November 4, 2025 • 20 mins
Labour Leader and MP for Rimutaka, Chris Hipkins joins Nick Mills in the studio to discuss the new unemployment rates - the highest in eight years.
In their monthly catchup they also discussed the new proposal of a bill to give police more power to remove people from the streets, the turmoil and worries within Te Pati Māori and how it effects Labour and their new polcies, and rumours of any future ones.
He shut down options of ministers from a coalition with the Greens and says minor parties have too much power in government.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from news Talk Said b.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
MP for Room Attucker and the Labor leader Chris Hipkins
joins us in the studio. Morning morning. How are you
feeling very good? Thank you?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
It feels on the way, although a bit of a
cold snap this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
What no, it wasn't was it.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
It's just a bit chilly out there. There's a bit
of a chili breeze.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Chilli outed upper Heart, Warmantown, Warman, Lyle Bay. This morning
it was very warm. Let's start by the just announced
the fogus unemployment went up one point one now five
point three. What's your take on that?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Well, this is the highest number of people unemployed since
about nineteen ninety four. You know Christopher Lux and Nikoloylis
they said they were going to fix the economy. It
feels an awful lot like they're making it worse, not better.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
What is the number? Do you know the number?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I haven't got the exact number. It's the highest number
since nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
What would you have done? What would labor have done
to actually fix us?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
We've got to get people back into we have got
to focus on investments. That get people working again. So
let's look at where the biggest job losses have been.
Twenty thousand fewer people working and building and construction, and
the government scaling back and canceling projects has been a big,
big driver of that. So the government stopped building state houses,
they stopped they stopped a whole lot of roading projects,
(01:26):
they stopped a whole lot of classrooms being built, they
stopped a whole lot of hospitals being upgraded. That contributed
to twenty thousand fewer people in building and construction. And
you could go through a number of other areas where
we've seen the government pull its investment back and people
lose their jobs.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
They are talking like they're opening things up and making
things easier, and you know, the riml whatever it is,
it's changing it and making it easier z you know,
working out to getting jobs and people working.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
It's just all rhetoric, you know, it's all rhetoric and slogans.
And the reality is that things are continuing to get worse.
More people are losing their jobs by the day, Unemployment
continues to go up, more people are signing up for
a job seeker benefit on a daily basis. Under this government.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Do you think the fact that they have been really,
really tough on things like the ird have been really
a lot tougher than they've ever been before, do you
think that's also transforming into actual job losses.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Well, this government's a lot like the Game of Simon says,
you've actually got to look at what they do rather
than what they say they're doing. So they talk about being, oh,
you know, we're a low tax government. If you're a
tax payer being chased by the IID, it probably doesn't
feel that way at the moment. Nikola Willison and Christopher
Luxon have been busy hiking up fees and levies all
over the show, finding all sorts of new ways for
(02:42):
the government to raise additional revenue because they're not willing
to be upfront with Kiwis about the fact that they
can't make their budget add up. I think what they're
doing at the moment and chasing getting the idea out
they're chasing businesses so aggressively has the potential to actually
dampen down the chances of an economic recovery. In an
(03:03):
economic downturn, businesses will find themselves in a range of situations,
and the government does have a responsibility to help people
through that.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Now I know the answer to this, but I've got
to ask the question because I have so many small
and medium sized businesses. When I talk to them on
the streets and talk to them and on the show,
they say they're not sure anymore whether it's national or labor.
That's better for small and medium businesses in New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
If you're a smaller medium business in New Zealand, you're
going to be better off when your customers have money
to spend. Which governments give your customers more money to spend,
it's labor governments. So when your customers are earning more
money because their wages are growing faster, that's going to
be better for your business. When your customers have good
jobs and their unemployment is lower, that's going to be
good for your business. When the economy is growing faster,
(03:54):
that's going to be good for your business. Look at
the stats over the last thirty years. Which governments have
delivered those things, lower unemployment, higher economic growth, more money
in people's pockets. It's labor governments have delivered that, not
national governments.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So how quickly if you became Prime minister and I'd
lose the bet that we've had. If you become Prime
minister this time next year, how quickly would we see
a turnaround? Tell our listeners how quickly things could become
better under labor. Because I'm an optimist, but I'm also
a realist, and my real reality is that you'd come
(04:29):
in and say, oh, everything's and problems are It's going
to take a while. Gosh, what national's just done to
your country.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
You can't turn the economy around immediately, but you can
certainly stop the things that the current government are doing
that are making it worse. So we have to get
the government investing again. And some of the results of
that could be quite quick. So if you take state
house building for example, if we could get the State
house build program up and running again reasonably quickly, that
would be thousands of extra people in work, and that
(04:57):
flows through into the rest of the economy. We get
some of the basic maintenance projects up and running again,
so getting schools properly maintained, getting ho hospitals upgraded, getting
police stations, fire stations, you know, all that work that
we were doing in government that's ground to a halt.
