Speaker 1: Hilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Labor Party
Speaker 2: leader Chris Hipkins has told the party it must change
Speaker 2: if it wants to regain the trust it's lost. The
Speaker 2: party held its annual conference in christ Church at the weekend,
Speaker 2: the first time its members of met since the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three election defeat. The party has inched closer to
Speaker 2: campaigning on a wealth tax or a capital gains tax
Speaker 2: at the next election after members passed a proposal to
Speaker 2: move the idea forward, and it's made three major promises
Speaker 2: a full Dneden Hospital, rebuild, rail enabled ferries and not
Speaker 2: getting involved in orcus. As the coalition government deals with
Speaker 2: contentious policy and flat pole results. Can Hopkins pull off
Speaker 2: a win in twenty twenty six? He joins us today
Speaker 2: on the Front Page to discuss the path ahead for Labor.
Speaker 2: First off, pres we're a year into this new coalition government.
Speaker 3: What do you make of it? Oh? I mean, I
Speaker 3: think the government's had a pretty bumpy start. It was
Speaker 3: always going to be a challenged for them to pull
Speaker 3: together three parties with quite different views of the world
Speaker 3: and sort of certainly some personal animosity amongst the party leaders.
Speaker 3: You know, Winston Peters and David Seymour's dislike for one
Speaker 3: another is well known and clearly hasn't debated since the
Speaker 3: government has been formed. But they've made things worse for
Speaker 3: New Zealand in the decisions that they've taken. So it's
Speaker 3: a challenging time economically around the world at the moment,
Speaker 3: and the government making decisions to massively cut back government spending,
Speaker 3: cutback infrastructure projects and so on has actually made a
Speaker 3: tough economic environment even tougher for.
Speaker 2: Kiwi's Well, Winston and David haven't ripped each other's heads
Speaker 2: off in public yet, have they.
Speaker 3: They've certainly, you know, of anything. They've both been taking
Speaker 3: pop shots at the Prime minister instead, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think that's somewhat new for New Zealand to see
Speaker 3: the deputy prime Minister from a different party saying that
Speaker 3: he thinks the Prime Minister is struggling in his job,
Speaker 3: and to have David Seymour and Christopher Luxen basically criticizing
Speaker 3: each other in public. I don't think we've seen that before,
Speaker 3: even an MMP where there's agree to disagree. I think
Speaker 3: generally there's still been a respectful relationship between party leaders.
Speaker 2: Luxeon's leadership has been called into question in recent weeks.
Speaker 2: How do you rank him personally? Like, where do you
Speaker 2: think he sets compared to other former prime ministers?
Speaker 3: I think probably the one and only time you'll find
Speaker 3: me agreeing with Winston Peters actually is I think he
Speaker 3: is struggling in the job. I think he's brought board
Speaker 3: a corporate mindset to running the country, and the country
Speaker 3: isn't a corporation. In a corporation, you can decide to
Speaker 3: make people redundant and basically then there's someone else's problem,
Speaker 3: and you can say this group of customers is a
Speaker 3: group of customers, We're no longer going to chase as
Speaker 3: a company. You don't get to make those sorts of
Speaker 3: decisions in running a country. Everybody is your problem, everybody
Speaker 3: is your customer, everybody is your responsibility. I think he's
Speaker 3: kind of struggling with that a little bit, because the
Speaker 3: process of government doesn't stop just because you've decided that
Speaker 3: your priorities are elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Is he a bad prime minister?
Speaker 3: Oh? I mean people for form their own views about that.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of new Zealanders think he's a
Speaker 3: bad Prime minister, and I think they've got good grounds
Speaker 3: for that.
Speaker 2: You've said Labor needs to regain the public's trust after
Speaker 2: a historic defeat. How are you going to start.
Speaker 3: I think the public want to see us getting back
Speaker 3: to the basics of what Labour stands for, making sure
Speaker 3: that we are focused on how we can bring the
Speaker 3: country back together. I think this government's creating a lot
Speaker 3: of division and they want to know that we have
Speaker 3: an approach that's going to end that division and bring
Speaker 3: people back together again. And I think also just demonstrating
Speaker 3: that we do know we lost. You know that we
Speaker 3: have reflected on why we lost and that we change
Speaker 3: as a result of that. You know, we we're not
Speaker 3: going to rerun the twenty twenty three election campaign. That's
Speaker 3: a campaign we lost, and so twenty twenty six we
Speaker 3: need to offer different things and we need to be different.
