rhetoric

Let’s dissect the rhetorical playbook. When Luxon says Māori protests against his government are “pretty unfair,” he’s deploying the tone policing fallacy(RNZ, 2023). Demanding civility from those being harmed while implementing policies that kill them earlier shifts focus from the violence of policy to the anger of victims.

When David Seymour claims the Treaty Principles Bill will create “equal rights” by defining Treaty principles in law, he’s using the reverse racism dog-whistle(RNZ, 2023)(RNZ, 2024). The bill proposes that “all people have the same rights and duties,” which sounds reasonable until you understand it explicitly prohibits the state from addressing structural inequities. Equity requires different treatment to achieve equal outcomes. Seymour knows this. He’s lying on purpose.

When coalition partners say they’re “ending race-based policies,” they’re borrowing rhetoric directly from American conservatives who opposed affirmative action, Voting Rights Act protections, and tribal sovereignty. This isn’t coincidence. It’s coordinated. The Atlas Network disseminates these talking points globally. The phrase “one law for all” appears in ACT materials, Hobson’s Pledge campaigns, and coalition agreements. It’s the same energy as “all lives matter”—technically true, deliberately obfuscating power dynamics.

The omitted context is colonization. When Luxon claimed in debates that New Zealand has “a strong Treaty partnership,” he erased 180+ years of Waitangi Tribunal findings documenting breaches of Te Tiriti(RNZ, 2023). The context he won’t mention: land confiscation via the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, which reduced Māori from economic powerhouses to generations of landlessness(Waitangi Tribunal, 2023). The context: economic policies that drove massive Māori unemployment even as the Māori economy was valued at $10.3 billion by 2010(Te Ara, 2012).

The Quantified Harm: What These Policies Cost in Māori Lives

Let’s make the violence visible with numbers. Health inequities kill. Māori life expectancy is significantly lower than the total population—a gap of over six years(Stats NZ, 2025). That gap represents thousands of Māori dying prematurely every year because the health system fails us systematically.

In state care, 4,011 children were in custody as of November 2024, with approximately 2,669 of them Māori(Salvation Army, 2025)(RNZ, 2025). These kids face horrific outcomes: 70% likelihood of continuing a generational cycle in state care(The Spinoff, 2025). Nine times more likely to use emergency housing as adults(RNZ, 2025). Half as likely to be in employment(RNZ, 2025). And what did Luxon’s government do? Cut 419 Oranga Tamariki jobs, axe funding to 190 community providers, gut the Māori Partnerships team(PSA, 2024)(1News, 2024).

The economic violence compounds. Trump’s 15% tariff hits Māori economic interests directly. Post-settlement iwi have significant stakes in primary industries—Ngāi Tahu and Tainui had combined assets worth over $1 billion by 2008, with the Māori economy valued at $10.3 billion in 2010(Te Ara, 2012)(Equal Justice Project, 2014). Agricultural exports, seafood, forestry—sectors where Māori have growing ownership—now face steeper barriers to the US market. That’s money directly out of iwi coffers, reducing distributions to beneficiaries and limiting economic development for Māori communities.

Te Tiriti Violations: How Every Action Breaches the Founding Document

The Waitangi Tribunal found in 2019 that the Crown had breached Te Tiriti by failing to ensure the health system met Māori health needs(NZMJ, 2024). Labour’s response was Te Aka Whai Ora. Luxon’s response was to disestablish it via urgency(Buddlefindlay, 2024). This violates the principle of active protection—the Crown’s duty to actively protect Māori interests.

The principle of partnership requires meaningful Māori participation in decision-making. Yet the Tribunal’s 2024 report found the Crown did not consult or engage with Māori when disestablishing Te Aka Whai Ora, nor did it gather substantive advice from officials(Waitangi Tribunal, 2024). The Crown made the ill-informed decision despite knowledge of grave Māori health inequities. The government proceeded anyway, breaching the principles of partnership, consultation, and acting in good faith(Waitangi Tribunal, 2024).

Tino rangatiratanga—Māori authority over taonga including health and wellbeing—is being systematically attacked. The removal of Māori-specific health structures, the cuts to kaupapa Māori service providers, the elimination of Māori language funding, the assault on Treaty principles themselves—each one diminishes our ability to exercise self-determination.

A UN-bound report found the government has “absolutely breached Te Tiriti o Waitangi” with its policies negatively impacting Māori rights, warning that racial discrimination is worsening in New Zealand(RNZ, 2025). Independent observers described this as “the most overtly racist government in decades”(E-Tangata, 2024). These aren’t partisan claims. These are findings from independent monitors tasked with assessing Crown compliance with Te Tiriti.

