“In a corporation, you can decide to make people redundant and then they’re someone else’s problem. You can say this group of customers is a group we’re no longer going to chase as a company.
“You don’t get to make those decisions in running a country. Everyone is your problem. Everyone is your customer.
“I think a lot of New Zealanders think he’s a bad Prime Minister and I think they’ve got good grounds for that,” Hipkins said.
Labour held its annual conference in Christchurch at the weekend — the first time its members have met since the 2023 election defeat.
The party has inched closer to campaigning on a wealth tax or capital gains tax at the next election — after members passed a proposal to move the idea forward.
It’s also made three major promises — a full Dunedin Hospital rebuild, rail-enabled ferries, and not getting involved in Aukus Pillar 2.
Aukus — a partnership between Australia, the UK and the US — is a trilateral security agreement.
Pillar 1 involves Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines, Pillar 2 entails sharing and developing high-tech defence technology.
New Zealand has not been offered the chance to join Pillar 1, and it wouldn’t accept regardless, due to the country’s staunch anti-nuclear position.
Hipkins said New Zealand also won’t be part of Aukus Pillar 2 under a Labour Government despite that agreement not having any nuclear connotations.
“Pacific countries have made it very clear, and they’re very important relationships for New Zealand.
“The Pacific, I’m finding, have raised a lot of concerns about the prospect of nuclear ships in the Pacific as well,” he said.
Former Labour leader Andrew Little, also a former Minister of Defence and Intelligence Agencies, has backed the current Government’s decision to investigate our potential involvement.
“The world is very different now from 10 and 20 years ago,” Little said in what could be a critique of former Prime Minister Helen Clark and former National leader Don Brash, who have been leaders of the campaign against the deal.
Hipkins said Little was a “fantastic minister”, but that doesn’t mean he needs to agree with him.
“We didn’t agree on everything when we were in Government and I’m sure we won’t now. And as a former parliamentarian, he’s free to share his views however he wishes.”
When it comes to what he thinks the coalition has done well in the past year in Government, Hipkins pointed to work in the infrastructure space.
“I agree with the Government that we need a much longer-term approach to planning infrastructure investment. The short-term nature of our thinking around infrastructure in New Zealand is one of the reasons we’re in the mess we’re in now.
“We had work under way on Auckland Light Rail. It’s a big project. And I think the timeframes that we had previously put out were unrealistic. And I’ve said that. But, Auckland is going to need mass rapid transit, given the scale of population growth there,” he said.
The Government officially cancelled the project in January, citing the $15 billion endeavour had already cost taxpayers $228 million over six years with not a “single metre of track” ever laid.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about Labour’s future, whether the party will campaign on a Capital Gains Tax, and its hopes to reignite Dunedin Hospital plans.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