Speaker 4: But making sure that we've got inflation now within the
Speaker 4: band first time in three and a half years. You've
Speaker 4: had three interest rate cuts in twelve months.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic.
Speaker 4: You've got rising confidence at annual highs right.
Speaker 1: In the last three years.
Speaker 4: Constitution, especially credibility. We see growth. That's what we've got
Speaker 4: to call. We're not seeing growth. We're actually again you
Speaker 4: can't point to any growth. Get some naive to be
Speaker 4: honest with you, to say, look, we had six years
Speaker 4: of economic mismanagement and in twelve months we're supposed to
Speaker 4: fix that all or at someone I need to say
Speaker 4: that the previous government had a credibility problem because they
Speaker 4: pushed the years and government when you're doing exactly the
Speaker 4: same thing we've had twelve months.
Speaker 2: When do you think the cutoff period is when a
Speaker 2: new government can stop blaming in old governments for its problems.
Speaker 2: Do you reckon it's about now?
Speaker 3: I think it's totally I think it's long gone. Actually,
Speaker 3: I mean they up to their first budget, yep. I
Speaker 3: guess you get to say, oh, well, the previous government
Speaker 3: made all these decisions and you know we're just having
Speaker 3: to live with those. But once you get through a budget,
Speaker 3: you know that's your chances of government to really reset
Speaker 3: everything and to say well, okay, that spending decisions that
Speaker 3: the government's taken are now ours. And I think you
Speaker 3: know it's well and truly time for them to accept
Speaker 3: responsibility for the fact that under their watch and as
Speaker 3: a result of their decisions, the New Zealand economy is
Speaker 3: getting worse and key we households are going backwards.
Speaker 2: Isn't the economy getting better?
Speaker 3: Though? If you've just lost your job and unemployment is
Speaker 3: forecast to continue to increase, I think you'll find the
Speaker 3: economy is getting worse overall. You know, New Zealand is
Speaker 3: not where it needs to be. Other economies are rebounding
Speaker 3: much more healthily than New Zealanders get to.
Speaker 2: The weeknd Labor held its conference in christ Church. Labor
Speaker 2: will build dened In Hospital as it was committed to
Speaker 2: prior to the election in twenty twenty three. Now the
Speaker 2: project's been dogged by delays. There's been a budget overruns.
Speaker 2: The cost has now belonged to three billion dollars from
Speaker 2: an original one point two to one point four in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. How on earth are you planning on paying
Speaker 2: for this?
Speaker 3: To be fair, there were delays in the beginning, but
Speaker 3: actually we have made a lot of progress on We
Speaker 3: did in government make a lot of progress on the
Speaker 3: Darnedan hospital. So the outpatients building, which is about a
Speaker 3: third of the new hospital, is almost finished actually and
Speaker 3: should be opening shortly that's great news for Dunedin in
Speaker 3: terms of the main part of the hospital, so you
Speaker 3: know the part where if you're admitted you stay overnight,
Speaker 3: that that larger part of the hospital. The current government
Speaker 3: have made a number of claims about the cost escalation
Speaker 3: of that that simply don't stack up when closer scrutiny
Speaker 3: is applied. So they've included in this supposed cost blowout
Speaker 3: things that were never the original cost in the first place,
Speaker 3: like car parking buildings and a new lab which was
Speaker 3: always visioned probably to be built by a private sector
Speaker 3: contracted provider, because that's the way lab services across the
Speaker 3: country often end up being provided. But it all comes
Speaker 3: down to choices and trade offs as well. So they
Speaker 3: found two hundred million dollars to give a tax break
Speaker 3: to tobacco, They found nearly three billion dollars for tax
Speaker 3: breaks for landlords, and then overall, I think the tax
Speaker 3: breaks for other kiwis that they gave out it was
Speaker 3: about twelve billion dollars in the budget. So it comes
Speaker 3: down to choices that you make as a government.
Speaker 2: Won't the cost climb even more by the time you're
Speaker 2: in government if you win the cost.
Speaker 3: Of these projects never goes down. But the longer you
Speaker 3: take to do them, the more expensive they become, which
Speaker 3: is one of the reasons why they should just get
Speaker 3: on with it and build the hospital. And my experience
Speaker 3: and I oversaw a lot of school rebuilding projects. You
Speaker 3: just want to get them done. Every time you slow
Speaker 3: them down for another review, you're just the cashridge is
Speaker 3: to goes kitching, kitchin kitching. You know, all of these
Speaker 3: reviews are one of the reasons why everything, the costs
Speaker 3: keep blowing out on everything.
