Prime Minister Chris Hipkins unofficially kicked off the election campaign this Sunday with a big speech at the Labour Party’s annual congress in Wellington.
Roughly 500 members and delegates were gathered in a conference room at Te Papa to hear their leader make the case for the party and his first 123 days as prime minister.
His speech hit all the classic Labour notes, starting with a nod to party founder Michael Joseph Savage and working through the list of leaders up to Jacinda Ardern.
But not every Prime Minister got a mention. David Lange was skipped, as were those who took the top job during a Labour Government but failed to win re-election for themselves.
These include Mike Moore, Geoffrey Palmer, and Bill Rowling. Hipkins will be hoping not to have his name added to the list.
Handing out Mr. Whippy ice creams in the parking lot afterwards, Hipkins attempted to capture some of the charm and personality of Ardern’s premiership.
She was not at the congress, perhaps because she could overshadow the new man, but she was evoked in Hipkins’ speech as he listed her government’s achievements.
Less children in poverty, extended paid parental leave, free school lunches, higher minimum wage, public holiday for Matariki, the Zero Carbon Act, almost 12,000 public houses, and so on.
“So let’s take a moment to say thank you, Jacinda, for your steadfast leadership, your perseverance, and for your unfading commitment to public service,” he said, to substantial applause.
Then he quoted his fellow MP’s grandfather, James Henare, saying: “We have come too far not to go further, we have done too much not to do more”.
But he neglected to mention Henare was a member and five-time candidate for the National Party through 1946 to 1963.
Hipkins said the role of leaders was to “light the path forward, not exploit the fear that comes from the darkness of uncertainty”.
“For some this is an age of hope, opportunity and acceptance. For others it is an age of fear, uncertainty and suspicion,” he said.
When he was asked at a press conference after the speech whether he’d run a “relentlessly positive campaign” like his predecessor did, he was only willing to say “a positive campaign”.
“But not relentlessly,” one reporter asked.
“We’ll run a positive campaign,” he repeated.
Saturday speeches at the party congress had featured rhetorically vicious attacks on the National and Act parties and personalities.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson said ChatGPT must have formed the National Party’s policies and its leader: “Captain Cliche himself”.
“I haven’t checked to see if he has six fingers on one hand, but I know he only has one policy on the other,” he quipped.
“They are like the most rubbish Marvel comic ever - Chris Luxon as Captain Cliché and his sidekick David Seymour as Reverse Robin Hood. Stealing from the poor to give to the rich”.
Not to be outdone on the name calling, National’s campaign chair Chris Bishop later responded with “Hypocritical Hipkins” after he promised not to lift the age of superannuation.
Raising the retirement age used to be Labour Party policy in 2011, but it now doesn’t think it is necessary after all.
Keeping it 65 was one of the policies Hipkins used in his speech to differentiate himself from National and Act, pleasing the predominantly older audience.
Not everyone in the room looked eligible for superannuation, but that demographic was definitely overrepresented — as they will be on polling day as well.
They seemed to be enjoying the event. Laughing, cheering, and even jesting with journalists.
“I’m one of the good ones,” a reporter from Newstalk ZB told one group of unconvinced Labour veterans.
They were more swayed by Hipkins’ stories of his working class parents.
His mother, a school teacher who worked nights to support the family. And his father, a retail worker at a department store until “the Brierley’s crew asset stripped it and it went broke”.
“As a teenager I watched my dad each night as he spread his accounts out on the dining room table. He wrote his carbon copy invoices by hand, totalling them up on a big old desktop Casio calculator”.
The oldies loved it. And, it echoed earlier remarks in the speech about the party’s “relentless focus on careful economic management” under Robertson.
“I have absolutely no doubt that Grant Robertson has well and truly earned his place alongside the likes of Sir Walter Nash and Sir Michael Cullen in the Labour Finance Ministers Hall of Fame”.
Hipkins and Robertson together found $420 million to announce its first election policy: permanent funding for the Apprenticeship Boost programme.
This was an Covid-era initiative of then Education Minister Hipkins who wanted tradies to keep training despite economic uncertainty.
