Kyota.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. From entering Parliament in two thousand and eight to leading the country in twenty twenty three, Chris Hipkins is no stranger to the spotlight. During COVID's beginnings, he was known as a safe set of hands, tackling education, health and becoming the Minister in charge of the COVID response for a time.
Now he's firmly setting his sights on election twenty twenty six, but is he confident he'll still be in Labour's driving seat when it rolls around?
Today?
On the Front Page, Hipkins joins us to discuss the cost of living, vibes around Parliament, and.
Whether he'll ever be able to shake COVID.
First off, Chris, we had David Seymour on a wee while back. We asked him if it'd be open to working with you. He said that would require Chris Hopkins to be working. He then made an odd reference calling you Pooh Midas, which I can only assume is replacing gold with pooh.
So is everything you touched he in to shit or something?
Oh? Look, I mean I think this is just what we're seeing from this government, you know, and the culture starts from the top, It starts in the Prime Minister, Winston Peter's David Seymour down where they just think that attacking people, belittling people, degrading people is what leadership looks like. I don't believe that. I'm all for a bit of humor in politics, you know a little bit of a sledge now and then where it's funny. That can add
to a bit of you know, political engagement. But they're not very funny, and they're also not very good at it, so I think they should just stick to actually doing what people ask them to do. You know, the New Zealanders wanted them to fix the cost of living crisis. They wanted them to, you know, get the economy moving. They haven't done either of those things. Maybe they should focus on them rather than sledging other people.
Well what about more recently, looks like you've got the prime ministers go to little He said. I'm not taking any lectures from frickin' Chris Hipkins or the Labor Party.
But why are you bothering people lately? Chris? Is it getting a bit tasty? In Parliament at the minute.
I think it's getting The government's certainly feeling the pressure, and they should be feeling the pressure because they made people a whole lot of promises that they haven't delivered on. But I remember standing next to Christopher Luxan during the leader's debates where he said that, you know, families with kids were going to be two hundred and fifty dollars
a fortnight better off if he became Prime minister. And they haven't identified one single family that's two hundred and fifty dollars a fortnight better off, and you know, food prices are still going up. You know, households are still really feeling the squeeze, and so I think the government are feeling that pressure. Really, they shouldn't have made promises that they didn't intend to keep, and so I think that's why they're lashing out at everybody else. They're just
trying to find people to blame for that. And you know, on the other side, there's a lot of pressure coming on us to say, well, what would labor do differently? Shear your policies, But the point that I've been making to people is I'm not going to put policies out there unless I know that I can deliver on them, because I don't want to end up two years down the track and find myself in the same position that they're currently in, where I've promised stuff that I can't deliver.
I think we've had way too much of that in New Zealand politics, governments of all stripes making big, sweeping promises for elections and then not delivering on them. So we're keeping up how to dry on the policy front deliberately because when we do announce it, I want to know that we can do it, and we won't be able to make that judgment till closer to the election, once we see the shape the economies in and so on.
So you basically do want to have a look at the books, maybe by next budget, and then you'll start kind of trickling out stuff.
Is that how it works in an election?
It is, it's kind of about looking at the government's books, but it's also about making sure we're doing the work now and opposition you don't unlike in government. You know, you don't have the entire public service doing the work for you. You've got to do the work. So we're looking at you know, what would things cost, how would
we actually deliver them. I think one of the valid criticisms of us last time we were in opposition was that we had some really good ideas, but we hadn't worked through the detail of exactly how would we do that. And then when we got into government, we found that some of the things that we said we were going to do very well intentioned, we didn't have a clear plan for how we would do it. And I think
the same thing has happened to this government. They've made promises with no plan on how they're actually going to do it, and I don't want to be in that position.
So we're going to take our time. I know people are eager to hear what we want to do, but I'm going to make sure that when I do go out there and say label will do X, I can then answer all the questions about it, and I can tell people how we're going to do it, so that they know that the promises we're making a credible and ones that they can rely on us delivering.
On Well, mister Speaker, hasn't it been a shambolic year for.
The Labor Party?
Has that?
And I have to say, has there ever been a leader of.
The opposition with less substance than Chris Hopkins, because what you get, what you get is a lot of carping. What you get is a lot of points of order, and you get a lot of wishy washy, don't you. It's a lot of wishy washy because beneath it all, they have no policies, zero policies, and they have no plan.