Now start getting that back up and running again. These
are investments in our future. But if you think about
(05:17):
a school classroom, so school classroom gets upgraded, who gets
work out of that. It's not just your builders. It's
the people who are laying the carpet, It's the people
who are selling the paint, It's the people who are
putting in the electronic whiteboards. All of those people could
get more and more work and therefore more economic activity
for the whole economy under a labor government.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
But to be fair, you were in there for six years.
You could have done all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
And we were The tragedy of it was we were
doing those things and this government stopped it. You go
around and visit the fire stations around that.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
You weren't fixing plases, that Nelson Hospital, which is you
know that's.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Hospital projects are the biggest, and they're the ones that
take the longest because they are big, complex projects. But
go and visit schools around the country. Every single state
school received upgrades under labor. A whole chunk of our
fire stations were completely rebuilt under labor. Police stations were
getting money police Some of our police stations are in
a woeful state. We're investing in upgrading those. The current
(06:17):
government have ground all of that to a halt.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
But they'll say the opposite. They'll say that they are
now getting things done where you didn't and you had
the opportunity.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Look old old fashioned adage, I know, follow the money.
The money isn't being spent despite all of the rhetoric.
They are spending about two billion dollars a year less
on capital spending, that's infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, everything, about
two billion dollars a year less than when they became
the government. So follow the money, don't listen to what
(06:48):
they say. Look at what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And why why should we listen to you not them?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Well, because we've shown that we can do these things.
You know, as Minister of Education, I put quite a
lot of stimy. I listened to the economy through school upgrades,
and we actually did spend that money. We gave schools
eighteen months to spend the money and they spent, and
small businesses in towns all over New Zealand benefited from
that investment.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Now for that to become a reality, you've got to
get into bed with a couple of other parties. Do
you agree with that or do you think that you
can get enough votes come next election to actually control
be Parliament on your own.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
My objective is to grow Labors support as high as
I possibly can. If you know, MMP does require you
to work with other parties, but there's a range of
different working relationships you can have. It doesn't need to
be like it is now. You know, Christopher Lexon lets
David Seymour and Winston Peter's run circles around him on
a daily basis.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
But that'll be exactly the same situation with Chloe and
the party. MA absolutely not. It has to be. It's
a reality that you're going to have to be holding
hands with them and they we might have Tamitha Paul
as the police Minister.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Absolutely that I can categorically rule that out. That is
absolutely not true. Chloe Swarbrock is finance, it's not half
So you do not have to sell your soul to
get the smaller parties into government. You know they want
to be in government. Christoph Luxen basically is doing a
whole lot of things that he said he wasn't going
to do to keep Winston Beaters and David see More happy.
(08:17):
That's not the way MMP should operate. When you say
you're not going to do something you shouldn't do it.
Small parties can promote things that they you know, sure,
but you don't have as a bigger party. You don't
have to support that. If you've told the voters that
you're not going.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
To all the goings on at the moment to party Mary,
is that helping or hindering you?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Oh, we're going to be aiming to win every one
of those Mardy electorates at the next election. I think
Marty voters aren't being served there by the representatives that
they have with Marty Party MP's at the moment. They're
too busy fighting with themselves and they're not actually representing
the people who they're there to serve.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Now we've heard through the media that there's a lot
of the elders of Marriedom getting together to try and
clean them up, tiding them up, sort them out. Are
they talking to you as well?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
We've got a very strong relationship with Mary across the country. Look,
the party vote. Labour won the party vote in every
one of the Mardy electrons and so my message to
Marty voters across the country is, if you want to
get rid of this government and you want a strong,
stable alternative that's going to actually focus on unifying the
country and leading the country forward in a positive way.
Vote Labor not just with your party vote, but give
(09:25):
us your electric vote as well.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
How will you work with two radical parties? Two parties
are there to protest rather than actually change and improve.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Well, Winston Peters and David Seamore seem to be there
to protest as well at the moment. And my message
to New Zealander is we've got to stop letting the
smaller parties call all of the shots. Christopher Luxon got
what thirty eight percent of the vote at the last
election versus David Seymour, who got what eight percent? He
doesn't act like it. He acts like David Seamoll was
(09:54):
the one who's in charge.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Right. Chris Hipkins is with me now. Now I'm going
to really start this segment off with something that I
don't quite think that I understand fully enough. Babe's first
majority major policy. I mean, it's the biggest announcement. I've
been asking about it every time you come in here.
