Hilda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Labor Party leader Chris Hipkins has told the party it must change if it wants to regain the trust it's lost. The party held its annual conference in christ Church at the weekend, the first time its members of met since the twenty
twenty three election defeat. The party has inched closer to campaigning on a wealth tax or a capital gains tax at the next election after members passed a proposal to move the idea forward, and it's made three major promises a full Dneden Hospital, rebuild, rail enabled ferries and not getting involved in orcus. As the coalition government deals with contentious policy and flat pole results. Can Hopkins pull off
a win in twenty twenty six? He joins us today on the Front Page to discuss the path ahead for Labor. First off, pres we're a year into this new coalition government.
What do you make of it? Oh? I mean, I think the government's had a pretty bumpy start. It was always going to be a challenged for them to pull together three parties with quite different views of the world and sort of certainly some personal animosity amongst the party leaders. You know, Winston Peters and David Seymour's dislike for one another is well known and clearly hasn't debated since the government has been formed. But they've made things worse for
New Zealand in the decisions that they've taken. So it's a challenging time economically around the world at the moment, and the government making decisions to massively cut back government spending, cutback infrastructure projects and so on has actually made a tough economic environment even tougher for.
Kiwi's Well, Winston and David haven't ripped each other's heads off in public yet, have they.
They've certainly, you know, of anything. They've both been taking pop shots at the Prime minister instead, and you know, I think that's somewhat new for New Zealand to see the deputy prime Minister from a different party saying that he thinks the Prime Minister is struggling in his job, and to have David Seymour and Christopher Luxen basically criticizing each other in public. I don't think we've seen that before,
even an MMP where there's agree to disagree. I think generally there's still been a respectful relationship between party leaders.
Luxeon's leadership has been called into question in recent weeks. How do you rank him personally? Like, where do you think he sets compared to other former prime ministers?
I think probably the one and only time you'll find me agreeing with Winston Peters actually is I think he is struggling in the job. I think he's brought board a corporate mindset to running the country, and the country isn't a corporation. In a corporation, you can decide to make people redundant and basically then there's someone else's problem, and you can say this group of customers is a group of customers, We're no longer going to chase as a company. You don't get to make those sorts of
decisions in running a country. Everybody is your problem, everybody is your customer, everybody is your responsibility. I think he's kind of struggling with that a little bit, because the process of government doesn't stop just because you've decided that your priorities are elsewhere.
Is he a bad prime minister?
Oh? I mean people for form their own views about that. I think a lot of new Zealanders think he's a bad Prime minister, and I think they've got good grounds for that.
You've said Labor needs to regain the public's trust after a historic defeat. How are you going to start.
I think the public want to see us getting back to the basics of what Labour stands for, making sure that we are focused on how we can bring the country back together. I think this government's creating a lot of division and they want to know that we have an approach that's going to end that division and bring people back together again. And I think also just demonstrating that we do know we lost. You know that we have reflected on why we lost and that we change
as a result of that. You know, we we're not going to rerun the twenty twenty three election campaign. That's a campaign we lost, and so twenty twenty six we need to offer different things and we need to be different.
But making sure that we've got inflation now within the band first time in three and a half years. You've had three interest rate cuts in twelve months.
That's fantastic.
You've got rising confidence at annual highs right.
In the last three years.
Constitution, especially credibility. We see growth. That's what we've got to call. We're not seeing growth. We're actually again you
can't point to any growth. Get some naive to be honest with you, to say, look, we had six years of economic mismanagement and in twelve months we're supposed to fix that all or at someone I need to say that the previous government had a credibility problem because they pushed the years and government when you're doing exactly the same thing we've had twelve months.
When do you think the cutoff period is when a new government can stop blaming in old governments for its problems. Do you reckon it's about now?
I think it's totally I think it's long gone. Actually, I mean they up to their first budget, yep. I guess you get to say, oh, well, the previous government made all these decisions and you know we're just having to live with those. But once you get through a budget, you know that's your chances of government to really reset everything and to say well, okay, that spending decisions that
the government's taken are now ours. And I think you know it's well and truly time for them to accept responsibility for the fact that under their watch and as a result of their decisions, the New Zealand economy is getting worse and key we households are going backwards.
Isn't the economy getting better?
Though? If you've just lost your job and unemployment is forecast to continue to increase, I think you'll find the economy is getting worse overall. You know, New Zealand is not where it needs to be. Other economies are rebounding much more healthily than New Zealanders get to.
The weeknd Labor held its conference in christ Church. Labor will build dened In Hospital as it was committed to prior to the election in twenty twenty three. Now the project's been dogged by delays. There's been a budget overruns. The cost has now belonged to three billion dollars from an original one point two to one point four in twenty seventeen. How on earth are you planning on paying for this?