What is something that the party's tinkering away in the background at the moment.
We're looking at a lot of things.
I mean, I think if you look at what is important to us, I said when I took over from Jacinda that I wanted to see labor get back to the core sort of things that are important.
To labor, back to basic, back to basics. Jobs.
You know, it's in the name of the Labor Party. That's what the Labor Party was founded on the basis of, you know, good jobs that mean people get well paid and could have a better life. That's why the Labor Party exists. So that's that's got to be front and center for us. And at a time when unemployment's going up, jobs, jobs, jobs, is very very important. So jobs health because you know, if you don't have access to good quality health care. Then you're going to your options in life are going
to be limited. And homes. Everyone deserves a place to call home. And if I've got so many the other issues we deal with, it stems back to one of those three things, or sometimes a combination of those three things not not being where we need them to be. So, you know, kids not going to school. Well, if your family's moving around houses all the time because they haven't got, you know, somewhere that they can put down roots, that's
actually a big part of the problem. Kids who are getting into trouble In many cases, it's because they're living transiently. So let's make sure everyone has a home. And then I think more recently, you know, we were expecting that once inflation was back down within the target band, that cost of living would sort of drop off the radar almost It hasn't. Cost of living is getting worse. So I think we need re election on the cost of living, and it's going to have to be more than just
shouting at supermarkets and shouting at banks. It's going to have to be things that government can actually do that will tackle the cost of living for people.
Well, when it comes to that, I was doing some research about it, and I mean, how do we make sure that the price of butter doesn't get anywhere like any more ridiculous?
Do you know what I mean?
In the Great Depression, I know that the government introduced subsidies for farmers and agriculture that kind of dropped off in the seventies and eighties.
Why can't we do something like that again.
Ultimately, we do live in a global market for that, and the real challenge for us is if we started to do that sort of thing here, we potentially limit our ability to then sell into the international market. It would compromise our ability to trade internationally if we brought back subsidies. I think there are real questions about our New Zealander is paying too much for butter everyone's fixated on but I've never spoken so much about butter in.
My life as I have in the last week.
But again, the government sort of shouting at Fontier is not going to solve the problem. I think there are real issues around the supermarket sector, around whether we've got enough competition in the supermarket sector. But again, just talking about it, admiring the problem, it's not going to solve it. So what's the government actually going to do in that space to get better competition in supermarkets, and how we're going to support New Zealanders to have a higher standard
of living will go up and down. You know, if you think about fruit and veggies, for example, the weather has an impact.
You know, we had our.
Cyclone in the first few weeks that I was Prime Minister that wiped out a huge amount of our fresh produce across the East Coast to the North Island, and that meant that that actually was one of the things
that forced up fruit and vegie prices. The government couldn't fundamentally change that, but we do have to make sure we're supporting families through you know, what is a really tough economic cycle at the moment, So looking at their incomes, looking at how we can you know, contain other costs. Public transport, which the government have cut subsidies for, is
going up hugely. Families on low incomes are more likely to rely on public transport, and now they're finding that their cost of transport, the cost of getting to and from work is going up. That's money that they then can't spend on food. So for those families that are living hand to mouth, everything matters and regardless of what the price of butter is doing. The real question is
what's the overall family expendit you're doing. You know, because there are areas where we can ease some pressure on families and things like public transport. You know, there are good examples of things governments can do.
What about the Greens approach, what about free dental, free GP visits.
And what was the first free childcare? Seems like a good idea.
So if you look at what we were talking about at the last election, you know, we had a plan to start delivering free dental. The reason that we were setting that out over a period of time is we don't have the dentists to be able to just you know, turn on a tap and say right, dental's free. That would be hard because we wouldn't have enough dentists. So
over time it's absolutely achievable. You know, I did this work as Prime Minister to identify, yes, we can have free dental here, and the case of GP visits, I wouldn't necessarily start there. I do think that making it easier to go to the GP is really important. So we might not get to free immediately. At the moment, it's costing some families one hundred bucks for a GP visit. I don't think that's okay. I think we've got to deal with that. But there's things that we can do.
Even before that, we abolished the five dollars co payment for prescriptions because if people were not picking up their prescriptions, they were more likely to end up having to go to a GP or go to a hospital emergency room than if they went to the pharmacist, got whatever medications they need and stayed healthy in the first place. So we did more than just that. We also said to pharmacists, you can give out some medications without prescription for winter ailments.
