In this week's episode, Thomas has a long-form chat with Labour leader and former Prime Minister turned Leader of the Opposition, Chris Hipkins, to discuss seven months in the role, Labour's analysis of its failed re-election campaign, what they'll do differently next time, and what needs to change in the political climate..
Hello and welcome to on the titles the New Zealand Heeriorals Politics podcast. I'm your host Thomas Coglan. Today we've got a really interesting interview it's worth Labor leader Resipkins. It's eight months since Hepkins lost the election and became Leader of the Opposition, but it's quite an interesting look back at the failed election campaign last year and what he's doing to rebuild the party in the election machine for the next election. Recipkins leader of the Opposition currently. Congratulations on holding that role. It's not a role that one is typically congratulated on holding, but the guy, I.
Don't think it's a job that anybody particularly wants. The most people would recognize that being leader of the Opposition is a prerequisite to becoming Prime minister. In my case, I'm kind of doing it the wrong way around. I had a brief stint as Prime minister for nine months now doing this job and the goal is to be Prime minister again after the election.
Well, thank you very much for joining us and sitting down with us to discuss Sam. Your first six months been but longer than six months now in the role. Can I ask you thought we'd struggure structure this in three parts, sort of the past and then looking forward to the future. Later did a campaign review of twenty twenty three. That's that returned some time ago.
Yeah, I mean the campaign review was mostly structured on you know, what parts of the campaign worked well, what parts didn't? You know, mechanically, how does the campaign work? You know, did we do the right things during the campaign? No campaign reviews ever going to give you a conclusive answer as to.
Why did you win or why did you lose?
That's much more subjective, and every voter has an individual decision making process that they make. The overall conclusion is pretty clear, we lost because not enough people voted for us. Why they didn't vote for us, that's something that is a bit more complicated, and we need to take the time to make sure we I mean, we can spend a lot of time trying to figure out why they didn't vote for us last time. Really the focus has to be on how do we get them to vote for us next time?
Who did the review?
So the review was done by Marion Street, former Labor Party president. She'd been a minister in the Clerk government and she had a panel of people who worked with her, but Marion was the lead reviewer.
Right and and you know, if you if you were to digest its findings into three sort of key takeaways, threw yourself on the part.
I mean, I think it was mostly focused at the practical level about how we make sure our candidate selections are good and robust. I mean, that's there's increasing concern across the political spectrum about the vetting process for political candidates. So you know, what are the lessons that we learned from the last round that we can take into future elections. What's the right timing for candidate selection processes, what's the right timing for reduced for releasing policy. We released a lot of policy in the last sort of six weeks of the campaign, but nobody really heard it. I think increasingly the way people consume that kind of information has changed in recent times. The campaign itself now has a different feel to it than it might have done, you know, a decade ago, and so we have to adjust the way we campaign to that.
It's an interesting point. I mean, National release its main text policy in twenty twenty two March of twenty twenty two, and they campaigned it for more than a year.
That's right, and so I think we have to recognize that now the political cycle has changed, policy takes longer to filter through the days of the big campaign surprise. In terms of new policy, they're not what they used to be. And I don't think we'll see as much of that in the future because the big campaign surprise often doesn't resonate in the way that it used to.
I suppose early voting, you know, it changes the calendar, pushes everything forward a few weeks despite the campaign period not really changing. It means that the grunt work really has to be done quite early, and the final couple of weeks are just relitigating previous points.
Yeah, and it's a really good lesson. If you look at the last election. For example, we put a lot out in the last few weeks. We actually had a swing towards US on election day relative to the early vote by quite a significant margin, but it was too late. You know, that the advanced vote had already consumed up enough that it guaranteed there was going to be a change of government. So even though the votes flowed more strongly towards US on election day, it was too late to change the overall demograph. You know overall profile by then.
Did it make any points about Auckland.
Yet certainly made points about some of the issues of concern in Auckland, you know, issues around crime and cost of living. I mean, I think almost every post election review will find that crime and cost of living were really big issues, but even more so in Auckland than the rest of the country.