Speaker 2: Also, a publicly owned into island ferry connection, including some
Speaker 2: kind of rail transport. What does that look like, Well.
Speaker 3: It means that we've got to have fairies that you
Speaker 3: can drive trains on and off. And bear in mind
Speaker 3: too that this is about making sure that we've got
Speaker 3: the most efficient ferry service for New Zealand. A ferry
Speaker 3: service that you can't drive trains on and off. Ultimately
Speaker 3: then transfers cost back on to freight providers, which then
Speaker 3: transfers cost back on to customers. An investment in a
Speaker 3: reliable ferry service is actually an investment in a productive economy.
Speaker 3: Then did Treasury do this thing called a BCR benefit
Speaker 3: to cost ratio analysis. The benefit cost ratio even at
Speaker 3: the higher price for the inter island ferry was something
Speaker 3: like four point eight, So for every dollar you spend
Speaker 3: you get about four point eight dollars back. The cost
Speaker 3: benefit ratio for the billions of dollars they're going to
Speaker 3: spend on the road from Auckland to fungat A is
Speaker 3: about one, so you get one dollar back for every
Speaker 3: dollar that you spend. So you know, again it's about
Speaker 3: choices and trade offs. This government a choosing to say, well,
Speaker 3: roads are everything, and interrland ferries and rail connections are
Speaker 3: not important. Actually they are important because if you want
Speaker 3: better roads, getting freight off the roads and onto rail's
Speaker 3: going to be a good way of delivering that.
Speaker 2: So New Zealand won't be signing up to AUCUST pillar
Speaker 2: two under a labor government. We know that pillar one
Speaker 2: involves the nuclear powered subs, but Pillar two involves sharing
Speaker 2: and developing high tech defense technology. Why this turnaround on
Speaker 2: AUCUST Pillar two.
Speaker 3: We've always been very skeptical of UCUS. Aucus fundamentally is
Speaker 3: a nuclear powered submarine pact between those three countries, and
Speaker 3: we're a nuclear free country.
Speaker 2: But that's the pillar one we're looking at Pillar two.
Speaker 2: Now that's the technology and AI aspect of it.
Speaker 3: Right, The two things are related though, you know, the
Speaker 3: Pacific is a proudly nuclear free region. Who in the
Speaker 3: Pacific countries have made it very clear, and they're very
Speaker 3: important relationships for New Zealand that they are also opposed
Speaker 3: to Aucus. So I think you can't separate those two
Speaker 3: things completely. In terms of coordinating with those other countries
Speaker 3: around things like military technology, around things like intelligence sharing,
Speaker 3: we already have arrangements to do that. So you know,
Speaker 3: we have a formal alliance, a formal ally relationship with Australia.
Speaker 3: We have a five country relationship with those three countries
Speaker 3: including and then adding Canada into that, which gives us
Speaker 3: access to a lot of the stuff that's happening around
Speaker 3: intelligence but also around technology. And we think that we're
Speaker 3: best to stick with those relationships rather than be involved
Speaker 3: in a relationship which is proving to be incredibly antagonistic
Speaker 3: in it within the.
Speaker 2: Region, antagonistic to China, though primarily right, not just China.
Speaker 3: Actually the Pacific of finding have raised a lot of
Speaker 3: concerns about nuclear prospect of nuclear ships in the Pacific
Speaker 3: as well, and so I think we shouldn't be blind
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 2: Andrew Little's come out backing the current government's decision to
Speaker 2: investigate our potential involvement in Pillar two. Here's, of course
Speaker 2: our former Defense Minister and Intelligence Agencies Minister, and of
Speaker 2: course a former leader of the Labor Party. Do you
Speaker 2: trust his judgment?
Speaker 3: I think Andrew Little's got you know, he was a
Speaker 3: fantastic minister. Doesn't mean we're going to agree on everything.
Speaker 3: We didn't agree on everything when we're in government, and
Speaker 3: I'm sure we won't now, and as a former parliamentary
Speaker 3: and he's free to share his used however he wishes.
Speaker 2: And the parties are passed a proposal to take forward
Speaker 2: work on a capital gains tax and a wealth tax
Speaker 2: and stop any work on other forms of tax. Does
Speaker 2: this mean it'll very likely be a part of your
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six campaign.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't comment on the remits that get past
Speaker 3: at conference, but I've said right at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the year that we needed to do work on tax policy,
Speaker 3: and we needed a different tax policy ahead of the
Speaker 3: next selection, which is what we're working on at the moment.
