Incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says today has been a chance for him to reconnect in his electorate and thank supporters who helped him.
Speaking to media after a visit to Cockle Bay School in East Auckland, Luxon said being there had brought back many memories for him.
"The kids are awesome and I've visited a lot of schools over the last year and a half and they've been really enthusiastic but I mean it's special to come back to your old school, right. I love this place and I got a love of learning here."
He says the children were required to tell the principal 'Sir' when he was in schools, and he "belonged to Sir's maths club, because had an extension class on Friday lunchtimes for us in the staff room to do extra maths".
Christopher Luxon talks to pupils at a school visit in Auckland, shortly after the 2023 election. Photo: RNZ / Tim Collins
He says today has been a chance for him to reconnect in his electorate and thank supporters who helped with the human hoardings.
"Acknowledging I've been around the country a lot over the last period of the campaign and I haven't probably spent as much time here in Botany as I would like."
He says there are major challenges in education and runs through National's policies, saying "those are the things we know will work, they're based in evidence, and they've led to good turnarounds in academic performance in other countries".
He says they want to move quickly on forming a government, because they need to turn the country around.
"We've got a 100-day plan that we're working through and there's lots of things we want to do but we need to actually sequence it."
Luxon on Tuesday confirmed the 100 days would begin once the government was formed.
He again said he wanted coalition negotiations to be "different from how it's been handled in the past" and not aired in the media: "I actually want to make sure we have very professional, constructive, positive negotiations".
He thought tremendous progress had been made in the National Party on increasing diversity "but actually there's still more work to do".
"What's great is we've worked really hard in the past two years in particular under my leadership of actually building out and what we call making outreach I guess to communities that we previously hadn't - I was really proud that we ran in two Māori seats this time, I was really proud to see engagement with the Pasifika community, Indian and Chinese communities for example, that got really engaged with our party."
On Tuesday, the full new National Party caucus met and Luxon continued to refuse to elaborate on the progress of negotiations with potential support partners.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters arrived at Parliament on Wednesday.
Arriving in Wellington, Peters remained steadfastly silent in the face of a series of questions from waiting reporters.