You've just your sister party in the UK has just won a massive majority on quite a small share of the vote. Has to be said, but you know that you play you played the electoral system you're dealt and they played it very well. One of the criticisms that was made of the Tory Party going out over there was that it sort of in its final well final five years, I suppose, became increasingly focused upon itself and voters kind of spung against that. I was wondering if there are a few moments in Labour's final term where the same the same criticism could been made about the Labor Party. There was a moment, I think the entrenchment of the Three Waters of one part of three Waters legislation, that the part of the anti privatization measure. Just Sinder at the time said a mistake has been made and we are taking it as a team. But Labor sort of protected itself, I guess, and refused to explain what had happened, how that had happened to be fear you did fix it, and you, as leader of the House at the time, you know, contributed to fixing it, But there was a sense of protecting yourselves rather than getting to the bottom of the issue. Is that Do you feel like at times you focused on yourselves but too much?
I don't think that example resonated particularly with the public. It resonated with some constitutionalists who were outraged by what had happened, But actually the things that resonated for us much more were losing three ministers and the run up to the election campaign.
That really hurt.
And that does give you the impression that you're focused on yourselves rather than focused on the needs of the general public. And there's no question that when they're kicked off and there were three ministers in very rapid succession, our polling took a real knock during that time, and I think that the combination of that and the cost of living crisis being at real crunch point at that time suggested to people we're focused on ourselves and not on fixing the cost of living.
Has Michael wood Is on your campaign, your policy councils, he signal he's keen to come back and run again in his electorate.
I haven't had a conversation with him about that. Ultimately, you know, candidate's elections are really a matter for the party. But I mean, I think you know, he will need to rebuild his relationship with the party, with the electorate and with the country ultimately, if he wants to be an MP again.
Does he have his trained relationship with the party When you talk about rebuilding it?
Oh, I mean, I think anybody who has left and those circumstances needs to make sure they're rebuilding some relationships.
And just I mean, just on that three Waters thing is like, now it's been two nearly two years, what did happen?
You know? What?
What? Why? How did that? How did that get entrenched? How did how how did something which which I guess you weren't meant to vote for get voted on? Can you explain it?
I mean, ultimately, you know, I think it was it was a mistake made by the labor team who were in the house at the time. You know, they they voted in favor of an amendment which they which they shouldn't have And I mean, I wasn't in the House at the time, so I can't give a blow by blow account of the discussions that took place on the floor of the House, but it was pretty immediate. It was obvious to me as Leader of the House, immediately after it had happened, that it was the wrong thing to do, and so we were going to need to fix it.
So Dan, it didn't go to cortcause obviously it wasn't discussed.
No, I didn't and it wasn't discussed. And you know, had it been discussed, I think the position would have been much clearer from the beginning that we shouldn't have supported it.
Did it Was it an honest mistake or do people actually try to vote for it because they wanted wanted it to pass?
I think, I mean, certainly the people who voted for it thought it was a good idea, But I don't think there was any deliberate intention to kind of slip one through. I think it was just perhaps people had an thought through the overall consequences.
Of you and and and obviously you know you you restate that in a system like them, the New Zealand system, stuff like that always goes to caucus first. Absolutely, let's talk about the prison so so far. Now, look correct me if I'm wrong, because this is taking a fair bit of googling on my part. But the main thing that you've currently said is not going to survive a future Reciplicans government is charter school's bagne anything else that you've that you've pleached her overturn.
I mean, we're not going to.
Sort of respond to every government policy p announcement by announcing what we would do in the future, because you running into an election campaign, you need to have a complete package, and you can't necessarily come up with a complete package if you're doing it on an ad basis as you're going along charter schools. That's a pretty important point of principle for Labor though. We believe in a publicly funded public education system and we think charter schools undermines that. And you know, the past experience of charter schools in New Zealand was not a good one. You know, they ended up costing a lot of money for not particularly good outcomes. So yes, we're opposed to that one. But in terms of the rest of the policy. You know, we have a well developed manifesto before the election.
I mean the ones that I was thinking about, things that I would you think would be and the realm of stuff that you'd overturn would be the smoke free changes, reverting to the status quo. On that the clean card discount would be one I would have thought that you might be looking to bring back for a pay agreement, something dear to Labour's heart.