Speaker 3: Any remits that get passed at party conference help to
Speaker 3: inform that policy development process. But we're a long way
Speaker 3: away at this point from having a finalized approach to
Speaker 3: text because you can't just look at tax and isolation.
Speaker 3: You've also got to look at you know, what are
Speaker 3: you taxing for, what are the things that you're funding,
Speaker 3: where's that money going to go, how's it going to
Speaker 3: be applied, what are the consequences for other taxes, and also,
Speaker 3: you know, what are the things you're trying to do.
Speaker 3: Are you trying to you know, I believe we need
Speaker 3: to incentivize more productive investment in our economy rather than
Speaker 3: speculative investment.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty three, you ruled out in introducing a
Speaker 2: wealth tax or CGT if re elected. That was before
Speaker 2: the last election. Of course, now it's back on the table.
Speaker 2: Has it got anything to do with labor likely needing
Speaker 2: the Greens and Tabatti Mali in order to form a
Speaker 2: government next time?
Speaker 3: No, not at all. I said before the last elections,
Speaker 3: As I would say in you know, every election, you
Speaker 3: should form your policies for the next term of government,
Speaker 3: and then if you've got to change those, then you
Speaker 3: change them at the next election so that people can
Speaker 3: vote on them. I said when I said that we
Speaker 3: wouldn't implement a wealth tex or a capital gains tax.
Speaker 3: I was very clear that that was the commitment that
Speaker 3: I was making for the next term of government. You know,
Speaker 3: should our position change, that were the time we would change,
Speaker 3: that would be at the next election.
Speaker 2: Last week we spoke to politics professor Bryce Edwards and
Speaker 2: asked him about how the opposition parties were performing, and
Speaker 2: he didn't think you guys were doing a great job
Speaker 2: of holding the government to account.
Speaker 1: If you look back on the last year, I think
Speaker 1: the government has had lots of areas that needed to
Speaker 1: be more strongly critiqued on, especially things like the Fast
Speaker 1: Track Act, especially on a lot of the ways that
Speaker 1: it seems to be governing for vested interests or the wealthy.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that Labour's done it a good
Speaker 1: enough job of highlighting some of those. Yeah, those deficits.
Speaker 2: What do you make of that?
Speaker 3: Well, I disagree. I think if you look at on
Speaker 3: issues that where the government's been divided in the country,
Speaker 3: like the tr Principle spill, you've seen a very united
Speaker 3: approach from the opposition parties. If you look at areas
Speaker 3: like the health system, for example, I think we've applied
Speaker 3: real pressure to the government on their issues, on the
Speaker 3: things that they're trying to do around deregulation of guns. Again,
Speaker 3: I think we've really kind of stepped up the pace
Speaker 3: there in terms of the pressure we've applied. But what
Speaker 3: I've also said, and I think you know New Zealanders
Speaker 3: have a lot of sympathy for this, is they get
Speaker 3: sick of politicians criticizing their opponents for doing something that
Speaker 3: they themselves would do, or opposing something which then they
Speaker 3: get into government and do exactly the same thing they've opposed.
Speaker 3: So I've said that we're the government are doing things
Speaker 3: that we would ourselves do in government. There will be
Speaker 3: constructive rather than obstructive, and I think actually New Zealanders
Speaker 3: want to see that from their politicians.
Speaker 2: What's something the government's done that you've thought that that's
Speaker 2: a good job.
Speaker 3: Look, it's kind of difficult because there's not a he
Speaker 3: give a lot that I think they've been doing well.
Speaker 3: But I think some of the there are a few
Speaker 3: decisions they've taken that might have some early promise. So
Speaker 3: if I look at the infrastructure space, for example, I
Speaker 3: agree with the government that we need a much longer
Speaker 3: term approach to planning infrastructure investment. The short term nature
Speaker 3: of our thinking around infrastructure in New Zealand is one
Speaker 3: of the reasons we're in the mess we're in now,
Speaker 3: and so if they can come up with things that
Speaker 3: will help the country to achieve that, then I think
Speaker 3: we can be supportive and we can be constructive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that certainly makes sense when you're talking billions
Speaker 2: of dollars for say a couple of ferries, or billions
Speaker 2: of dollars for a second Auckland bridge, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Right absolutely. I mean, if you look at Auckland light Rail,
Speaker 3: you know we had work underway on Auckland light Rail.
