Category: Politics

Source: Radio New Zealand

The debate between Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Taxpayers Union chair Ruth Richardson seems unlikely to go ahead, with Richardson saying she won’t be part of a “circus or sideshow”.

Willis last week challenged Richardson – the former National Party finance minister who championed the so-called “Mother of all Budgets” – to a debate “any time, anywhere”.

Initially laughing off the request, Richardson agreed – but the pair have been unable to settle on a time, a location or a host.

Willis directly criticised the Taxpayers Union’s rhetoric at the Half-Year Economic and Fiscal Update opening of the books on Wednesday, coming armed with a copy of the group’s proposed solutions which she said would deliver “human misery”.

She said she was still up for the debate and would be available Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, and did not care who the moderator was.

However, in a statement later in the afternoon, Richardson said instead of a good-faith roundtable discussion in a Wellington Studio, Willis had pushed for an event at Parliament chaired by Winston Peters, which would be “a circus”.

“In the face of the level of fiscal failure revealed today, it is clear why she wanted such a distraction,” Richardson said. “The outlook delivered today is the worst in 30 years. It gets lost in the billions, but no one was expecting the books to be anywhere near this bad.

“The debate was supposed to be about whether there is a credible pathway back to surplus; today’s numbers show there clearly isn’t one. Over the last two years, Minister Willis has pushed back surplus another three years. If there is a so-called ‘path to surplus’, Willis is walking the wrong way.”

She appeared to pull out of the debate entirely, saying: “I will not be party to a circus or a sideshow designed to distract from fiscal failure.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Both Labour and the Taxpayers’ Union have hit back at criticism levelled at them by Finance Minister Nicola Willis, saying she must take responsibility for the state of the books.

Treasury’s Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) – published on Tuesday – showed a surplus was not forecast until 2029/30, although Willis said the government would still target 2028/29.

The expected deficit for 2025/26 was projected to be $13.9 billion, $1.8b worse than forecast in May. A slower economy, lower tax take, higher debt costs were cited as reasons for the revisions.

In her accompanying Budget Policy Statement, Willis mounted a defence of her “deliberate, medium-term” strategy, and attacked her opponents on both the left and the right.

She acknowledged there were calls for her to take a harder approach – and cut spending faster – and those who wanted a softer approach.

But Willis said going harder could hurt lower income families and depress demand in the economy, while going softer was “reckless and irresponsible”.

She used Labour’s opposition to the government’s savings measures to create a hypothetical Labour Budget, with an increase to the deficit and the debt.

Using Treasury’s analysis of the savings the government had delivered over its first two Budgets, Willis’ office calculated that if government spending in 2024 and 2025 had not been offset by its savings programme, then the OBEGALx deficit would be $25b, and net core Crown debt would be 59 percent of GDP over the forecast period.

“We have the receipts, and unfortunately for Labour, having opposed every saving that we have delivered, they cannot take a position of responsible fiscal management,” Willis said.

But Labour leader Chris Hipkins questioned whether Willis had factored in the government’s tax cuts to those forecasts, an initiative Labour would not have gone ahead with.

“We certainly wouldn’t have delivered the tax cuts that they delivered at the last election, which have now created the structural deficit that Nicola Willis is dealing to.”

Labour’s finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said the government and Willis had made the wrong decisions.

“She’s blamed Labour. She’s blamed Fonterra. She’s blamed Ruth Richardson. She’s blamed the unions. She needs to have a good, hard look at these books and reflect on the choices that she’s made.”

The Green Party’s co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the government had created a “doom-loop” for itself.

“They have underfunded our public services and infrastructure, they have completely gutted the circumstances necessary for creation of jobs and a productive economy, which in turn has meant they have lowered their tax revenue,” she said.

“All of this has meant that we are circling the drain as a country, and these are active government decisions. Different decisions can be made.”

At her Tuesday media conference, Willis brandished a policy document from the Taxpayers’ Union, which said abolishing Working for Families tax credits would save $2.98b in 2025/26, or $14.95b over the forecast period.

Willis said such a policy would take money away from 330,000 families overnight, with beneficiaries and low-income working families to bear the biggest brunt.

“It would create a level of human misery that I, for one, am not prepared to tolerate.”