And as a result, because people could go to the pharmacy, they didn't end up going to the doctor because they didn't need to. And I think there's a lot more we can do in that area. You know, pharmacies do an amazing job around the country. When I became Minister of Health briefly, I learned so much more about what pharmacists can do. And I think that those opportunities to provide better preventative health care are just all over the place.
Keep people healthy and the health system will be under a lot less pressure.
And what about that free childcare.
Yeah, and I've always been committed to that. So when I was working for Trevor mallard is the Ministry of Education back at a long time ago now, I was working on implementing twenty hours free early childhood education for three and four year olds. As Prime Minister, I extended that to two year olds. The current government have canceled the extension to two year olds unfortunately, but I do
think progressively increasing more access to free early childhood education. A. It's got benefits for the kids because we know kids who have been in early childhood education quality early childhood education do better when they go to school. But it also means that for parents it's a huge easing of cost and it allows them to get back into work. And it will benefit women more than men, but there
are some men who will benefit from that too. So women are more likely to be the person who is at home looking after the kids, but increasingly now in this day and age, there are more dads doing that too, and free early old education really helps them to be able to go out and earn money as well as looking after the kids.
Right, So what's stopping us from just doing it tomorrow?
Is it?
The money, do we need to tax the retch.
We could have done twenty hours free early childhood education for two year olds, and we had done that. Actually the government took the money away from that to fund their Family Boosts, which has been an absolute flop. You know, one hundred and fifty three families I think have actually got the full amount of the family boost which you know, whereas every family with a two year old would have got the twenty hours free and they wouldn't have had
to fill in a form to get it. It just would have happened automatically, so big saving for the family. So there is money there to extend that out over time to more so you could potentially, you know, increase the number of hours or increase the age groups who are eligible. I think that's something that we should certainly aspire to and we can afford that as a country
if we make the right choices. Bearing in mind that if we've got kids in early childhood education and the result of that is that their parents are then going back to work, those parents are going to be earning money and paying taxes, which is a good thing for government because it means that ultimately governments and you know, yes, we're spending more money on ECU, but we're getting more money because of the parents earning more money.
What do you think about taxing the.
Rech I think it's a I don't like the phrase. And the reason I don't like the phrase is because I think that tax fundamentally should come down to fairness. Everyone should pay their fair share, Everyone should make a contribution. We all benefit from health education, you know, the infrastructure that we build, things like roads, we all benefit from that. We all benefit from having a police force, we all benefit from having a good justice system. We all benefit
from having a defense force. So we should all contribute to the cost of those things. And the tax system should be fair, which means those on higher incomes. And I am one of those people should pay more. And I'm quite proud to say that I'm happy to pay more as someone on a higher income.
I accept that. You know, it's a great tagline.
You know, it's on a poster.
If it's on a poster, but it kind of it creates a culture of resentment about Texas. Texas aren't a punishment, you know, Texas are the contribution that we all make to living in a decent society, and.
Ow poll, we asked do you support or oppost the introduction of a capital gains tax on properties other than the family home. Forty six percent of voters are in support of the idea, while forty one percent oppose it, and thirteen percent either don't know or preferred not to say.
I've read something published on Aaron said.
This was in December, though, and it suggested that you will be campaigning on a capital gains tax at the next election, and that quote details would be announced as early as mid next year.
Now it's past mid next year. Now it's July. Now any word on that how that may look.
Yeah, well, I've said that we'll announce our policy on that before the end of this year, because I think it is important. You know that that is big policy area.
People want to know where they stand. Certainly people to my left, you know, on the left of politics, get really excited about tax debates, and I understand that, but we also need to talk about how we get people into good, well paid jobs, how we generate more wealth for the country, and we need to do that as well as ensuring that the benefits of that are fairly shared by everybody. And you can't have one side of
that debate without the other. So tax is one of the ways we ensure that everybody gets the affairs share and pays the affairs here. But we've also got to make sure that we're generating good, well paid jobs, that we've got businesses who are doing well so they can employ more people. And I don't think you can separate those two things. I think those two things do need to go together.
So you will commit to yes or no by the end of this.