To be fair, there were delays in the beginning, but actually we have made a lot of progress on We did in government make a lot of progress on the Darnedan hospital. So the outpatients building, which is about a third of the new hospital, is almost finished actually and should be opening shortly that's great news for Dunedin in terms of the main part of the hospital, so you know the part where if you're admitted you stay overnight,
that that larger part of the hospital. The current government have made a number of claims about the cost escalation of that that simply don't stack up when closer scrutiny is applied. So they've included in this supposed cost blowout things that were never the original cost in the first place, like car parking buildings and a new lab which was always visioned probably to be built by a private sector contracted provider, because that's the way lab services across the
country often end up being provided. But it all comes down to choices and trade offs as well. So they found two hundred million dollars to give a tax break to tobacco, They found nearly three billion dollars for tax breaks for landlords, and then overall, I think the tax breaks for other kiwis that they gave out it was about twelve billion dollars in the budget. So it comes down to choices that you make as a government.
Won't the cost climb even more by the time you're in government if you win the cost.
Of these projects never goes down. But the longer you take to do them, the more expensive they become, which is one of the reasons why they should just get on with it and build the hospital. And my experience and I oversaw a lot of school rebuilding projects. You just want to get them done. Every time you slow them down for another review, you're just the cashridge is
to goes kitching, kitchin kitching. You know, all of these reviews are one of the reasons why everything, the costs keep blowing out on everything.
Also, a publicly owned into island ferry connection, including some kind of rail transport. What does that look like, Well.
It means that we've got to have fairies that you can drive trains on and off. And bear in mind too that this is about making sure that we've got the most efficient ferry service for New Zealand. A ferry service that you can't drive trains on and off. Ultimately then transfers cost back on to freight providers, which then transfers cost back on to customers. An investment in a reliable ferry service is actually an investment in a productive economy.
Then did Treasury do this thing called a BCR benefit to cost ratio analysis. The benefit cost ratio even at the higher price for the inter island ferry was something like four point eight, So for every dollar you spend you get about four point eight dollars back. The cost benefit ratio for the billions of dollars they're going to spend on the road from Auckland to fungat A is about one, so you get one dollar back for every dollar that you spend. So you know, again it's about
choices and trade offs. This government a choosing to say, well, roads are everything, and interrland ferries and rail connections are not important. Actually they are important because if you want better roads, getting freight off the roads and onto rail's going to be a good way of delivering that.
So New Zealand won't be signing up to AUCUST pillar two under a labor government. We know that pillar one involves the nuclear powered subs, but Pillar two involves sharing and developing high tech defense technology. Why this turnaround on AUCUST Pillar two.
We've always been very skeptical of UCUS. Aucus fundamentally is a nuclear powered submarine pact between those three countries, and we're a nuclear free country.
But that's the pillar one we're looking at Pillar two. Now that's the technology and AI aspect of it.
Right, The two things are related though, you know, the Pacific is a proudly nuclear free region. Who in the Pacific countries have made it very clear, and they're very important relationships for New Zealand that they are also opposed to Aucus. So I think you can't separate those two things completely. In terms of coordinating with those other countries around things like military technology, around things like intelligence sharing,
we already have arrangements to do that. So you know, we have a formal alliance, a formal ally relationship with Australia. We have a five country relationship with those three countries including and then adding Canada into that, which gives us access to a lot of the stuff that's happening around
intelligence but also around technology. And we think that we're best to stick with those relationships rather than be involved in a relationship which is proving to be incredibly antagonistic in it within the.
Region, antagonistic to China, though primarily right, not just China.
Actually the Pacific of finding have raised a lot of concerns about nuclear prospect of nuclear ships in the Pacific as well, and so I think we shouldn't be blind to that.
Andrew Little's come out backing the current government's decision to investigate our potential involvement in Pillar two. Here's, of course our former Defense Minister and Intelligence Agencies Minister, and of course a former leader of the Labor Party. Do you trust his judgment?
I think Andrew Little's got you know, he was a fantastic minister. Doesn't mean we're going to agree on everything. We didn't agree on everything when we're in government, and I'm sure we won't now, and as a former parliamentary and he's free to share his used however he wishes.
And the parties are passed a proposal to take forward work on a capital gains tax and a wealth tax and stop any work on other forms of tax. Does this mean it'll very likely be a part of your twenty twenty six campaign.
Well, I don't comment on the remits that get past at conference, but I've said right at the beginning of the year that we needed to do work on tax policy, and we needed a different tax policy ahead of the next selection, which is what we're working on at the moment. Any remits that get passed at party conference help to inform that policy development process. But we're a long way away at this point from having a finalized approach to text because you can't just look at tax and isolation.
You've also got to look at you know, what are you taxing for, what are the things that you're funding, where's that money going to go, how's it going to be applied, what are the consequences for other taxes, and also, you know, what are the things you're trying to do. Are you trying to you know, I believe we need to incentivize more productive investment in our economy rather than speculative investment.
In twenty twenty three, you ruled out in introducing a wealth tax or CGT if re elected. That was before the last election. Of course, now it's back on the table. Has it got anything to do with labor likely needing the Greens and Tabatti Mali in order to form a government next time?
No, not at all. I said before the last elections, As I would say in you know, every election, you should form your policies for the next term of government, and then if you've got to change those, then you change them at the next election so that people can vote on them. I said when I said that we wouldn't implement a wealth tex or a capital gains tax. I was very clear that that was the commitment that
I was making for the next term of government. You know, should our position change, that were the time we would change, that would be at the next election.