The Taxpayers’ Union head of policy and legislative affairs James Ross told RNZ not all of the suggestions in the document had to happen, but the longer it took the government to make choices, the harder it would be.

“The real story is that for the third time in just two years, the minister has seen the surplus slip back and back and back,” he said.

In the HYEFU, the cost of superannuation payments was projected to increase from $24.8b in 2025/26 to $30.9b in 2029/30 (with the number of New Zealanders receiving Super tipped to cross the one million line in 2027/28).

Willis, who temporarily put on her National party finance spokesperson hat, said “all sensible parties” should take a position on superannuation into the campaign.

A policy to raise the KiwiSaver contribution rate, announced last month, was National’s “opening shot,” Willis said, in that the party sees KiwiSaver playing a greater role in people’s retirements.

ACT leader David Seymour agreed superannuation needed to be looked at.

“There is an obvious change that just about every country we compare ourselves with is making, and that is now inevitable in New Zealand. The question is are we going to make that change slowly and gradually in our own time, or have it foisted on us by some financial crisis in the future?”

Edmonds said Labour was not prepared to change the superannuation settings “at this point,” while New Zealand First leader Winston Peters asked what had changed to make people concerned.

“When it’s only 5.2 to 5.3 percent of our GDP, half the imposition that it is in other economies, how can this be the issue?”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Minister for Transport can’t say how many people are expected to lose their jobs as the government plans to merge multiple ministries with around 1300 staff in total.

Chris Bishop said the agencies involved are “very high-performing” but he acknowledged – while the intention is for “better government” rather than cost reduction – there will be “efficiencies on the way through”.

He said those efficiencies will be a decision for the new chief executive. Bishop planned to visit the agencies along with other ministers involved and speak directly to the staff affected over the coming days.

The government announced a mega ministry which will take on the work of housing, transport, and local government functions.

The new Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT) will bring together the ministries of environment, transport, housing and urban development and the local government functions of Internal Affairs.

Bishop said he currently had the “privilege” of being the minister for many of those agencies and they often provide different advice across different issues.

“We want coherent, integrated advice across some of the great challenges facing New Zealand, and we think this will help make a difference.”

The announcement was made to provide “clarity and certainty” to the public and the people who work in those agencies it was happening, given it had been talked about publicly for three or four months now, Bishop said.

He said careful thought was given to the timing of the announcement. With Christmas approaching, he said the alternative was to make the decision now and announce it in February next year. He pointed out that sort of delay would be legitimately criticised.

Bishop confirmed there’d been a range of scenarios considered as part of the advice received in relation to job losses, but that work couldn’t start until certainty was provided around the merge.

“That’s all for another day.

“It’s really important that the new CE gets in place, establishes a structure, works out exactly the business units and how it’s going to operate.”

Bishop said it wasn’t a decision they’d made “lightly”, but that it was the right one.

In the coming days, Bishop said he and other ministers would personally visit staff affected at all of the agencies. His message to them would be the same message to the public: “they are very high performing.

“They’re a high-performing agency full of high quality New Zealanders who are working for the public interest.”

He pointed to the work delivered by the Ministry for the Environment such as the Fast-track legislation, amendments to the existing RMA and new bills that would replace it.

“My message to them is they will be more effective once you bring together climate adaptation with local government and with transport and with housing, because climate adaptation spans all of those issues, and at the moment, it’s completely disconnected and they’re not working together as a team.”

Whether there would be a reduction in Cabinet roles, due to a consolidation of portfolios, Bishop said that was up to the prime minister.

Around $30 million of “initial up front investment” was required to bring the agencies together, but indicated there would be more efficiencies due to the merge after a couple of years.

Opposition’s response

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said “another expensive merger” of government departments wouldn’t be his priority while all the economic indicators are going backwards and things are getting worse for New Zealanders.

“The merger of MBIE didn’t deliver the benefits that the government then claimed it was going to deliver. This one’s not going to be any different.

“What it will do is cost taxpayers a lot of money in rebranding and reorganisation at a time when we should be focused on other issues.”

The Greens co-leader Marama Davidson said she’ll be keeping a close eye on whether this would result in more cuts to public services.

“We’d like to see if this is going to ensure that communities continue to receive the public services that they deserve, that they’re entitled to.”

She wanted to understand better what the government was trying to achieve with the merger.

