When a leader's words land harder than intended, the moment of correction becomes its own kind of statement. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, having told Rotorua entrepreneurs that some carried a 'parent-child mentality' toward government, reversed course by Monday's post-cabinet press conference — acknowledging not just a poor choice of words, but a failure to honour the weight of what small business owners actually carry. The episode sits within a longer human story about the gap between economic rhetoric and lived economic reality, and what it costs, politically and personally, to bridge i