Source: Radio New Zealand
Labour leader Chris Hipkins. (File photo) RNZ / Mark Papalii
Labour leader Chris Hipkins says he’s confident his party has changed enough since the 2023 election to win next year’s contest.
Speaking to RNZ before Labour’s annual general meeting in Auckland on Friday night, Hipkins said the party was shifting from reviewing policy to campaign mode.
“The focus for us now is to really get onto a campaign footing. We’ve been consolidating after the last election, we’ve been reviewing all our policy.
“We’re largely through that process now and so now we’re really getting onto a campaign footing and getting ready to win the election next year.”
The party went back to the policy drawing board after voters emphatically voted it out off the back of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Roughly one year out from next year’s election, Labour had so far presented the electorate with a pared back policy platform.
It includes a New Zealand Future Fund, a gaming rebate and a capital gains tax to fund three free GP visits and cervical screening.
This time last year, Hipkins told Labour’s membership the electorate had voted for change in 2023, and the party would have to change to win it back.
“The policy announcements that we’ve made already are very different from the sorts of things we were talking about in government last time,” he said this week.
Casting his mind back to 2023, Hipkins said he had laid down his conditions on staying on as leader just four days after the bruising election result.
“I said to the team pretty clearly, if you want me to stay as the leader, one of the conditions for that is going to be that we are going to work cohesively together as a team and I will be focused on making sure that happens, and that’s exactly what has happened.”
Hipkins successfully pitched its long-awaited capital gains tax in October, though he was pushed to do so earlier than planned after details were leaked to RNZ.
It was hardly the start the party would have wanted for such a contentious policy, though Hipkins said the idea seemed to have landed well.
“We worked through the capital gains tax policy very, very carefully to make sure that what we were putting before the electorate was something that people could understand the need for and they could understand how it would work and it’s landed very well with the New Zealand public.
“Our work on the three free doctors visits, similarly, went through a very thorough process so that we could be confident that we could deliver on that commitment.”
Labour’s policy platform as it stood was one big bottom line for the party, he said.
“These are things that we will deliver on in government,” he said.
Labour has capitalised on voter disillusionment with the coalition, leading National on the cost of living, health, the economy and housing in the latest IPSOS Issues Monitor survey.
However on current polling numbers it couldn’t go it alone and would need the support of the Greens and Te Pāti Māori
Hipkins had been keeping the Māori Party at arms length ever since internal ructions began and had since laid out his party’s intention to contest all of the Māori seats.
“I think Te Pāti Māori has got themselves into a world of difficulty. They’re not in any fit shape to play a constructive role in the current Parliament, much less a future government.
“And that’s one of the reasons that we’re going to be out there to win every one of those Māori seats back at the next election. I know Māori voters want a change of government at the next election, and my message to them is, voting Labour guarantees you a change of government.”
Voters would have to wait until next year to learn more about Labour’s policy platform heading into the election, with only small fry ideas to come in 2025.
“There’s a little bit more to come. They’re not major announcements but they will colour in a few of the blanks for people,” Hipkins said.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