“Certainly, if it’s about making sure that our communities are receiving the support they need – that could be a really good thing.

“I also want to understand if this is about more cuts to government services.”

Davidson said this government was “trampling over the top” of local decision-making and local government decision-making, and suggested a need to better understand whether the government was “authentic” about supporting local decision-making and ensuring communities get the services they deserve.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Finance Minister Nicola Willis is doubling down on her “disciplined” plan for returning the books to surplus – despite new forecasts delaying it by yet another year.

And she took aim at those advocating for sharper spending cuts, such as the Taxpayers’ Union, warning that that prescription would deliver “human misery”.

“We are sticking to our strategy,” Willis said. “Not over-reacting to movements in the forecasts.”

Treasury’s half-year update, published on Tuesday, predicted a return to surplus in 2029/30 – a year later than its forecasts in May. That’s using the coalition’s new OBEGALx calculation which excludes ACC.

“I wouldn’t get too wound up about small changes,” Willis told reporters. She said she would continue to aim for a surplus by 2028/29.

“We are on target to return the books to surplus faster than Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and many other advanced economies, while maintaining a prudent debt position.”

In her budget policy statement, released alongside Treasury’s update, Willis confirmed she would stick to her previously signalled operating allowance of $2.4 billion.

Existing pre-commitments meant that left just $1b a year on average for spending on new initiatives in next year’s Budget.

“Most agencies and ministers will need to plan to manage service pressures and other commitments with little or no additional funding,” Willis said.

Willis noted the downward revisions to forecasts were “relatively modest” but acknowledged they followed a similar trend over the past two years due to factors “outside the government’s direct control”.

The Taxpayers’ Union last week launched a campaign calling for Willis to cut public spending and debt more aggressively, accusing her of simply continuing the previous Labour government’s “sugar-rush economics”.

It prompted Willis to throw down the gauntlet, challenging its chair Ruth Richardson – a former finance minister – to debate her “anytime, anywhere” on the government’s finances.

The two have since been locked in negotiations over the conditions for the debate, including time, location and moderator.

Speaking on Tuesday, Willis said she had no update on that showdown but was still up for the debate.

“The offer is there. Thursday afternoon, I’m available. Friday morning, I’m available. I don’t really care who the moderator is. If they want to turn up, I’m ready.”

Willis explicitly nodded to the “shorter, sharper fiscal consolidation” being advocated by the Taxpayers’ Union.

She said while that would speed up the return to surplus, it could also hurt frontline public services and depress already-weak demand in a recovering economy.

Willis pointed out that the Taxpayers’ Union proposed scrapping all Working for Families tax credits, reducing recipients’ average weekly incomes by about $180.

She said beneficiaries and low-income families would bear the brunt of that change, delivering “a level of human misery” that she was not prepared to tolerate.

Willis said, on the other hand, Labour’s approach to spending was “reckless” and would further delay a return to surplus.

She said the government had delivered about $11b a year in savings during its term.

“Without this disciplined approach, this year’s deficit would be $25 billion and debt would be on track to blow out to 59 percent of GDP,” she said.

Willis promised to release more details to prove that: “We have the receipts.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

ACT leader David Seymour is promising to reignite the Treaty principles debate next year, saying he’ll never move on from his vision for equality in New Zealand.

Seymour – who’s deputy prime minister – made the comments in a sit-down interview with RNZ, reflecting on the past year and looking ahead to the 2026 election campaign.

The Treaty Principles Bill, championed by ACT, was voted down at its second reading in April, but not before provoking massive public outcry and the largest hīkoi to ever reach Parliament’s grounds.

The issue had largely shifted from public focus since then, but Seymour said he remained committed to the idea and “quite confident” in its long-term prospects.

“Our friends abandoned us and did not support us for the vote in Parliament,” he said. “But… we’ve planted the seeds of a movement of equal rights for this country that won’t go away anytime soon.

“I’ll never move on from the idea that we are all equal. Our universal humanity trumps any superficial differences in relation to race or culture… nobody can make those simple facts go away.”

The proposed law would have scrapped the existing understanding of the Treaty’s principles and replaced them with three new principles: that the government has the right to govern, that everyone has equal rights before the law, and that the only exception to that is where it’s set out in Treaty settlements.

ACT secured the legislation during coalition negotiations with National but did not receive any guarantees beyond its first reading.