Yeah, and we're going to have a different tax policy to the one we had at the last election. Very upfront about that.
You know.
In New Zealand, I think we've paced far too much emphasis on buying and selling houses amongst ourselves, pushing up the price so that potentially a whole generation of homeowners is being shut out of the housing market, and not enough emphasis on productive investment, on building businesses that employ
people that allow them to earn more money. And our tax system currently encourages people to do that, you know, to basically go and just speculate in the residential property market, and that's not going to make us rich as a country. So I think our tech system does need to change. I understand why mums and dads have gone out and said, oh, I've got a house. Now I can use the equity I've got my house to buy our rental property and that that can be my retirement savings. I understand why
people have done that. The tax systems actually encouraged them to do that. But that's not sustainable. If every person who owns a house now buys another one, the next generation of homeowners won't exist. So we have to do things differently.
Do you think labor will ever escape the COVID curse?
When you say COVID curse, I mean it's challenging because it was hard. You know, it was hard for the whole country, and it's actually really I find as a politician it's also quite hard to talk about it now because you did we get everything right during that time? No, I don't think we did get everything right. Were there lessons that we learned from that? Yes, of course, you know, no one had ever done this before, no government had
ever encountered what we encountered with COVID. Undoubtedly there are things that if we could go back and do them differently, we would do some things differently. I can say that, And then someone asked me a specific question that'll be like, well, what about decision X, And so you explain the reasoning behind that decision and then they say, oh, so you don't think you made any mistakes.
I said, no, I'm not.
I'm just explaining why we made the decision we made at that time because there wasn't a rule book and it was hard. The management of the border was so hard because one of the ways that we avoided lockdowns, long prolonged lockdowns in New Zealand was by having the
border restrictions in place that we had. But that meant that if you were traveling, if you had to travel for business, if you had family who were away overseas and they wanted to come back and see you, or you wanted to go and see them, you couldn't travel freely in the way that we're all used to being able to travel. And that was really, really hard.
And some people have just gotten over the fact that we didn't travel for a couple of years, and some people are still holding onto it.
It seems.
I mean, every time it must come up, you must, you must a little person inside you must just sigh.
A little bit.
But I do understand because it was hard and there were, and it really had a bigger effect on people's lives. But I guess the point that I would make is, yes, government decisions weren't perfect, but actually it was the virus and the global pandemic that caused a lot of the pain. Because the decisions the New Zealand government was making we're not out of line with what other countries were doing.
We were more successful, I think partly because we're an island nation and we were able to isolate ourselves better and avoiding long protracted lockdowns. I mean, I've got friends and family who are in the UK who spent a year and a half of rolling lockdowns. We avoided that here and we were able to live relatively freely during that time, other than know some periods where we weren't.
And you know, for Auckland, that last lockdown was the hardest and it was hard, and that was one of the areas which I don't think we got it completely right. You know, it went on for too long and we as we moved, as we dealt with the new variants.
Remember we sort of shifted from from COVID early COVID to delta omicron and then and then we had you know, moving from elimination where we're aiming to just get back to what we've been doing before, to realizing that we couldn't and that we were going to have to deal with COVID in the community. That was very bumpy and very hard, and we didn't get every decision right in there,
and I'd never say that we did. And so as a result, I think there are people who look at that going, you know, if they'd been government, why or you know, would we have made decisions differently if we knew then what we know now.
Yes, Unquestionably, when it comes to election next year, are you still confident that you'll be leading the Labor Party?
Absolutely? And you know, look, I've still got a lot of energy for this job. I only took over about
eight months before the election. I had eight months as Prime Minister, and you know I said there as soon as I took over from Jacinda, I want Labor to get back to focusing on what the Labor Party is all about, jobs, health, homes, you know, making sure we're raising living standards for all New Zealanders, focusing on the things that unite New Zealanders rather than the things that divide us apart making sure that we we're dealing with
controversial and tricky areas like the Treaty for example, that we're slowing down a bit and we're bringing people with us.
We're not.
You know, people don't feel like a whole lot's happening that they don't know about, and they're mistrustful of that. You know, I started that work when I became Prime Minister, and then you know, I still think that's work that the Labor Party needs to do. I think we need to make sure that we're there for the people who we represent.
And would you be open to working with the Greens and TPM or those conversations just not started yet.
We work closely with them.