The International Context: How NZ Becomes a Laboratory for Global Rollback

What’s happening here isn’t isolated. It’s part of a coordinated transnational campaign to dismantle indigenous rights, worker protections, and environmental regulations globally. The Atlas Network connects over 500 think tanks across 100 countries(PSA, 2024). They share playbooks. When Australian mining interests fund campaigns against the Voice to Parliament, when American conservatives gut tribal sovereignty, when New Zealand’s ACT Party pushes Treaty Principles legislation—it’s the same money, the same ideology, the same ultimate beneficiaries(ABC, 2025).

New Zealand has joined three frameworks primarily aimed at expanding the US military-industrial base in the Indo-Pacific(RNZ, 2025). Sixty percent of the $6 billion in arms the NZ Defence Force has on order comes from the US(RNZ, 2025). This isn’t security partnership. It’s subordination.

The softly-softly approach—the one that got us higher tariffs than Australia—is revealing itself as capitulation. New Zealand is being drawn deeper into US strategic priorities while being economically punished and receiving no meaningful concessions. Luxon is trading Māori rights for American approval, and not even getting the approval.

Cui Bono: Who Profits from Māori Dispossession?

Let’s name names. Graeme Hart, worth billions, donates $100,000 to ACT(NZ Herald, 2024). What does he get? A government committed to deregulation, privatization, and reducing “bureaucracy” (i.e., oversight). Alan Gibbs, founding ACT member and longtime Business Roundtable/NZ Initiative figure, gets an ideological ally in power pushing the same free-market fundamentalism(Bryce Edwards, 2024).

The construction industry benefits from Kāinga Ora cuts—less social housing means more private development(PSA, 2025). The private health sector benefits from Māori Health Authority elimination—less kaupapa Māori provision means more patients funneled to private providers. Foreign investors benefit from loosened regulations(RNZ, 2024).

And Trump? He gets a compliant ally who won’t push back on tariffs, who’ll quietly accept subordination, who’ll continue aligning New Zealand with US strategic interests regardless of cost. That’s worth a dinner and some hair compliments.

The people who lose? Tamariki in state care who no longer have culturally competent support. Whānau in housing crisis who can’t access Māori providers. Communities losing early intervention services for at-risk kids. Workers in the 10,000 public service jobs cut. Māori language learners losing programmes. Every single Māori facing health inequities that kill us years earlier than Pākehā.

The Call to Action: Resistance as Tikanga

The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right

We are not powerless. The hīkoi against the Treaty Principles Bill drew tens of thousands(Democracy Now, 2025). The Waitangi Tribunal urgent inquiries are documenting Crown breaches in real-time(Waitangi Tribunal, 2024). Community providers are fighting funding cuts(1News, 2024). Māori health leaders are calling for the Treaty Principles Bill to be killed(RNZ, 2024). A High Court challenge contests the Te Aka Whai Ora disestablishment on Treaty and Bill of Rights grounds(RNZ, 2025).

But we need more. We need coordinated economic action—boycotts of Atlas-aligned businesses, divestment from companies funding anti-Māori campaigns. We need electoral strategy—ACT wields outsized power through coalition agreements. We need international solidarity—connecting with indigenous movements globally facing the same Atlas-funded assault.

Specific targets: Demand the Waitangi Tribunal findings be respected and Te Aka Whai Ora functions restored with adequate Māori authority. Fight the Treaty Principles Bill at select committee with submissions. Challenge every public service cut through employment law and judicial review. Support community providers through direct funding and contracts. Strengthen iwi economic power through strategic partnerships. Use every legal mechanism, every political lever, every platform to make resistance costly.

Because make no mistake: they are counting on our exhaustion, our division, our despair. Luxon’s meeting with Trump isn’t just photo-op—it’s a signal that the neoliberal project has allies at the highest levels, that the assault on Māori rights has international backing, that the money and power are aligned against us.

But we have something they don’t: whakapapa, tikanga, collective memory of resistance spanning 185 years. We know what colonization looks like because we’ve been fighting it since the Crown breached Te Tiriti. We know these tactics because they’re the same ones used to justify land confiscation, the Native Land Court, the New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863 that reduced Māori—once economic powerhouses—to generations of landlessness and poverty(Waitangi Tribunal, 2023).

They think hair compliments and tariffs will break us. They’re wrong.

Toitū te Tiriti. Toitū te Whenua. Toitū te Mana Māori Motuhake.

If you have the capacity and capability, please support this mahi through koha. Every contribution enables continued investigation and resistance. HTDM: 03-1546-0415173-000. These are hard times for many—give only if you’re able.

Nā Ivor Jones, Te Māori Green Lantern
Te Arawa/Ngāti Pikiao

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