National voted the bill down at second reading, calling it “too simplistic”, and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon ruled out entertaining another iteration as part of a future coalition.

Despite that, Seymour said he had not given up on the debate. He said ACT would campaign on the issue again but was still developing the exact shape of the policy.

“We will be campaigning on the idea that New Zealanders, whatever wave of settlers you may be part of, the first being Māori, or any later ones, you nonetheless are human beings with hopes and dreams and equal rights in this country.

“The mechanism and the vehicle for that, well… we’re not going to burn all our powder in the first few months.”

Indeed, ACT looked likely to hold back more of its policy offerings until later in election year, with Seymour admitting the party “peaked too early” in the 2023 campaign: “We were pooped.”

The Treaty principles debate resulted in some tense exchanges between the coalition parties, a dynamic which has played out again more recently over Seymour’s Regulatory Standards Act.

Despite voting for the legislation last month, NZ First leader Winston Peters swiftly vowed to repeal it next term. The National Party had also left the door open to rolling it back.

Initially, Seymour fired up, suggesting Peters was gearing up to support a Labour coalition.

But Seymour was now playing the dispute down, advising RNZ not to over-egg the parties’ differences.

Asked whether his partners had acted in good faith, he said: “I’m not getting into characterising other people or their faithfulness. My view is that this government has signed up to do it, and we would expect it to continue.”

Other internal differences this term included over firearms reform, with ACT twice invoking the ‘agree to disgree’ clause. The eventual Arms Act rewrite also fell short of what the ACT party had hoped for.

But Seymour said the outcome was still an ACT Party victory and would not have happened at all without its advocacy.

Asked whether he expected more internal feuding in election year, Seymour said ACT would remain “very collegial” with its number one focus on keeping the opposition parties out of power.

He noted the government had passed more legislation in the first two years than any other MMP-era parliament despite claims the coalition parties were “always warring and dysfunctional” .

“And to the extent that there has been disagreement, and some of it’s been public, I say, so what?” Seymour said.

“New Zealand needs to get better at having disagreement but still being able to work together. The alternative is cancel culture.”

Seymour acknowledged 2025 had been a “tough time for everybody” and said it was “no secret” the ACT party wanted more aggressive cuts to spending.

But he said he had been “really thrilled” with policy progress, arguing years of ACT campaigning had shaped major reforms across regulation, resource management and earthquake building standards.

Seymour said he had “every intention” of staying on as party leader up to the election and to then serve out another term.

“I still think that I’m getting better at it… I got into Cabinet, became the deputy prime minister… we’ve absorbed that pressure and we’re ready to go again.

“So long as I’m still growing, I’m still going.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is holding his post-Cabinet press conference, as Australia reels from the terrorist attack on Sydney.

Earlier on Monday, Luxon said he had contacted Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to offer support and condolences after 16 people died – including a shooter – when a father and son opened fire at a Jewish holiday celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach

“These were shocking and appalling images we saw last night; I was sickened as I watched it. Our thoughts go straight to the people who have lost their lives or their loved ones, or been injured. But also our thoughts go to the Jewish community in Australia, but also here and around the world.

“There is no indication of any New Zealanders caught up in the attack. Obviously, many of us know that area very well and there’s a lot of Kiwis in that area.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it is not aware of any New Zealanders involved in the fatal shooting.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is holding his post-Cabinet press conference, as Australia reels from the terrorist attack on Sydney.

Earlier on Monday, Luxon said he had contacted Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to offer support and condolences after 16 people died – including a shooter – when a father and son opened fire at a Jewish holiday celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach

“These were shocking and appalling images we saw last night; I was sickened as I watched it. Our thoughts go straight to the people who have lost their lives or their loved ones, or been injured. But also our thoughts go to the Jewish community in Australia, but also here and around the world.

“There is no indication of any New Zealanders caught up in the attack. Obviously, many of us know that area very well and there’s a lot of Kiwis in that area.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it is not aware of any New Zealanders involved in the fatal shooting.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Defence Force is brainstorming with local and overseas companies on how to improve intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in the oceans around New Zealand.

Its capability plans calls for spending $50- to $100 million over four years on long-range aerial drones.

But the NZDF in a new tender document said drones were just an example and it was open to any solutions for monitoring the South-West Pacific and Southern Ocean.

