Yesterday, Stats NZ released quarterly economic data which showed that not only had the economy not been in technical recession as numbers earlier this year had suggested, but that economic growth had been 0.9% in the last quarter, well ahead of predictions.
That did not impress Mr Luxon, who was campaigning in Invercargill yesterday, much. He called the growth figure "anaemic" and said his party’s economic prescription would lead to stronger economic performance.
"National has the plan to tackle inflation so that we can get interest rates down, we can get economic growth back into the country again, and when we grow our economy that enables us to grow our public services and also our infrastructure.
"Labour have had an absolute majority for the past three years and they have been useless — they cannot deliver anything."
Finance Minister Grant Robertson said annual growth now stood at 3.2% and the size of the economy was now bigger than it was pre-Covid.
"The economy is turning a corner and showing its mettle in the face of a deteriorating global environment and the impact of extreme weather events," he said.
Mr Luxon, meanwhile, used his time in Invercargill to reveal National’s policy to boost overseas student numbers.
The sector was the fifth-highest earning export sector before the pandemic but has struggled to regain that prominence against fierce competition from other countries, especially Australia and Canada.
Mr Luxon said National would enable fast-track visa processing for international students who paid an additional fee, increase the hours international students were able to work each week, allow their partners to work in New Zealand and diversify the countries Education New Zealand recruited international students from.
"We have a great opportunity here to revive our international student sector ... We want to get these visas processed and to get these students here."
The announcement was made at the Southland Institute of Technology, and Mr Luxon was flanked by his immigration spokeswoman, Erica Stanford, and tertiary education spokeswoman, Penny Simmonds, the former SIT chief executive.
Ms Simmonds has vowed to dismantle the newly nationalised vocational education system created by Labour, and she told the ODT that having individual polytechnics once more chasing overseas students would be more effective than a centralised recruitment system.
"At the moment individual polytechnics can’t go overseas and do their own marketing ... and so you have people overseas marketing for overseas students that know nothing about SIT, and we really need to have locals going over there and integrating that with the community — we were really successful with our international recruitment because our mayor went with us," she said.
While the SIT had marketed in the same territories as Te Pukenga had, it had also had great success in targeting Indonesia and South America, Ms Simmonds said.
