Christopher Luxon knows the truth about mediocrity

And he's saying the quiet part out loud.

There is a moment in Christopher Luxon’s latest media interview where he looks incredulously at the reporter as if to say - It’s like you don’t know what we’re about.

The interview is on so-called ‘truancy’.

Most of you reading this are parents who are trying to parent through a pandemic. You know as well as I do that the rates of ‘truancy’ are because we are trying to keep our kids or other kids alive during a pandemic (thank you for keeping your kids home when they’re sick).

If a child self-isolated because they had Covid 19 or someone in their family did, then they were “automatically not regularly attending” according to the Ministry. But never let the truth get in the way of political messaging.

This is not even taking into account the cost-of-living crisis - another reason for low attendance rates.

My kids just spent the last five days off school after another Covid 19 outbreak in our community. They were sick themselves, gratefully not with Covid but from one of the myriad of viruses going around.

Due to having to stay home with the kids, without sick leave, we had to transfer money from our meagre savings to get through. And we’re the lucky ones, because we have savings, and because mostly my work is from home. It just so happened that this week - I was working away from home.

In the interview the reporter points out that parents taking their children out of school before and after the school holidays is a contributing factor to the ‘truancy’ rates. Luxon scoffs, and says ‘go see some decile one and two schools’.

He says, as they say, ‘the quiet part out loud’.

We’re not talking about families like mine. We’re talking about ‘bottom feeders’.

Luxon to me is just the latest rich white man in a line of rich white men who lead National. Personally, I don’t think it’s really worth knowing their names - Ched Muller, Simon English - whatever….It doesn’t matter. They’re all the same. And who and what they stand for never changes.

Poor kids and their poor parents are an easy target for Luxon and the other capitalists. They have always been the target. And they’re almost surprised I think, that journalists get this confused when they’ve never hidden their loathing of the working class, the bottom feeders, that they profit from.

When a Stuff political reporter Anna Whyte rightly held Luxon to account, pointing out that ‘truancy’ is actually linked to wealthy families too. The read between the lines was obvious. And also….true.

Our families - rich, privileged, white - we can do what we want.

Your families - your families can’t.

Because the kids of National leaders ARE fine. They don’t need to go to school all the time. If they fall behind their parents can afford to get them tutors. Their children automatically gain entry to the best schools through the price of admission that’s not even a possibility for so many of our country’s kids. If they finish university (which it’s a given they’ll go to) with poor grades, a mirror of the mediocrity of their fathers, it doesn’t matter - Daddy will get them into housing development and real estate.

Do you think it matters if Christopher Luxon’s kids go to school? His seven homes earn him 15 times what he will get as National Party leader. He earns $296,007 a year. That salary alone, without property, would mean his kids will be fine. He has a net worth that is an entire decile one school’s families incomes combined.

The parents of families like his will never ever work night shifts for minimum wage then rush their kids to school - so tired they can barely drive. Those parents will never ever have to try to find enough money for a bus that doesn’t come, or drive the car without a warrant because they can’t afford one or have to choose between paying for petrol to get to school or petrol to get to work. Those parents will never have to take on second jobs to pay for speech therapy for their child or wait in the public health system for up to a year for physiotherapy for their disabled child. Those parents will never ever have to go hungry so they can eat.

And when, with all of this privilege, their children find themselves with all of this power - they will use that to do what their parents did. They will enforce the idea that life is a meritocracy and others need to be held to account for the moral failing of struggling during a cost of living crisis. The moral failing of being poor.

These parents will remind their nanny to take lil Nicola to her viola lesson and make sure lil Chris has a good afternoon snack before his economics tutor arrives…And then they’ll stand proudly in their mediocrity and declare that other parents - parents they’ll never know, will never speak to, will never care about - know that:

“You had the kids. It is your responsibility to make sure they have the education that you never had”.

And middle class parents will lap it up because while they’re not rich, they’re not one of those poor people. They’re two pay cycles away from losing it all, not one. So they’ll keep rewarding men who make them feel like they’re not like those parents. In the hope there might be some class confusion and they’ll be seen as like Luxon.

Watching it happen in real time is fucking torture.

Christopher Luxon probably

Right now, Elon Musk is proving to the world what we’ve always known. Rich men who come from rich families are able to hide their ignorance, their sheltered naiveté, and their complete lack of sense. They hide it by always failing up. Every time they fuck things up, which they always do, there’s another job waiting from the boys club.

We know they can barely run the businesses they’re gifted. Yet we expect that they can run countries! Even when we have seen Trump’s America!

They show us who they are, over and over and over again! They say the quiet part out loud over and over again!

Today, he has suggested we send kids to military boot camps. I mean, what the fuck. We know boot camps don’t work. We have already had this discussion! In 2017! And it’s not the Samuel Uffindell types who will be sent there is it?

When will we believe what’s right in front of our faces?

I don’t know what the answers are. I really wish I did. I just know that I need a fucking break from these rich men shitting on us.

Just a short break.

Just until January.

If Luxon and his cohort (including that misery goblin David Seymour) could just shut the fuck up until January. That would be choice. And I’d sincerely appreciate it.

Just please.

In the lead up to Christmas many of us are facing even less money coming in at a time when the pressure is on you to spend. Luxon probably doesn’t even know how much is in his account right now, so if he could just shut the fuck up for those of us who know at any given moment how much we have, how much we don’t have, and how much we need - that would be great.

Because we’ve got families in our community who need help and we help each other. Those of us with more, give more. Those of us with time, give time. Those of us with money, give money.

And that’s what I see as my responsibility as a parent.

As a human.

As a bottom feeder.

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- Emily