Christopher Luxon

A former Air New Zealand chief executive, he sits for Botany and heads a coalition with ACT and New Zealand First. He is named in the race for Prime Minister of New Zealand in the 2026 election.

Career

Luxon was born in Christchurch in 1970 and studied commerce at the University of Canterbury. He worked for Unilever from 1993 to 2011, rising to president of its Canadian operations, then joined Air New Zealand as group general manager in 2011 and was its chief executive from 2012 to 2019. He was elected MP for Botany in 2020, became National Party leader in 2021, and has been Prime Minister since 27 November 2023, leading the first three-party coalition under New Zealand's proportional system. Wikipedia reports that he survived confidence votes in his leadership in April and August 2026.

Positions

Wikipedia describes the government he leads as pursuing tax cuts of NZ$14.7 billion, about 9,500 public-sector job reductions, the reinstatement of three-strikes sentencing, military-style boot camps for young offenders and a ban on gang patches. It also records that he opposed co-governance arrangements with Māori, supported the Treaty Principles Bill only to its first reading, and repealed smoke-free legislation. Reference works place his National Party in the centre-right.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Wikipedia

Photo: The Office of the Governor-General of New Zealand, CC0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)