Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is batting off hypocrisy suggestions after admitting he'd paid for his Te Reo Maori courses with taxpayer funds while chastising the public service for getting extra benefits for learning.
But it's not the only walkback the Prime Minister has had to perform on Monday. He was also planning to break his promise not to fly on the VIP plane - but plot twist - it's broken again.
Luxon began his post-Cabinet press conference on Monday with a Maori greeting.
It's an official language from the official podium.
"Of course we want to support people learning Te Reo, we think it's a fantastic language," Luxon said.
Luxon thinks it's so fantastic he's scrapping incentives for learning it in the public service.
But his own Te Reo lessons came courtesy of the taxpayer.
Luxon denied that was hypocritical.
"I have a finite leader's budget as do all leaders of political parties," Luxon said. "You get to choose to spend that money on whatever you wish that you think will help."
The Government wants to remove bonuses for public servants fluent in Te Reo and a couple of weeks back the Prime Minister defended that policy by telling public servants to pay for their education themselves.
"In the real world outside of Wellington outside of the bubble of Parliament people who want to learn Te Reo or want to learn actually any other education actually pay for it themselves," he said at the time.
Unfortunately for the taxpayer, Luxon lives inside the bubble - though he's not sure how much the taxpayer paid.
But how does he explain that when he has previously said the Government will go through the Budget line item by line item?
"I am sure we can provide it to you but the bottom line is I don't know off the top of my head," Luxon said.
He believed the country had got a good outcome from him learning Te Reo.
"They have got a Prime Minister who is actually keen to learn Te Reo and wants to get better at it and actually wants to improve my skills in it."
Oh how words come back to bite, especially when you make categorical promises in Opposition.
On Monday, Luxon pulling a loop de loop on comments from June, when he said the current aircraft were "ancient" and "they shouldn't be flying".
Captain Christopher Luxon suited up to board Broken Promises Airlines - hoping to take the defence plane he said he'd never fly for a spin across the ditch to see the Aussies on Wednesday.
Asked what had changed, he said: "In essence, coming this close before Christmas, a desire to get to Australia beforehand."
But the old gal's got maintenance issues again.
"It is incredibly frustrating. We are not sending people to the moon, we are just trying to get them to Australia," Luxon said.
The airforce 757 had its first opportunity to wheel up under this Government on Friday, but it broke down, leaving Foreign Minister Winston Peters hustling onto the Hercules to make it to Fiji.
"We have had a series now of incidents over the last few years that are I think embarassing for New Zealand and I think that's something we need to genuinely have a bigger conversation about," Luxon said.
Who better to source a new plane - than an ex-airline chief executive.
