Luxon indicates asset sales could be included in National’s 2026 manifesto

Monday, 10 November 2025

Treasury boss Iain Rennie speaks to The Post's Anna Whyte about what is going to shape the future of the public sector.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has indicated asset sales could be included in National’s manifesto for the 2026 election, with government-owned farms among items that might be considered for sale.

The issue was highlighted in the Treasury’s Investment Statement 2025, published last week, describing the state and value of the Crown’s significant assets and liabilities.

Over the past decade, both assets and liabilities had doubled, and become more complex with more entities and asset types, The Treasury said in a statement.

“Without policy change, spending is projected to increase much faster than revenue over the next 40 years, which will put downward pressure on net worth,” the statement said.

“This could reduce the Crown's ability to borrow to fund investments, provide adequate services to future generations, and maintain a buffer against adverse shocks.”

Secretary for The Treasury Iain Rennie said asset management needed to be improved “to get more value from existing investments, ensure we’re investing in the right assets, and improve our risk management and understanding”.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon wants a “mature” conversation on the future of government-owned assets. (File photo)

Speaking on Newstalk ZB on Monday morning, Luxon said The Treasury statement was a “good challenge”.

“I think there is a lot that we can do around government efficiencies for sure. We’ve got a hell of a long way to go still there,” he said.

There was also a genuine case for “recycling assets so that actually the New Zealand taxpayer gets money from assets that then is deployed to another asset that actually creates value for them, it is more useful for them”.

“I think we need to have quite a mature conversation about assets in New Zealand. I think it’s been a very simplistic one of you either flog them off, or you keep them,” Luxon said.

But superannuation funds rotated assets through a portfolio. “We should be thinking about whether that’s the right thing for us to be doing, too,” Luxon said.

“First and foremost, I don’t think our government agencies do a very good job of managing their assets, in general. In fact, we’re the fourth-worst in the OECD in asset management.

Christopher Luxon suggested government-owned farms could be better off in private ownership.

“Fifty percent of our most capital intensive agencies haven’t had asset management plans, which means they don’t even know what they own and where the assets actually are.”

Looking at something like Pāmu - the brand name for Landcorp Farming - “which is a whole bunch of farmland that the Government owns and runs,” Luxon said.

Projections to 2031 were for high prices for protein and red meat. “We’re pretty bad, I imagine, as a government-run farm relative to other farmers doing that job much better.

Treasury Secretary Iain Rennie said the Crown needed to improve its asset management. (file pic)

“And that could give young farmers an opportunity to get into some land,” Luxon said.

“So, then you’d say the money that we’d get out of that might be better spent building out a road.”

Luxon accepted there would be “a whole bunch of politics,” but hoped it might be possible to have a principled conversation.

“It needs to be more mature than what we’ve had in the past, which is it does become political really quickly, it becomes very emotive very quickly.”

There would not be any asset sales before the next election, Luxon said.

Speaking to RNZ on Monday, he said National would “go to the election with policies in this space, I suspect. But we haven’t decided our policy yet.”