I mean, on all of those, the world will have changed by the time the next election rolls around. So if you look at smoke free, for example, it won't be a case of just simply reinstating what we've done before, because we will have had three more years. If you look at the most recent change that they've just made, for example, where they're allowing for they're not vapes, what do they call the heated devices heated tobacco devices. So that's a new thing and we don't know how fast the uptake of that will be before the next election, so we're going to have to.
Respond to that.
So, yes, it is the overall agenda, right, Yes, we still want New Zealand to be a smoke free country. What will be the process for us to get there. We'll have to have a different package for that. Issues around the clean car discount, the nature of the vehicles being purchased has changed, so we've gone from having a high uptake of electric vehicles as a result of the clean card discount to a reversion of purchasing the double.
Cab diesel use.
But we don't necessarily know whether that's still going to be the case two years from now.
What about fair pay agreements?
Fair pay agreements absolutely.
I mean I have said that we want to have New Zealanders earning better money and we want to make sure that those who are in the lowest income jobs are getting better pay.
You're worried about AI.
I'm worried and excited by AI at the same time. I think AI has got huge potential for New Zealand. We could be quite uniquely positioned. If you look at renewable energy, for example, one of the biggest constraints to AI development and uptake is going to be access to energy. AI is very energy hungry and New Zealand can be part of the answer to that. So there's opportunities for us in there. There's opportunities for us to use AI in new and creative ways. But we need to go into that eyes wide open. I think the world and this will be a topic and world politics in the next few years will be around well, what kind of constraints should we ethically and morally have around where AI is used and how it's used.
Part of the growth story. One of the criticisms that that's been made of the labor opposition at the moment is opposition to fast Track. You've launched that campaign things this weekend on that. There's also there's a long standing disagreement between perhaps not long standing because national broke broke from that, but the recent disagreement over agricultural emissions pricing. Now, obviously fast track is about economic development. That's well, that's what the government is arguing. Agricultural emissions pricing is a challenge for one of our most important, strategically competitive industries. The criticism that's made of Labor is that, you know, if it's not if we're not going to fire up the resource extraction economy, if we're going to if we're going to target the primary industries with more regulation, where does the New Zealand Where does New Zealand's growth come from. Where's that bet driver of economic growth and prosperity.
I think that's an overly simplistic argument. So if you look at agricultural pricing, for example, the government haven't said that they're not going to do it. They've just said that they're going to do it. And by twenty thirty, what have they done In the meantime They've created six more years of regulatory uncertainty for the primary sector. What's that going to do? Ultimately, it's going to delay investment in the primary sector and decarbonizing and reducing their methane emissions, because why would they do that if they don't know what the regulatory settings are going to be. I spent some time visiting farms two weeks ago, used the parliamentary recess as the opportunity to do that. They know that this is a big issue. They know that they're going to have to grapple with it because the market is already driving them towards that. If anything, they do need to see some regulatory certainty because the sorts of investments that they need to make are investments that are going to take ten to fifteen years to pay back. So will they make those investments now, no, they won't because they aren't going to do that if the whole regulatory environment's going to change by twenty thirty. So I actually think that the government should take the opportunity to try and find a bipartisan way forward because the issue around agricultural emissions is not going to go away. It's going to continue to be a challenge for New Zealand. The international market is going to continue to demand that we do something about it. And I think the biggest hurdle for our farmers is going to be lack of regulatory certainty and consistency. So I think they should be aiming to try and achieve that sooner rather than later. So I actually think they've left farming in a worse position in the sense of they've now got a huge question mark hanging over the terms of what's going to happen.
I mean, the sectors worried it will make them uncompetitive. They are highly productive, that they worried it will make them less productive and therefore less competitive internationally. I mean, is that a fair criticism.
I think the biggest risk to the sector at the moment is that international consumers stop buying their stuff, So you know, big companies Esclay, Tesco, Walmart. These are all major international brands have said that they're going for a reduction in their emissions and they're not going to be buying goods if we can't demonstrate that we're driving down our emissions in the process of producing those goods. There are a range of options for the primary sector. Electrifying farms is one of the ways they can reduce their carbon emissions, for example, but it requires a long lead time to both get that in place and then to pay add off. Reducing methane emissions, there is technology available that can be rolled out sooner rather than later, but you need regulatory certainty for that to happen.