When I say closely, we cooperate with them quite a lot in opposition. And you'll see things like the Treaty Principles Bill, which we thought was a really divisible but we work really closely with the Greens and with the Mardi Party to oppose that and to make sure that it was defeated. We have a lot of values in common with both of those parties, you know, if you're talking about the values of unity, of collective action, of making sure that we are catering to the squeezed middle,
but also those on the lowest incomes. I think we share those aspirations. We want to make sure that we're leaving the planet in at least as good as state as we found it. I think we share those goals. I've said that what we will do before the election, as I did last time, as I say, look, these are the areas that we've got in common with other parties, and these are the areas where we think we can work with them, and these are the things we categorically
would take off the table. We won't do that, and I think that will make it clear what the future governing arrangements might look like. But I differ for a bit from the current govern in the sense that, you know, I respect the important constituencies the smaller parties represent, and I also respect that we compete with them for votes too.
I don't think.
Under MMP the smaller parties should call all of the shots. You know, I still think that the bigger parties have a mandate to reflect the view of a much larger section of the electorate, and so I do think under MMP you need to kind of keep proportionality in mind. Yes, there should be some concessions and some trade offs to
the other parties in order to form government. But that doesn't mean that you should be doing things that you specifically told the electorate before the election that you weren't going.
To do, like the Treati's Principle.
The Treaty Principle's Bill is a good example, the Regulatory Standards Bill. You know, some of these things that no one knew that they were voting for at the last election, and now they're being inflicted on them. I don't think that's the spirit of MMP or democracy. I think, you know, the majority should still rule in a democracy, and at the moment that's not happening. We're currently being ruled by a minority, a small minor, and I don't think that's what New Zealand has voted for.
I can only assume David not Winston.
When I'm talking about the minorities.
There's the small minority.
Well, both of them to some extent on different issues. You know, they've both got their hobby horses that they're sort of inflicting on the rest of the country, and they're not things that New Zealand has voted for.
Well, Ending greyhound racing is not that.
Look, I support Winston Peters on ending greyhound racing that I know the greyhound racers don't particularly like the fact that were supporn in the government on that, but it's time. And you know I said before the election that I thought it was time and I congratulate him for doing it. You know, not everything in politics needs to be about saying I impose that just because it's the other side that are doing it. I think there's actually too much
of that. And I also think let's make sure that when we're opposing each other, it's for the right reasons, not the wrong reasons. So it shouldn't be just it should be because we disagree, not because we're trying to, you know, secure political advantage or political points. So thinks things like infrastructure projects, why does everything take so long in New Zealand and why does it cost so much money? Well, the political cycle is part of the problem. You know.
New government comes in and says we don't like all that stuff that the last lot we're doing, so we're going to stop all of that and we're going to start again. Everything slows down, everything costs more money, and in the meantime, seventeen thousand fewer people are working in construction today than they were at the last election, and the government's part of the problem. I've said that I want to take a lot of the politics out of that.
The Infrastructure Commission have come out with a big list that says these are the things that New Zealand needs. They're not things that political parties have decided, you know, these are the things the Infrastructure Commission have said. For the country of the size that we are, with the geography we are, this is what we need and we need to do it. I've said to the current government, if you're doing stuff that's on that list, let's not
fit all with that. Let's just get on and do it because that's been objectively determined that that's what we need as a country. And let's stop the stop start nature of what we're doing because not everything needs to be political.
And looking forward, Chris, what does a better New Zealand look like to you?
I think it involves higher standards of living for all New Zealanders, So people having good jobs, recognizing that there's going to be turnover in jobs as technology changes, but that if you lose your job because things have changed, that you can get another one, if you need to retrain and reskill in order to do that, that you're
supported to do that. That you can have a place that you can call home, whether it's owning your own home or having a security in your rental, that you can access good healthcare, that your kids are getting a good education, a world class education. That we are actually preserving the environment that we live in so that it can sustain future generations of people, and that we're living sustainably. You know that we're having a high quality of life,
but in a way that's sustainable. To me, that's what New Zealand should be all about. There's huge opportunities for us. You know, the move to a more sustainable way of living doesn't need to be a hardship. Infact, it could be the source of our great prosperity in the future.
Thanks for joining us, Chris.
Thank you.
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzidherld dot co dot mz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our editor.
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
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