It works by paying employers to take on and train new apprentices in their first two-years of an approved programme.
Budget 2023 extended its funding through to the end of 2024, but Labour would fund it indefinitely, if re-elected, at an approximately cost of $120 million each year.
“It will reinforce our strong message to school leavers, and in fact to all New Zealanders, that under Labour – the party of apprenticeships – the trades are a great career opportunity and we will back you all the way,” he said.
His closing pitch to the party was one that all Governments seeking a third or more term end up making: better stick with us, than risk it all with the other guys.
“We know how to lead and run a country. We are known and we are tested, and we can be trusted. We are ready for the tough battle ahead in October. Bring it on!”
He and his party walked off stage to Elemeno P’s 2008 jam ‘Baby Come On’, shaking hands and plotting ways to win in October.
60 Comments
I think labour supporters are trying to make excuses for the parties terrible performance. The only positives from labour have been an extra days holiday. Everything else from crime, child poverty to homelessness has been an absolute failure. No wonder JA ran for the hills. Labour have gone close to destroying the country. Given another term they 100% will. Oh forgot co-governance, and have a look at the principles of tax article…
At what point do we stop blaming the Government for the choices, and subsequent societal outcomes, of individual choices?
For example we have a huge social welfare bill, working for families tax credits yet widespread child poverty. Somewhere in the middle is money not going where it should be.
Just read the article in stuff on Queenstown accomodation and thought exactly the same. Here's a community that has individually and collectively chosen it's direction, and it's all about money and tourists. The Result is predictable and not the governments fault.
I didn't vote for Labour, but in their defense, I think the gun reform was a big win and something that certainly wouldn't have happened under Nats. The NZDF has seen some good investment under Labour, with new P8 Posoidon and Hercules aircraft, and the biggest salary catch-up in decades. I'm grateful for their banning of live animal export and we're hopefully about to see an end to the feral shitshow of rodeo. Labour has done some work towards reducing the contamination of our rivers and destruction of the environment. If you want to see a party quite literally "destroy our country" as you say, look at Luxon's unconscionable sellout promise to wind back environmental regulation. It's certainly been a challenging six years around the world and I think it's unfair to blame all our woes on the government.
I think the gun reform was a big win Really? I thought it was an epic failure! They made life completely miserable for law abiding gun owning citizens. They wasted over 200 million dollars of tax payers money collecting guns from people who don't contribute to gun crime. Worst of all the gun register is beginning on the 24th of June. We know from Canada's experience that Canada wasted about 2 billion dollars on a similar endeavor with no positive outcome. Labour are on target to reproduce Canada's failure? How is that such a "big win"?
Unless you're in law enforcement or the military, you don't need a gun. I dont particulary care about guns, but your view seems like an extreme ideological position which most New Zealanders would probably disagree with.
You understood what I said right? The gun register will deliver worse than zero return on investment from a tax payer point of view! Almost guaranteed to waste more than two billion dollars of tax payer money and deliver nothing, or worse negative returns.
Farming is one thing, but what about recreational hunting, and all the tourism and economic activity that goes with that. What about military historians who collect historically significant guns. Do we just throw all those people, and all that economic activity the wall because some woke lefties feel that that guns = bad.
Jimbo, I think you will find that Massey University do a survey every few years as to the political leanings of journalists in NZ. Last one was this year. More than 80% are left of centre and more than 50% are just plain left or hard left. So for all the Hosking's and du Plessis Allan's, their are 4 left wingers. And those are facts, not just made up nonsense.
Labour's performance has been terrible. I can't vote National because of their position on landlording. A weak economy calls for a strong leader. Neither Luxon nor Chippy are voteworthy I'm afraid. I attended a manufacturing show in Christchurch last week. The young engineers are desperate to be able to afford a home and the talk is definitely about leaving. Come on NZ, let's sort it out.