Well, what about what about resource extraction mihining? You know, you must look over at Australia. They've got your very powerful unions but a very permissive culture when it comes to mining. You see immense wealth being dug out of the ground and that wealth being shared with labor thanks to title label laws. It's a very attractive kind of economic model to anyone from New Zealand, you'd think.
But the primary extractives that the government are talking about are coalon gas and coal and gas aren't part of our energy future and shouldn't be part of our energy future. So they're talking about reopening coal mines on the West Coast, and they're talking about drilling for more natural gas. Well, we haven't had a significant natural gas find in New Zealand since two thousand and one. Bearing in mind the oil and gas the expiration band has only been in place for the last five years or so. So the reality here is if there was a whole lot of natural gas, they're ready to be tapped into. You think they might have found that in the period between two thousand and one and twenty seventeen.
What about these other these climate free new minerals which are needed for the transition antimony? I'm maybe saying it right. They found that on the West coast. I think it could be. It can be very, very valuable. You know what, why not in the West coast long along a labor sort of stronghold. Obviously gon'ta blue this time around, but you know what, why can't they unleash the wealth from beneath their own feet.
I think anyone in the Labor Party is saying that we should turn our backs on the minerals that we need for example, to sustain the renewable energy revolution that's happening around the world. But there do need to be protections around the natural environment as we extract those minerals, So mining on conservation land, mining where it endangers biodiversity, these are areas of concern for us. So we've got to make sure that any regime that we've got in place around consenting for those sorts of activities actually adequately protects those things.
As a basic point, though, if you could, like coal and oil and gas accepted, would you like to boost mining New Zealand, we see it seemore mining.
I'm not opposed to the mining of some of the minerals that we may need for the renewable energy future, as long as there are appropriate environmental safeguards and place, as long as there are good consenting processes in place. But I don't think that's going to be a huge driver of the New Zealand's New Zealand's future economic growth. I think that's more likely to be in areas around renewable and energy. It's more likely to be in areas around digital technology. It's more likely to be in areas around sustainable food production. I think those are the sorts of things where we will see job rich opportunities for New Zealand in the future.
You've just finished your regional conference circuit, so there's been a bit of talk about this captain's calls now. Labour says that the idea of a captain's call is a bit of a media invention and a creature of New Zealand politics obviously, but there's no sort of formal captain's call process in that the captain's calls, that what are at leads to have been captain's calls are extras to follow course process.
That's right.
I mean, ultimately the leader of the party is entitled to have an opinion and if you want to call that a captain's call, go ahead. If you don't want to have the leader having an opinion, you're probably looking for somebody who's not much of a learner. So but the reality is that if we look at the last election campaign, our tax policy, lots of discussion about that, but our tax policy was ultimately signed off by the caucus. It was signed off by the party's policy council. It was not determined unilaterally.
Would you accept I mean, are you open to some sort of discussion with members about them having a bit more of a say in some of those decisions. I think, accepting that there is no such thing as a captain's call formally, there seems to have been a bit of disgruntlement about the way that the tax policy was handled. Would you accept members putting forward some changes to give them more of a say on those decisions in future?
I mean, we have a manifesto process, which I actually think is a pretty good one. It's a pretty robust one, and people might not always agree with the outcome from that manifesto process, but I think it works pretty well.
I mean, look, I suppose, let's face it'd be prettyfficult to bring Labor Party members into the beehive during an election campaign to give them a say on what your text policy is. But at the same time that there does seem to be a bit of an appetite on behalf of the membership to have a bit more of a voice in those crucial decisions. Is there anything you can see changing there to give them more say.
We've done a number of things since the election. We've just had our round of regional conferences. I intended every one of those regional conferences where there's some really good policy discussions going on. We've had a number of zoom sessions where we've got guest speakers coming in from around the world actually to talk with our members about policy development and new policy initiatives and ideas. So I think engaging members in the policy process is important in a political party, and we're doing a lot more of that than we did over the last six years.
And how's the text check going?
Text Check's very constructive.
Yeah, So you know, do you think we'll see a return of interest deductability?
Look, I mean what we'll see from US is a tax policy at the next election that will reflect labor values, but it will also fit within a broader economic strategy. You can't deal with text alone, you know, as an isolated as you it does has to fit within your broader economic strategy wealth tax. I know people will want to know what the text policy is going to be. We haven't determined.
