{"id":8745,"date":"2023-12-20T17:33:37","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T04:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=8745"},"modified":"2023-12-20T17:33:37","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T04:33:37","slug":"christopher-luxons-reo-maori-lessons-cost-taxpayers-4150","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=8745","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Luxon&#8217;s reo M\u0101ori lessons cost taxpayers $4150"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The prime minister&#8217;s office has confirmed his te reo M\u0101ori lessons when he was leader of the opposition cost about $4000.<\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had this month criticised spending on bonuses for public servants who were proficient in the language, and also criticised spending on lessons in the public sector.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What I&#8217;d just say to you is people are completely free to learn te reo themselves, that&#8217;s what happens out there in the real world &#8211; out there in corporate life, or in any other community life across New Zealand,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>However, it\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/504994\/christopher-luxon-s-reo-maori-lessons-paid-for-by-taxpayer\">later emerged he had received his own lessons<\/a>\u00a0in te reo M\u0101ori, which had been paid for by the opposition leader&#8217;s budget, which is publicly funded.<\/p>\n<p>Other National Party MPs\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/505080\/national-mps-who-took-reo-maori-lessons-hail-its-usefulness\">also admitted<\/a>\u00a0to having lessons paid for by the taxpayer.<\/p>\n<p>Luxon&#8217;s office on Wednesday confirmed the cost of his lessons was $4150.<\/p>\n<p>VIA RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The prime minister&#8217;s office has confirmed his te reo M\u0101ori lessons when he was leader of the opposition cost about $4000. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had this month criticised spending on bonuses for public servants who were proficient in the language, and also criticised spending on lessons in the public sector. &#8220;What I&#8217;d just say [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8747,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8745\/revisions\/8747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}