Christopher Luxon Is Blind to the Public Mood Toward Erica Stanford

by ELV

Christopher Luxon being asked by RNZ why he thinks Erica Stanford's name during his speech received the most heckles

At Waitangi, the mood was unmistakable.

When the name of the Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, was spoken, the response was not polite disagreement. It was audible immediate booing.

It was honest.

And yet, Christopher Luxon stood at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds and appeared genuinely surprised. As if the backlash toward his Education Minister had come out of nowhere. As if the damage done over the past year had not been felt — deeply — by educators, whānau, and students across the country.

He is out of touch.

Because the people who were booing are not abstract critics anymore.

They are parents of the more than 1,500 young people who left school last year without NCEA. They are whānau of rangatahi who now sit inside New Zealand’s NEET data (not in education, not in employment, not in training) watching their children struggle to find a foothold in the future they were promised.

Those parents know exactly what is happening to their kids.

No phonics headline will convince them otherwise.

The other clues he should be listening to that the public mood has shifted, came from the schools themselves.

Across Tai Tokerau in the run up to Waitangi Day, doors of schools have been opened to the Minister of Education. Not out of alignment. But more out of fear.

Fear that saying no is never neutral.

Fear that funding, staffing, support, or goodwill might quietly evaporate if access is denied.

In more than one school, students were spoken to before ministerial visits. They were reminded to be polite, respectful and kind. Not because they are incapable of courtesy — but because adults understood the stakes.

Despite this preparation, some rangatahi proudly spoke out.

High school students — informed, politically literate, and deeply aware of how education decisions shape their futures — asked questions and concerns. They named impacts. They did exactly what we tell young people democracy is meant to look like.

When rangatahi spoke up out of turn to the Minister however, sadly their voice was managed and contained by the leadership teams. When student voice becomes something schools feel they must moderate to protect resourcing, we are no longer talking about equal citizenship. We are talking about power.

Then there is his delusion of equality.

In his speech, Luxon invoked Article Three of Te Tiriti — equality of opportunity.

He was careful to add the familiar qualifier: equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. 

But here is the contradiction he did not address. If this Government were genuinely serious about equality of opportunity for Māori learners — not rhetorically, but structurally — why was the original Te Mātaiaho crushed?

Te Mātaiaho was not ideology or a Māori word for our curriculum refresh. It was a Māori-authored, Indigenous framework — gifted through the curriculum refresh by Dr Wayne Ngata and others grounded in mātauranga Māori, education, and lived whakapapa. It offered a vehicle for authentic reform that began where equity actually begins: identity, belonging, language, and place.

It understood that you do not equalise opportunity by flattening difference. You do it by recognising it — and designing for it.

If Article Three was truly the guiding principle of our government, Te Mātaiaho should have been the cornerstone. Instead, it was erased. 

In its place came rushed reforms devoid of partnership and the elevation of a Minister whose confidence has consistently outpaced her competence — reality-TV certainty delivered with a smile, thin data, and thick ego, designed to reassure boardrooms rather than classrooms.

Luxon attempted to shield all of this with the same old tired and unreliable phonics data.

Six months of results from a brand-new screening tool. measuring a very narrow slice of reading ability, presented to the nation as transformation.

But phonics will only cover so many cracks.

It cannot disguise the erosion of trust and relationship with educators.

It cannot mask the removal of Māori frameworks designed to support equity.

It cannot paper over the growing unease of parents watching schools destabilised in the name of speed and control.

The volume of the heckle at Waitangi should have told Luxon that.

The booing of Erica Stanford’s name was a barometer. It measured frustration and disillusionment. And a growing recognition that this Government’s education agenda is being driven by ego rather than evidence; hollow showmanship rather than outcomes; control rather than care.

If Luxon believes he can carry National’s future on the back of that misjudgement — wielding phonics as proof, dismissing Indigenous frameworks, and ignoring the voices of rangatahi and whānau — then he has profoundly misunderstood the public mood.