We talked to about how national announcement is quite early on. Do you see some major policy announcements text or otherwise coming I suppose it would be next year. It would be the equivalent point in the political side.
I think you'll certainly see big policy announcements earlier from US this time around compared to last time.
And that would mean twenty twenty five paps.
I'm not going to put a specific timeframe on it, but I certainly think it'll be earlier than it was during the last campaign.
I mean the I'm sort of hesitated to waste more time about asking text when you don't have a tax policy, but the labor seems to be quite tortured by capital gains text. You went to two difficult, two difficult elections on a capital gains tax, and I suppose you almost went to twenty seventeen on a capital gains text because that was pretty clearly lurking in the wings there the party seeing to have a sort of it seems to have been burnt by that tax. And when you ask, when you ask sort of economists like what is it, what is a really sort of a gaping hole in the tax system? What would you like to see a government do tax wise? They often say, look, capital gains tax is a glaring emission in New Zealand's tax licy.
I certainly acknowledge if you look at what the banks are arguing, what the credit ratings agencies have argued what the I am ever argued.
They've all argued that our tax base is.
Too narrow, that our over reliance on PAYE is the main form of government taxation. Revenue actually disproportionately penalizes those who are salary and wage journers relative to those who were in their money through investment returns and so in particularly property investment returns, and so, you know, I think that's something that we there's a lot of argument about how best to do that. I mean, capital gains tax and wealth tax are actually variants of the same things. It's a form of taxation on capital. And so that's the process that we're working through now. If we're going to close that gap, what's the fairest, most equitable way of doing that.
And you don't think labor has been slightly sort of psychologically damaged by previous elections having been burned on it.
It certainly had an impact to the text policy that we had at the last election. I mean, the text policy that we had at the last election was absolutely informed particularly by twenty seventeen, and then again by what we said in twenty twenty. You know, one of the criticisms I get and it's really interesting is from people saying, oh, but you had three years, we had a majority wide.
Didn't you do it?
Well, we said in twenty twenty that we weren't going to do it, and I think it would have been bad faith with the electric for us to implement a wealth text or a capital gains tax when we had specifically said that we weren't going to do those things.
As someone who was a full time minimum wage Jurner would have would have had some of their income slip into the thirty percent tax bracket this year had the brackets not been changed. In fact, they will have because the brackets don't change until the end of this month. I mean, was that something that you could have countenance as Prime minister? Would you have locked this term to finally interest those brackets?
Does need to be more regular adjustment of tax brackets to allow for fiscal drag, and I do think we need a mature conversation as a country about the consequences of that and how we plug the gap that that will inevitably create in the revenue screams for the government. Because fiscal drag is a problem. I acknowledge that fiscal drag is a problem. But I'd also note that the last time that these tax brackets were adjusted was sixteen years ago, and Labour's only was only in government for six years of that. So actually you could argue that the national previous national government advantage was more advantage by fiscal drag than the labor government was.
And there's a reason for that.
It's because it's the only major source of revenue outside of GST that the government has to fund everything that we want government to do. So if we want to adjust tax brackets more regularly, and I think we should, and I think that's a fair argument, we need to have a way of plugging the gap.
And you think you would have done that maybe this term. You know, at some point this tom you would have looked at it and thought, you know what, you can't read have a minimum wage work on, a full time minimum wage worker having some of their income tax at thirty percent.
I mean, I think we should always look at how we can support people on the lowest incomes, and text is one of those ways one of the things that we need to look at. But also, I mean, one of the debates about income text that frustrates me is that the parties on the center right of the political spectrum have sort of been stressing for decades now that the way you're raising people's incomes is to cut their taxes. Actually, the way you raise their incomes is to make sure they're being paid more now.
And it's finished by talking about the government that you might perform. There's been what the Greens have had a tough year. It's called a spade of spade and to Party Malori obviously is having this problem with the multiple issues around Manudua Murai, one of which I believe was resulted from a label resulted in a Labor Party complaint about the way that campaign was run in the Tamaki Makodo electorate. Is it possible to build a bridge with the the Maori Party after such a fracture set of in particular in that seat.
