In the aftermath of the 2023 election, 2024 loomed as quite a challenging 12 months for the Labour Party and its leader Chris Hipkins.
Receiving just 26.9% of the vote after achieving New Zealand’s first single-party majority government under MMP was seen as a clear repudiation of Labour and Hipkins himself, who had been Prime Minister less than a year before he was sent back to Opposition.
Enter New Zealand’s first three-party coalition in the form of National, Act and New Zealand First, who promptly went about unravelling and repealing many of Labour’s most high-profile policies such as the Māori Health Authority and the Three Waters reform.
Meanwhile, Labour lost some of its most experienced MPs in Grant Robertson, Andrew Little and Kelvin Davis, who all retired from politics.
Acknowledging the party’s flagging support in areas such as Auckland following the pandemic, Hipkins commenced his listening tour – branding Labour as willing to hear the country’s frustrations after taxing lockdowns and alert level changes.
But despite those challenges, Hipkins tells the Herald he’s been pleasantly surprised by the support Labour is receiving.
“I went into this year not quite sure what to expect in terms of the amount of progress we might make in 2024,” Hipkins says, accepting 2023 was “not a great year for us”.
“I think we’ve made more progress than I anticipated in terms of rebuilding our public support.”
Hipkins points to polling trends as proof. While some major pollsters have at times found a 10 percentage point gap between National and Labour, several polls have the gap much closer with some putting Labour about 3% behind.
“If you said to me a year ago, ‘Next year, you’ll be nipping at the heels of the Government and in the odd poll, getting right up close to them’, I wouldn’t necessarily have thought that just one year out from the last election, so that’s good news,” he says.
An experienced politician, Hipkins says he was naturally wary of the public’s distaste for an Opposition opposing the Government for the sake of it, contributing to a relatively quiet Labour Party for the first half of 2024.
However, Hipkins believes it’s paid off.
“In Opposition, you’re more adversarial, you’re more negative and so there is more potential for people to not like you as much and actually, by and large, that hasn’t proven to be the case.
“I’ve managed, I think, to be relatively critical of the Government without necessarily losing a lot of public support.”
The summer break following the election was Hipkins’ opportunity to assess his ambition to continue leading the party, but he came away confident he should remain with the hope of returning Labour to government in 2026 and beyond.
“Over the course of the year, I’ve become more resolved to actually stay to see through the next election and then also back into government again and continue on.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has been among the most vocal speculators regarding Hipkins’ future as party leader, often joking senior Labour MPs Kieran McAnulty and David Parker were ready to roll Hipkins.
Hipkins says he expects little else, acknowledging the leader of the Opposition is often subject to such rumours when they can’t fill the void with announcements.
“We’re not in a position to do that yet, to give people other things to write about because we’re still only one year out from losing the election so we’ve still got a lot of work to do in terms of resetting our policy in terms of really clarifying what our areas of focus will be for the next election campaign.”
Key to Labour’s success in 2024, Hipkins claims, has been a collegial caucus. Throughout the year, Hipkins has often recalled the tendency for Opposition parties to tear themselves apart in the wake of a heavy electoral loss but he believes his party remains stable.
That has partly been achieved through keeping former ministers in their portfolios but Hipkins says he’ll soon be discussing with his MPs their interest areas with an eye on a future reshuffle.
One way a reshuffle can be prompted is through retirements. In November, Hipkins hinted to the Herald that there may be “a few” ahead of the next election.
A month on, Hipkins stresses no unexpected departures are imminent, as far as he’s aware.
However, he says he hopes to have any retiring MPs announcing their intentions ahead of 2026.
“I think you want to make sure at the very least that you see your team going into 2026, into the campaign, are the people who you can point to and say, ‘This is going to be the senior line-up in the next government and these are people who are locked in, absolutely committed’.”
Presenting a united front appears of high importance to Hipkins, who says he’s been surprised by how willing the three Government parties are to publicly disagree with each other.
His comments come just days after the Government finally revealed its decision regarding the Cook Strait ferries, received by many as underwhelming given key details including the cost were yet to be determined.
It’s been widely reported how the ferries upgrade has split the coalition with Act expressing concern at the level of public investment while NZ First holds steadfast to a solution that ensures the ships are rail-enabled, a costly feature.
Hipkins remembers the governing arrangement Labour had with NZ First and the Green Party from 2017, saying the first 18 months were largely civil thanks to the “novelty of being in government” but says he’s been surprised by the coalition’s public conflicts.
“It’s almost like they’ve been slugging it out from day one ... we’ve not seen that under MMP.”
One of the most high-profile disagreements comes in the form of the Treaty Principles Bill. Supported by Act, the policy to redefine the Treaty principles is opposed by National and NZ First (for different reasons) but was agreed to in the coalition negotiations to be progressed through to the select committee phase. Submissions are set to begin in January.
Hipkins believes the world is grappling with a “crisis for democracy”, reflected by people’s distrust of politics, media and the courts, and he suspects the coalition’s conflicts playing out for all to see only deepens those rifts.
“No one expects [the parties] to all agree, but [the public] expects them to have a civil, working relationship with each other but they seem to have struggled to present that regularly.
“I do think that erodes trust in the professionalism of politics.”
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.