“The Persistent Surveillance (Air) (PS(A)) project aims to improve the NZDF’s ability to collect high fidelity ISR data, for longer durations, against a range of targets,” it said.

It is holding three workshops in January to hear back from industry, timed to get American, European and Australian involvement too.

“The workshops are designed to be brainstorming sessions that will identify innovative and viable opportunities.”

Initially, any solution might be owned and operated commercially but in future phases Defence could take over ownership, it said.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

In its penultimate sitting week of the year, Parliament was flat out, debating 12 different bills – 11 of them under urgency.

The week began with the hype around the Resource Management Act (RMA) announcement, but while two major RMA bills were introduced, they weren’t actually debated.

The small RMA-related bill that was debated, which extends certain consents, was contentious mostly because of the urgency and its very late reveal to the opposition.

The big flashpoints came later in the week, with two particularly contentious pieces of legislation debated through Thursday and until nearly 2am Friday, and the other through much of Friday.

The first of them was the Electoral Amendment Bill, back in the House from the Justice Select Committee, and given the urgency treatment for its second reading and committee stage.

The bill proposed some significant changes to general election rules, including shifting the enrolment deadline to 13 days before election day. That meant no more enrolling or updating your details on the day, something 110,000 people did on election day 2023.

The bill would also re-instate a wider ban on prisoner voting.

The government argued the earlier enrolment cut-off was needed to address slow vote-counting times. Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith told the House at second reading that “it now takes a week longer to get the official results after an election than it did prior to 2020.

“It used to take two weeks, now it’s three weeks and that’s an extra week of uncertainty for New Zealanders.”

He said the wait could be even longer, with the reality of coalition negotiations under MMP.

Despite this being the third consecutive evening under urgency, MPs were especially fired-up for this electoral bill. Labour’s Ginny Andersen was the first opposition MP to speak on it and immediately set a combative tone.

“Out of all the unethical, shady and dishonest things this government has done, I think this one is possibly the worst,” she said, “It’s stopping people from voting in the next general election.”

Describing the bill as a crafty sandpaper-on-the-cricket-ball-type move designed to tilt the game in the government’s favour, Andersen questioned whether the change would even speed up the count.

“The Electoral Commission told the Justice Committee that, even with all the changes present in the bill, there will be no difference between the time it took to count the votes at the previous election and the time it will take in the next election… so that begs the question, why is this bill being passed now?” she said.

Associate Justice Minister and ACT leader David Seymour attempted to flip the ‘gaming the system’ argument by comparing Labour’s 2022 electoral law change, regarding donations, to this week’s changes.

“It’s only three years ago that many of the people on that side of the House… passed a law that would require the disclosure of donations at a much different threshold than had been done previously, to effectively dox people who supported a party, but didn’t want to be publicly revealed for doing so,” he said.

“When it was revealed that that change would disproportionately affect the parties that they were about to campaign against, did they say, ‘Oh, we’re sorry, this is being done through venal motivations?’ No, they did not.

“They said, ‘It’s all about transparency’. Well, they can’t have it both ways.”

Once the bill’s committee stage began, it quickly became clear the opposition planned to make the government work for every clause.

After a long night of speeches and protracted voting, the House didn’t adjourn until 1.40am Friday, with the committee stage not actually wrapping up until 11pm.

As specialists in this content, the Justice Committee’s MPs, with little sleep, were back in the chamber at 9am to resume where they left off. It capped off an especially gruelling week and year for justice spokespeople, with four justice-related bills put through urgency this week.

Once the Electoral Amendment Bill was finally reported back – and the justice spokespeople had presumably slumped to their offices for a much-needed kip – fresh faces entered the chamber for the other major flashpoint of the week – the Climate Change Response (2050 Target and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

This bill received the VIP urgency treatment, passing through all debating stages, but skipping select committee (meaning no opportunity for public input).

It is a simple bill and primarily amends New Zealand’s targeted biogenic methane reduction (from 2017 levels), from a 24-47 percent, to a 14-27 percent by 2050, nearly half the previous target.

It was clear from the first opposition speech that they intended to dig into the methodology behind the new target during the committee stage, once again a hint at a gritty battle to come. Between the electoral reforms and the climate target reset, the two most controversial bills of the week consumed a hefty chunk of Parliament’s lengthy sitting time this week, pushing the House into an extra, nearly 15-hour long day of debating on Friday.