I've got a pretty constructive relationship with both of those parties. I've always described the relationship between Labor and the Greens and more letter lead to Party Mahiti because of course they used to be on the other side of the political aisle to the one they're on now as a state of coopertition and you know, so we will cooperate on things, but we compete for votes and you know some of those, like the Tomachemakodo campaign, they become pretty tight and very very competitive.
And you know you've said there are what you're penning the outcome of the Motel investigations into that into that campaign. You know, you've said what the allegations rais are pretty seriously needs to be looked into. Do you think it's possible? I mean, there might need to be some serious change that to Party Malori for them to become a fully fledged member of a government that they literally.
I mean ultimately to Party Maori will have to determine whether they want to be a part of government or whether they want to be a campaigning for you know, you know, a crusading sort of activist protest movement. That's ultimately a question for them to work their way through.
The idea of a separate Maori parliament was raised in the HP report. I think I actually was trying to find out what we labor was on that I think might have said no to a supro Malori parliament. What do you think of that idea?
We have been very clear as a party that we're opposed to that there is one parliament and it is the New Zealand Parliament.
And what about returning to the co governance debates of the past. Do you think your future sort of tr Maori policy might might might relook at the idea of co governance or do you think, given the reaction from the elector at twenty three, might you might seek to address issues in the tr Maori space differently.
Well, we're certainly not going to go and remove all of the co governance models that have been put in place, largely under a national government's actually, because I think that would be wrong to do. I think we would think very carefully about where we might look to have co governance arrangements in the future if they're not already in place now, because I don't want it to be the polarizing issue that it was before the last election.
So you so think about it a different way of addressing similar issue.
Yeah, I mean there are still underlying issues there around how you involve Mardian decisions that affect them, and we do have to add answers to that. Co governance is only one of the ways that we do that as a country, and I would point out that a lot of the most successful co governance arrangements that we've got. I'm thinking of to uras, I'm thinking of the Waikato and Wanganui rivers. These are all put in place under a national government.
And finally, the Green's mean that disaster starts to thee from them where to begin. But Labour's not really capitalizing on that. In terms of the polling, why's that. I think you can capitalize on them.
To be honest, I'm always pretty ambivalent, not ambivalent, but I think we need to take polling at this point in the electoral cycle with a fairly big grain of salt. It's it's useful, but it's not an indication of where people are going to be two years from now when we head in the next election. If we were going to take polling as an indication of the last election two years before the last election, Labor would have comfortably won that election. So the reality is a lot changes over the term of a parliament.
Do you think. I mean, we've seen some terrible violence in the United States, and I'm so skeptical the way in which you could port United States politics to New Zealand. But there have been caused from the current presidents have turned down the temperature. Both the Greens and To Party Mardi have raised the temperature recently. I think deb Nardi were Packer said the smoke free reversal. The reversal of smoke free policy was systemic genocide of Maori. It's pretty intense. I think you called out that language at the time. Do you think those two parties need to sort of dial it down a little bit.
I think the ACT Party in New Zealand First also need to dial it down a bit. I think Mary are being used as a wedge in New Zealand in a way that's really unfair and I don't think it's going to be good for New Zealand and the longer term. I don't think it's going to bring New Zealanders together. I don't think it's going to tackle into generational equity issues than the way that we should be as a country. And I think ext national New Zealand First to Party madeo I think a bit less. So the Greens have been stoking there and I think they should all stop doing that.
So everyone should to take a look at themselves and just stile it down for the sake of political discourse.
I mean, I think political discourse should be a bit more civilized than some of it is. I mean, Christopher Lexan described me as an arsonist a few weeks ago, and you know, having having the week prior told me that I need to tone my language down. I mean, I think everybody needs to take a deep breath.
Well, thank you very much for joining us. And on the Tiles, Chris, I'll let you, I'll let you ge into your lunch. We've interrupted, interrupted the lunch breaking the labor labor party today, so I'm very sorry about that. All good. Thank you very much for joining us. That was on the Tile, the Herald's politics podcast. Thanks for listening, and thanks to Chris Epkins for participating in that interview. We'll have more on the Tiles next week. Ethan Sills was our executive producer. Thanks for listening.