Dr Michael John Schmidt: He Is Only a Manager

Luxon is no leader.

Christopher Luxon did not create New Zealand’s demographic bind – but in response he has chosen to fall back on what he knows: legacy managing, not leading. The result is that he is pursuing a managed-decline strategy.

The distinction matters. The country’s fertility rate has collapsed to a record low of 1.49 births per woman and our ageing population is placing unsustainable pressure on a superannuation system that was never designed for longevity at this scale. Yet Luxon’s Government continues to reinforce the very frameworks that deepen the crisis. This is not leadership – it is strategic negligence.

The National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) was introduced by the previous Labour Government in 2020 – the coalition’s ideological and political opponents – and it was a textbook example of technocratic overreach. It promoted urban intensification under the guise of infrastructure efficiency, just as population growth began to stall. I emphasise “ideological” because we know where the elitist, globalist planning consensus typified by Davos stands, and the policy was Davos-inspired: density over distribution, spatial compression over renewal, efficiency over adaptability. It was not designed for demographic resilience.

* It is, in fact, anti-family.

Its structure reflects a worldview in which the state is supreme and households are spatial units to be managed, not supported. It suppresses the conditions required for family formation, intergenerational living and demographic renewal, while reinforcing institutional dependency and spatial conformity. This is not neutral planning – it is demographic engineering. Hence the “15-minute city” – a concept adopted by cities like Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Bogotá, Portland and Melbourne – which embeds the same logic: spatial containment, behavioural predictability and institutional primacy over household autonomy. New Zealand’s urban policy is ideologically captured.

Luxon knows that he inherited this framework from the Davos-aligned Jacinda Ardern misadministration. She attended the 2019 World Economic Forum and was frequently grouped with leaders like Justin Trudeau, whose governments adopted similar urban intensification models. Yet Luxon has not challenged it. He has not revoked it, redesigned it or – even to my knowledge – commissioned a review. Instead, he has retained it wholesale: without interrogation, without amendment and without any attempt at strategic recalibration. That is not just a missed opportunity. It is a dereliction of duty.

The contradiction is glaring. Luxon has publicly called for higher birthrates and acknowledged the fiscal exposure of an ageing society. Yet his government remains committed to spatial policies that suppress fertility and accelerate demographic inversion. Urban growth continues to be channelled ‘up and out’ around transport corridors and service hubs, reinforcing a housing model that delays family formation and renders large-format homes unaffordable. Immigrants, too, are absorbed into this same spatial logic – and their fertility declines accordingly. And, like the rest of us, they will age, and their eventual retirement will further strain the superannuation system.

Luxon is supporting a system that is not neutral – it is a demographic accelerant. And how, then, can he possibly reconcile this inaction with his stated concern that fertility must rise? The contradiction is not academic. It is structural, visible and accelerating. His role is not to oversee decline – it is to confront it with clarity, to lead with intent and to act with the courage required to break from inherited failure. On every count, he has chosen inertia.

This is not a matter of ignorance. The data are clear and I find it astonishing that such glaring misalignments are being ignored. Platforms like Stats NZ, the REINZ House Price Index and realestate.co.nz provide suburb-level insights on affordability, buyer demographics and household formation. The issue is not lack of information – it is courage.

Luxon’s failure occurs because his style is ‘legacy managerial’. An outcome of this is that he refuses to admit that the system he inherited is misaligned – because to do so would be to concede that he is not in control. That the metrics, models and mandates he defends are structurally obsolete. And so, he does what legacy managers do: he defers, delays and kicks the can down the road.

Immigration has become his preferred lever. In 2023, net migration hit record highs. Luxon frames this as a solution to labour shortages and fiscal sustainability. But it is not a strategy – it is demographic patchwork. It inflates GDP, it replenishes the workforce, putting downward pressure on wages and sustaining service economies without redesigning the systems that underpin them. It does not increase GDP per capita – the critical metric for funding future superannuation – and may even reduce it. It sidesteps the harder task: building for longevity, care and contribution. And it carries its own contradictions – social cohesion, infrastructure strain and long-term convergence toward the same ageing trajectory.

This is not leadership. It is placeholder governance. Luxon has had every opportunity to challenge Labour’s legacy frameworks, to redesign the spatial and demographic architecture of the country and to lead with strategic clarity. He has chosen inertia. And in doing so, he is making the situation worse – not better.

The coalition Government must confront this reality. It must stop ‘managing decline’ and start designing renewal. There are many levers with which to achieve that – increased automation, AI, reduced immigration and ‘longevity audits’ (assessing fiscal, infrastructural and social readiness for demographic ageing) are four examples. Luxon either lacks the insight to conceive of progress or the will to pursue it – or both. I suspect the latter, as his behaviour is very much like a legacy manager rather than a visionary leader. A leader would find ways to overcome NZ’s deep institutional pathology (particularly in the ‘civil service’) – the inability of electoral democracies and their systems to reward long-horizon planning.

We can see how managerialism fails under demographic stress. The question now is not whether Luxon can formulate, communicate and pursue a vision. Can the country afford to continue waiting for leadership?

Dr Michael John Schmidt left NZ after completing postgraduate studies at Otago University (BSc, MSc) in molecular biology, virology, and immunology to work in research on human genetics in Australia. Returning to NZ has worked in business development for biotech and pharmacy retail companies and became a member of the NZ Institute of Directors. This article was first published HERE