RNZ’s The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament’s Office of the Clerk.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Labour leader Chris Hipkins is promising voters will see a different Labour in 2026 to the party they turned their backs on in 2023.

The last election saw Labour’s six years in government come to an end, and Hipkins returning to the opposition benches just 10 months after becoming prime minister.

Speaking to RNZ for an end of year sit-down interview, Hipkins was keen to cast some distance between the government he led to defeat, and the party he will take to the next election.

“The country’s moved on. The challenges facing the country are different, and so the solutions have got to be different too.”

Settling on a tax

Hipkins said 2025 had been a big year for Labour, and releasing its tax policy had been one of the highlights.

The party finally ended speculation over what kind of tax it would pursue, opting for a capital gains tax over a wealth tax, targeted at investment and commercial property.

The revenue would be ringfenced and go towards three free doctors visits a year for everyone. A Future Fund, free cervical screening, and a GP loan scheme have also rolled off the policy pipeline.

Asked whether Labour had given any consideration to using the tax revenue to go into the general pot or pay down debt, Hipkins said one of the biggest fiscal challenges any incoming government would face after the next election was the escalating cost of healthcare.

“Our national obsession with buying up rental houses isn’t actually helping us to grow the economy, and that needs to change. So targeting a capital gains tax at that area in order to encourage more investment in the productive economy was our first priority,” he said.

“The second thing is, what are we using that money for? We’ve got a crisis in our health system. We’ve got to do more to keep people healthy.”

Paying for those promises relies on there actually being capital gains to tax. Hipkins said economic forecasts suggested house prices would return back to their long-run average.

A different Labour?

Labour’s challenge is to convince voters it is a different Labour to the one they voted out, and Hipkins believed the public was seeing that.

“The Labour Party has been through quite a period of renewal. But also what we’re offering New Zealanders is quite different now. We’re in a very different situation now to the one that we were in two years ago when we went into the 2023 election, and the answers that we offer New Zealanders need to be different as well, and they are.”

A message to the party at this year’s conference was it cannot “say yes” to everything.

That meant, Hipkins said, that any promises Labour would make at the election were ones it knew it could keep.

“We’ve had a series of governments now who have encouraged people to be aspirational for New Zealand and have promised things that have been completely unrealistic. I don’t think we can afford to do that anymore. I think people will lose faith in a whole democratic system if we see politicians continuing to do that, I’m not going to fall into that trap.”

Depending on your pollster of choice, Labour is marginally in front of National or marginally behind. Likewise, Hipkins is either just in front of Christopher Luxon as preferred Prime Minister, or just behind.

All of that is to say it is tight. It means the major parties’ fortunes are looking increasingly reliant on their potential partners, and Hipkins has a problem in the shape of Te Pāti Māori.

The party has never gone into government with Labour, and yet they continue to be grouped together, especially by the coalition.

Te Pāti Māori’s ongoing scandals and internal turmoil have led Hipkins to declare it is a “shambles” and not ready for government, and he wants Labour to win all seven Māori electorates to ensure Te Pāti Māori is not part of the conversation post-election.

The nature of MMP means parties usually need friends, but Hipkins is not resiling from his intention to eliminate Te Pāti Māori.

“Every election is different. There have been a whole variety of different outcomes in MMP elections. Parties have come and gone, and that will continue to be the case.”

He also will not entirely rule out New Zealand First, repeating Labour would signal who it will and will not work with ahead of the election, but with no commitment around a date.

“There’s a lot of water to flow under the bridge. My goal is pretty simple. If you want a change of government, if you want to see good, solid, positive leadership for the country, then vote Labour.”

Some big names have left since the election. Kelvin Davis, Grant Robertson, Andrew Little and David Parker have gone. The likes of Barbara Edmonds, Kieran McAnulty and Willow-Jean Prime have been promoted to the front bench.

“It’s actually a very different Labour lineup now. So if you look at our senior team, our front bench lineup, there’s only, I think, three MPs left there who were there before the election,” Hipkins said.

Despite the same person at the top of the list, Hipkins said it was a “very nice problem to have” that many people were putting their names forward to stand.

