Chris Hipkins has arrived at Ngāti Hine Health Trust in Kawakawa, Northland, where he is being welcomed in a pōwhiri with a rousing waiata from Kawakawa Primary School children.
Video / Michael Cunningham
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins came to Northland yesterday and said out loud what everyone living in the region knows to be true - our roads are not good enough.
Hipkins also said the region had historically been underfunded in a range of areas including education and health but that Labourhad been investing to reverse the trend.
In making the argument, he laid claim to the Provincial Growth Fund as a Labour Party idea and said the $650 million pumped into the region would have come regardless of its 2017 coalition agreement with NZ First which has always claimed credit for the $3 billion scheme.
It was a claim that blew up into a political row last night with NZ First leader Winston Peters saying it was always his party’s pitch in coalition negotiations - and he could prove it if Hipkins gave permission for the release of 2017 coalition documents.
On a flying visit to the mid-North, Hipkins spent the day hosted by Kawakawa and Moerewa-based Ngati Hine touring projects emblematic of Crown and Maori partnerships.
While there, he gave a speech in which he decried “race-baiting” politics and later said National leader Chris Luxon was condoning racism by not calling it out.
Hipkins was in the mid-North with Northland MP Willow Jean Prime and Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis, along with Whangarei MP, Dr Emily Henderson.
Speaking in Moerewa, Hipkins said the successive National governments had taken the region for granted because it felt assured of winning the seat, which it had on all but three occasions since 1938.
Hipkins ticked through a string of areas in which he said the North should have had more funding, listing roads, education and health among others.
On roads, he said the region’s roads weren’t up to scratch and his personal experience returning by road from Waitangi earlier less year led to him telling officials State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyn Hills needed improvement.
Hipkins said there hadn’t been enough spent on roads in the North and Labour had invested to strengthen alternate routes after repeated damage had closed State Highway 1.
He said his personal experience travelling by car to and from Waitangi this year led to personal intervention over the Brynderwyn Hills.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins in Northland, meeting apprentice builder Juan Brown. Northland MP Willow Jean Prime is pictured at the centre. Photo / David Fisher
At the time, the fragile State Highway link to the North was beset by slips and closures with traffic, on occasion, diverted through a circuitous rural route.
“I went back to Wellington and said we have to do something about the Brynderwyns.” In the latest policy statement on land transport it was now prioritsed and it was “probably going to end up being a bypass”.
“We have under-invested in roads in New Zealand for a long time and Northland has not had the level of investment (it should have).”
He said there needed to be a “robust, resilient highway” linking Auckland and Northland. “We don’t have that now.”
Hipkins said National had “ignored” Northland’s roading needs other than the bridges promised during its failed 2015 byelection campaign in the electorate.
Hipkins said: “National has neglected Northland for decades. The Labour government, even before we held the Northland seat, has been investing heavily here because so much of the infrastructure, including the social infrastructure, was so badly run down.
“We’re going to continue to do that for as long as we’re in government. It’s actually just the right thing to do.”
Hipkins’ day in the mid-North included visiting Bay of Islands Hospital in Kawakawa where a new hospital wing is set to be opened two days before the October 14 election.
Chris Hipkins at the Ngāti Hine Health Trust in Northland. Photo / Michael Cunningham
“The reality here is you didn’t have access to the health services that all of the people of Northland actually deserve to have access to. So we put a lot of money into making sure that you’ve got better hospital services.
“All of that was just being neglected. All those problems were just being ignored and they were getting worse ... to the point where the hospitals were so badly run down, the schools were so badly run down, that it’s taking us a while to catch up. But actually we are catching up.”
When Hipkins was asked if PGF funding would have come North without NZ First, he said it would have done and then claimed the $3 billion fund was Labour’s idea.
He said: “The Provincial Growth Fund was actually Labour’s idea. When we went into the coalition negotiations with New Zealand First, we put the Provincial Growth Fund on the table.”
He said it was Labour who brought it to the negotiating table in 2017 and “it was a Labour initiative”.
“Shane (Jones) deserves credit for being a very vocal champion of the project but actually it was a commitment by the whole of the government and Labour was the bigger party in the government.”
NZ First’s leader Peters challenged Hipkins to give him permission to release the 2017 record of coalition negotiations that led to the 2017-2020 government.
Image 1 of 9: The Kawakawa Primary School kapa haka group, who are one of the recipients of funding to support them attending the Te Mana Kuratahi National Festival, performs for the Labour leader.
“Hipkins was not even at the table on the negotiations. We have a record of the negotiations. It was entirely our demand. I was pushing it. This is the first time in six years anybody has claimed it was Labour’s idea. It is total desperation.”
Peters’ deputy Shane Jones - who was the Cabinet minister who oversaw the distribution of the money - said the PGF was first negotiated with the National Party and then taken to the Labour Party.
“We’re not going to allow red-headed magpies to burgle ideas. Stop! There’s a burglar afoot in Northland.”