“The party of apprentices.” Well said & well proven too. Six years of it, while they learn the job and still in grade one. So Mr if Hipkins believes the electorate will choose a government of his party of apprentices with a racial faction already breaking ranks, the Greens back stabbing and vitriolic, and TPM out on the extreme of everything, then he may as well walk uphill on roller skates.
Maybe older politicians are wiser. Bringing diversity for the sake of it is not really helpful. Bring diversity, but of skilled people from diverse backgrounds is as it adds to the skill base. The “new blood” is unfortunately ideologically driven, and lack any real practical experience.
Damien Grant: Chris Hipkins fails the moral and competence tests to be PM
https://i.stuff.co.nz/opinion/132157503/damien-grant-chris-hipkins-fail…
I'm old enough to remember local firms (in England) having relationships with local schools so that they could tempt their best school leavers into fully paid apprenticeships. In those days, firms had to work to get the talent they needed, and they considered the cost of training young people up from scratch (often over years) as just part of doing business.
Of course, go back another few years, and unemployment was basically nonexistent. If you didn't like a job, you could walk out on Friday and start another one on Monday (and my dad did exactly that several times).
Scroll forward into the 80s and 90s, and a new economic model had emerged - one where a new economic orthodoxy required countries to maintain a buffer-stock of unemployed people to suppress wages and keep the unions weak. They came up with fancy equations and terms (NAIRU etc) to justify this new paradigm - and they completely bastardised and misrepresented the work of the best NZ economist that has ever lived - Bill Phillips.
Work became more transient and markets more global and 'free'. Firms argued that training costs (and many others) were something that should be met by Govts - 'we can't find skilled people' they said, and 'if you don't provide subsidies we will move somewhere that will''... 'You need us more than we need you'.
So, whenever I hear Govts talk about funding more apprenticeships or throwing subsidies at firms because they will otherwise leave, or another Adrian Orr speech about unsustainable levels of employment... I think, is this really how we should be running an economy in the 21st Century?
That’s true too, some of the incompetence I’ve seen in corporates is staggering. I was meaning more along the lines of taking on uni leavers and developing them, as opposed to importing trained workers. It can be real tough for young students to get their foot in the door.
Agreed.
Large corporates in NZ owe their size and strength to market reg/policy failures not their ability to innovate/invest to remain ahead of the curve. So, there is no real incentive for these businesses to hire local talent and can remain fixated on the cheapest option available.
These corporates also exploit their market powers to extract goods and services from within NZ at the lowest possible prices, leaving their small suppliers with limited means to spend on important things such as staff training and innovation.
Only 7 out of the top 30 NZ businesses cater to export markets - nz-en-Top-200-2022-Top-200-Index.pdf (top200.co.nz)
Zero real-world experience, just like JA. They make decisions based on poll's rather than any real world conviction. They are more concerned about their image/brand than getting stuck in and effecting change, even if it is uncomfortable. They have no conviction other than remaining in power.
I don't particulatly like Luxon or National, but they deserve their opportunity to see what they can do because Labour are abysmal.
How anyone can vote for Labour again now is beyond me. I think its just envy over Luxon having a number of houses while they are renting. Its a sad state of affairs if this is the case and you are happy to vote for the Labour party which are sailing this country up shit creek just to keep him out.
Its not going to make any difference financially to Luxon either way, he is still going to have all those houses and a high paying job be it PM or in the opposition. Labour has been a complete and utter disaster for this country, six years of hell in a handbasket. If Labour get back in, any sain person will be booking their tickets to leave NZ.
Labour are a no brainer for oldies - pension at 65, winter energy handout, free prescriptions etc. In fact the people they haven’t bothered helping are the working class they were founded by - we just get hit with tax bracket creep and none of the infrastructure that was promised.
Labour has good ideas but can’t deliver, National have no idea at all. At least you get tax cuts with National, but they haven’t really said what they will cut to pay for it.
"“relentless focus on careful economic management” under Robertson". On what actual planet? Printed money, caused inflation, borrowed 10's of billions, increased NZ's underclass, spent billions and billions but still wrecked health, education and law and order. Jesus, if that's relentless focus, I'd hate to see what happens if they think they have dropped the ball.
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