“Growing our support means we bring in a whole lot of new talent, and I’m really excited about that. I offer some stability, some continuity, some experience, and you know, I’ve had that brief experience of being prime minister, so I know what to expect.”

A cost-of-living election

Signs point to the economy being rosier by the time of the election.

Business confidence is up, and ASB recently predicted the economy would turn around in 2026.

Hipkins was not concerned that Labour’s attack line on the economy could be running out of runway.

“New Zealanders deserve an economic recovery that benefits all New Zealanders. This government are only focused on benefitting those at the top. New Zealanders need to see a recovery that they all feel, and they’re not feeling that from this government,” he said.

“They don’t think this government cares about them. They don’t think this government’s focused on working New Zealanders who go out there and flog their guts out every day to create a better future for the country. That’s what my focus is.”

The coalition has prosecuted Labour for the “mess” it inherited.

Hipkins conceded that 7.5 percent inflation in 2023 was hurting New Zealand families, and that was reflected in the way they voted. But he said other countries had bounced back quicker since then.

“Why is it that New Zealand has been such an outlier here? It’s because of the decisions of this government, not the previous government. They want to blame everyone for problems that they have created.”

Labour has promised it would repeal the Regulatory Standards Bill, and restore pay equity (although on that point, the party will not say how it will pay for the restoration, which saved the government $1.8 billion a year).

But there have been other cases where Hipkins has said Labour would not repeal legislation it has opposed, saying the public had no appetite for another repeal-and-replace merry-go-round.

That was also partly because Hipkins did not see the point spending the first years of a new term unwinding legislation, adding he was in favour of a four-year term.

An Auckland-focused campaign

Hipkins has previously conceded Labour was not “listening” to Auckland, as its vote plummeted in the Super City.

Previously safe seats like New Lynn and Mt Roskill flipped blue, while turnout in South Auckland strongholds was low.

Since then, Hipkins has spent a lot of his time in Auckland, and is convinced Auckland is now listening in return.

“It’s been a long, slow rebuild for us in Auckland, the first 18 months or so of this Parliamentary term. It was slow going, but we have seen, particularly in the last half of this year, a real increase in our support in Auckland and some energy really building behind our campaign,” he said.

“Momentum matters in campaigns, and we didn’t have the right momentum in the last campaign. That was pretty clear. You know, trending in the polling sort of started going down from July onwards, which meant that we got to that critical turnout period, and the momentum wasn’t with us.

“This is very different now. The momentum is building for Labour. We’ve got a good groundswell of support rebuilding. We’re going to run a very big and very aggressive turnout strategy at the next election.”

Hipkins said he would be spending a lot of time in Auckland on the campaign to ensure that turnout, and had also reflected on his own style of campaigning.

In contrast to the give-everything-a-go Luxon campaign, Hipkins sometimes struggled on the road, relying on a “good to see you”, a handshake and moving on.

Five-and-a-half days laid up with Covid-19 did not help. He exited isolation into the final stretch with renewed vigour, but by then it was too late.

Hipkins said now that he had “had a go” at a campaign, he would be doing things differently.

“I was balancing a lot of things during the last campaign, including the fact that I’d basically only just become prime minister and was trying to lead the country through some really difficult circumstances.

“This time around, I’ve had the opportunity to go through a campaign. I know what to expect. It will be quite different for me. We’ll be doing different things.”

New Zealand has not had an election where the prime minister and the leader of the opposition were the same person as the election before since 1993.

Just as then, the roles were flipped, with former Prime Minister Mike Moore going up against the man that ousted him in 1990, Jim Bolger.

And, just like Moore, Hipkins had not served a full term before being beaten.

“I was campaigning to re-elect a government that I hadn’t been the leader of for most of the time we’d been in government. This time around, I’ll be setting out quite a different vision for the country, quite a different set of priorities. And so it would be my opportunity to stamp my own mark on the campaign and on the next government.”

As for what the public could expect from a full term of a Chris Hipkins-led government, he said Labour would be better prepared.

“Becoming prime minister in the tail end of a parliamentary term is really hard, because you’ve got to both figure out the direction you want to take things in and reset everything that’s already happening.

“Campaigning in my own right for a new government will be quite different to that, because I’ll be able to set out: these are my priorities, this is where I want to lead the country, this is what I want my government to be about.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand