Labour leader Chris Hipkins is promising his party will produce robust and realistic policies but he isn’t giving anything away as his caucus prepares for 2025.
Despite a day of brainstorming in Palmerston North for the party’s caucus retreat, Hipkins is refusing to give an indication of what might inform Labour’s policy manifesto come the 2026 election.
Citing his intention to release the bulk of Labour’s policy in election year, Hipkins also added his reflection on the party’s policy development when it last transitioned from Opposition to Government in 2017.
“Some of the commitments that we made and I’ve mentioned some of them, things like KiwiBuild, Auckland Light Rail and so on, we hadn’t worked through the exact details of how that would be and therefore we weren’t able to deliver on the commitments that we’ve made,” he said.
“That must not happen again, I don’t want that to happen again.”
All Hipkins would divulge was to expect policy announcements “in the coming months”.
“You’ll hear more from us as the year progresses around the different approaches, the different direction that we would take as an alternative government.”
Hipkins explained the party would be seeking more “external advice” during the policy development stage to ensure policies could be delivered on.
“It’s about making sure we’ve done all of that work before the election.”
Hipkins’ reticence to espouse under-cooked policies was reflected in his comments opening the retreat in which he admitted Labour had struggled to answer voters’ questions on economic recovery, crime mitigation and job creation during the 2023 election.
“That’s one of our challenges as we develop our policies for the next election, we’ve got to have more to say on all of those things.
“But we also heard some home truths from [voters], that they felt that across our six years in government, we’d often over-promised and under-delivered.”
Hipkins’ frank reflections on Labour’s past errors formed only a small portion of his public comments in what had been a largely upbeat retreat.
Labour MPs, fresh from a summer break, appeared jovial as they gathered for the annual caucus in a sunny Palmerston North.
As his political rival was delivering a State of the Nation in his usual blue suit, Hipkins persisted with summer attire wearing shorts and jandals which he insisted made up one-half of his “smart-casual” look, paired with a white button-up shirt.
While the Distinction Hotel may not have been the most appropriate place for his choice of footwear, Hipkins’ relaxed attitude appeared to be reflected in his MPs.
Many would have taken pleasure in seeing the latest Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll this month that put Labour above National for the first time in almost two years. The poll also found more people believed the country was heading in the wrong direction.
Never one to trumpet the results of a single poll, Hipkins had clearly used it to inform his strategy to be more vocal in 2025.
“I think what we can already hear from New Zealanders is that they’ve seen enough of this Government to know that they don’t like it,” Hipkins said as his MPs murmured in agreement.
One of Hipkins’ priorities in 2024 had been to refrain from “barking at every passing car”.
While he cautioned against embracing that strategy completely in 2025, Hipkins declared Labour would be “ramping up the pressure”.
“We’re going to make sure we’re looking at using every avenue that we have available to us to dial up the volume there a little bit.”
Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.