Speaker 3: It's a big project and I think the time frames
Speaker 3: that we had previously put out were unrealistic and I've
Speaker 3: said that, but Auckland is going to need mass, rapid
Speaker 3: transit are given the scale of population growth there. Within
Speaker 3: the next decade, Auckland could have two million people and
Speaker 3: you've got to be able to get around. And even
Speaker 3: with more investment and roads, there's still going to be
Speaker 3: road congestion. The only way you're going to tackle that
Speaker 3: is by making sure that you've got good alternative options,
Speaker 3: which includes public transport. So I think we need a
Speaker 3: plan around Auckland that says, over the next twenty to
Speaker 3: thirty years, what's the transport infrastructure we need. And so
Speaker 3: even if the current government came in and said, Okay,
Speaker 3: we don't think Auckland light rails an immediate priority, why
Speaker 3: scrap it all together? Why not just continue with the planning,
Speaker 3: the design, the consenting work so that at a future
Speaker 3: point we can continue the momentum on it. Even if
Speaker 3: they said, and their priority for construction is going to
Speaker 3: be new roads, why don't they continue with the planning
Speaker 3: on the stuff which they might not want to do immediately.
Speaker 3: I think that is the sort of that's the sort
Speaker 3: of thinking that we need around infrastructure. So I've said
Speaker 3: when we come into government next time, and I want
Speaker 3: that to be after the next selection, That's what I'm
Speaker 3: aiming for. We're not going to stop everything just because
Speaker 3: the previous government started it. I think we've got to
Speaker 3: make sure that we keep the wheels of infrastructure investment
Speaker 3: moving so.
Speaker 2: We look overseas gaffes and controvert your policies didn't really
Speaker 2: stop Donald Trump getting re elected last month. Hey, the
Speaker 2: economy and cost of living remains a top priority for
Speaker 2: voters here and overseas. Do you think labor has a
Speaker 2: chance in twenty twenty six, even if the economy picks
Speaker 2: up under.
Speaker 3: National I think one of the things that Donald Trump
Speaker 3: tapped into, and I think it's very important for all
Speaker 3: Western democracies to think about, is the fact that the
Speaker 3: economy isn't working as it should for a larger and
Speaker 3: larger group of people. So if you look at the US,
Speaker 3: for example, under Biden, their economy was growing, they were
Speaker 3: creating new jobs, but people weren't feeling that they were
Speaker 3: actually feeling at a household level like they were going backwards.
Speaker 3: And I think the same thing is happening here is
Speaker 3: even if say GDP growth numbers improve, and frankly it'd
Speaker 3: be hard for them to do otherwise given how bad
Speaker 3: they've been. But even if they do start to improve,
Speaker 3: then if people are still feeling like, oh, our household
Speaker 3: costs are still going up, our salary and wages aren't
Speaker 3: going up, and we feel like we're going backwards. Think
Speaker 3: that's the space where I think we're very rightly frustrated.
Speaker 3: And I think if you look over the last forty
Speaker 3: odd years since we embarked on some pretty radical reforms
Speaker 3: in the nineteen eighties New Zealand households. A lot of
Speaker 3: New Zealand households have been going backwards.
Speaker 2: And finally, Chris, while we're on Trump, he managed to
Speaker 2: of course, when reelection after a defeat, are you confident
Speaker 2: you can do the same in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I wouldn't still be here if I didn't think that.
Speaker 3: You know, we're getting really strong support from New Zealanders,
Speaker 3: even you know, when I've been out and about, there's
Speaker 3: plenty of people who have come up and said, look,
Speaker 3: we didn't vote for you last time because x Y
Speaker 3: and Z, but we're open to voting for you next time.
Speaker 2: What was x Y and Z?
Speaker 3: Oh's the things that we just talked about before, you know,
Speaker 3: cost of living, crime. I think people just wanted to
Speaker 3: get over COVID. They just wanted to forget about it
Speaker 3: and move on. And also the fact that they were
Speaker 3: a bit dissatisfied with the fact that we had taken
Speaker 3: on so many big reform projects all at once, and
Speaker 3: they wanted a sense that we were focusing on getting
Speaker 3: the basics right. So those are all messages that.
Speaker 2: We've heard and Are you personally committed to lead labor
Speaker 2: into the next election? Will you be heading Labor?
Speaker 3: I absolutely will be wonderful.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Chress.
Speaker 3: Good as Gold, happy to talk to you.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzedherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Speaker 2: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 2: tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.