Last week we spoke to politics professor Bryce Edwards and asked him about how the opposition parties were performing, and he didn't think you guys were doing a great job of holding the government to account.
If you look back on the last year, I think the government has had lots of areas that needed to be more strongly critiqued on, especially things like the Fast Track Act, especially on a lot of the ways that it seems to be governing for vested interests or the wealthy. And I don't think that Labour's done it a good enough job of highlighting some of those. Yeah, those deficits.
What do you make of that?
Well, I disagree. I think if you look at on issues that where the government's been divided in the country, like the tr Principle spill, you've seen a very united approach from the opposition parties. If you look at areas like the health system, for example, I think we've applied real pressure to the government on their issues, on the things that they're trying to do around deregulation of guns. Again, I think we've really kind of stepped up the pace
there in terms of the pressure we've applied. But what I've also said, and I think you know New Zealanders have a lot of sympathy for this, is they get sick of politicians criticizing their opponents for doing something that they themselves would do, or opposing something which then they get into government and do exactly the same thing they've opposed. So I've said that we're the government are doing things
that we would ourselves do in government. There will be constructive rather than obstructive, and I think actually New Zealanders want to see that from their politicians.
What's something the government's done that you've thought that that's a good job.
Look, it's kind of difficult because there's not a he give a lot that I think they've been doing well. But I think some of the there are a few decisions they've taken that might have some early promise. So if I look at the infrastructure space, for example, I agree with the government that we need a much longer
term approach to planning infrastructure investment. The short term nature of our thinking around infrastructure in New Zealand is one of the reasons we're in the mess we're in now, and so if they can come up with things that will help the country to achieve that, then I think we can be supportive and we can be constructive.
Yeah, and that certainly makes sense when you're talking billions of dollars for say a couple of ferries, or billions of dollars for a second Auckland bridge, that kind of thing.
Right absolutely. I mean, if you look at Auckland light Rail, you know we had work underway on Auckland light Rail. It's a big project and I think the time frames that we had previously put out were unrealistic and I've said that, but Auckland is going to need mass, rapid transit are given the scale of population growth there. Within the next decade, Auckland could have two million people and you've got to be able to get around. And even with more investment and roads, there's still going to be
road congestion. The only way you're going to tackle that is by making sure that you've got good alternative options, which includes public transport. So I think we need a plan around Auckland that says, over the next twenty to thirty years, what's the transport infrastructure we need. And so even if the current government came in and said, Okay, we don't think Auckland light rails an immediate priority, why
scrap it all together? Why not just continue with the planning, the design, the consenting work so that at a future point we can continue the momentum on it. Even if they said, and their priority for construction is going to be new roads, why don't they continue with the planning on the stuff which they might not want to do immediately. I think that is the sort of that's the sort
of thinking that we need around infrastructure. So I've said when we come into government next time, and I want that to be after the next selection, That's what I'm aiming for. We're not going to stop everything just because the previous government started it. I think we've got to make sure that we keep the wheels of infrastructure investment moving so.
We look overseas gaffes and controvert your policies didn't really stop Donald Trump getting re elected last month. Hey, the economy and cost of living remains a top priority for voters here and overseas. Do you think labor has a chance in twenty twenty six, even if the economy picks up under.
National I think one of the things that Donald Trump tapped into, and I think it's very important for all Western democracies to think about, is the fact that the economy isn't working as it should for a larger and larger group of people. So if you look at the US, for example, under Biden, their economy was growing, they were creating new jobs, but people weren't feeling that they were actually feeling at a household level like they were going backwards.
And I think the same thing is happening here is even if say GDP growth numbers improve, and frankly it'd be hard for them to do otherwise given how bad they've been. But even if they do start to improve, then if people are still feeling like, oh, our household costs are still going up, our salary and wages aren't going up, and we feel like we're going backwards. Think that's the space where I think we're very rightly frustrated.
And I think if you look over the last forty odd years since we embarked on some pretty radical reforms in the nineteen eighties New Zealand households. A lot of New Zealand households have been going backwards.
And finally, Chris, while we're on Trump, he managed to of course, when reelection after a defeat, are you confident you can do the same in twenty twenty six.
Absolutely. I wouldn't still be here if I didn't think that. You know, we're getting really strong support from New Zealanders, even you know, when I've been out and about, there's plenty of people who have come up and said, look, we didn't vote for you last time because x Y and Z, but we're open to voting for you next time.
What was x Y and Z?
Oh's the things that we just talked about before, you know, cost of living, crime. I think people just wanted to get over COVID. They just wanted to forget about it and move on. And also the fact that they were a bit dissatisfied with the fact that we had taken on so many big reform projects all at once, and they wanted a sense that we were focusing on getting the basics right. So those are all messages that.
We've heard and Are you personally committed to lead labor into the next election? Will you be heading Labor?
I absolutely will be wonderful.
Thanks for joining us, Chress.
Good as Gold, happy to talk to you.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzedherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.