Capital gains tax. I can't really understand it. Give it
(10:17):
to me clearly, make me understand. And if I can't
quite understand the whole thing. A lot of our listeners
can't eat it.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
So it's a very simple tax that we're proposing, a
very simple capital gains tax that would apply to residential
property excluding the family home and commercial property. It would
apply to those properties sold after the first of July
twenty twenty seven, and only on the gains made after
first of July twenty twenty seven. So all of the
(10:45):
capital gains that you've already made, that's all locked in.
Any gain that you made in addition to that after
the first of July, you would pay a capital gains
tax on that of twenty eight percent, which is the
same as the company tax rate.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So is this a drive to get people to sell
people that own investment properties to sell them before the
twenty twenty seven Is that an idea to try and
get more stock in the market.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
If people do choose to divest, you know, that will
open up some opportunities for first home buyers. But long term,
it's about sending the signal that we want to move
away from an economy that's focused, you know, solely, not
not solely, but focused largely on the property market, to
one that's focused on investing in productive businesses that create
good jobs. So we've exempted. You know, let's be clear
(11:29):
what's not covered by the capital gains tax. Businesses are
not covered. Key we save it is not covered. The
family home is not covered. Farms are not covered. We
want to we want to get people investing in the
productive side of the economy that creates jobs and opportunity.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
What happens if I live in town because I work
in town, but I've got my batch, and why can
I that I go out to every weekend, spend a
few days out there, go out Thursday and say Thursday
to Sunday, and then come back into town. Does that
still have to have to pay capital gains on that?
Speaker 3 (11:56):
So the exemption applies to your family home. So family
home will never be taxed, but secondary properties they will
be subject to a capital gains tax. What if you'd
ownly but only after the first of July twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Seve Okay, So so what if you had them in
a trust.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Whether they're held in a company or a trust is immaterial.
The question is whether if it's your family home and
it's held in a trust, then it's still exempt. If
it's your holiday home and I'm in this situation. You know,
I've got a holiday home. It's held in a family trust.
If I sold that ten years from now, I would
pay a capital gain on the increase in value from
the first of July to the point where I saw.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
So how are you going to work the valuations? Is
it going to be the government valuation, the council valuation
or do we get all have to get individual valuations
because some value is going to be making a lot
of money.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
So there's with all things in the tax system. There
are a range of options for people. So you can
use a straight line valuation, which is basically you take
the purchase price, you take the sale price, and then
you basically divide the gain by the number of years
in between, and then you figure out how many of
those years fall after the first of July twenty twenty seven.
So that would be the simplest method. So you can
(13:03):
use that. That's called the straight line method. But if
your capital gains tax were all earlier on in the piece,
and actually your property hasn't generated much gain in the
last few years, you wouldn't want to use that. You'd
actually want to use a different valuation. So you can
get a value you can get a professional valuation in.
So there are a range of options, and the Text
Working Group sets all of those out.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
When I first heard it, I said to someone, I
think the biggest winner is this is value valuers. And
I still still think it's probably you know, value is
going to make a lot of money out of this,
aren't they for the first couple of years.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Well, if you take a residential property, for example, there's
a lot of you can get pretty good valuations, pretty
quick and pretty cheap using those online valuation tools. At
the moment, would they be suffice Well, the IID would
set out guidance on that, but I would imagine, given
the number of properties that we'd be talking about, that
there would be quite simple tools that would have become
available at a relatively low cost to the mum and
(13:57):
dad investor with a rental property.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
I wish that they just used the CVS or the
council valuations, because my counsel valuation has got my house
worth a million dollars more than I think it's word.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
So the Text Working Group does include that in their
options for evaluation. There will be some circumstances where that's
not necessarily going to be the best option for the
individual investor. And so that's why the idea will release guidance.
But the text working Group canvassed all the options. Rateable
values is one of them.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
How's it been received by your followers?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Pretty positively? I think New Zealanders can see that we
need to change what we're doing. We have two hundred
New Zealanders every day getting on a plane and leaving
the country permanently. We need to create jobs, we need
to create opportunity, and we need to give our kids
a sense that they're going to be able to buy
their own homes because without those things, they're just giving
up and leaving.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
So how did you hear about the homelessness stuff? God,
this is very fascinating. In Parliament yesterday you asked Christopher
Luxen a question and he hit you for six I
mean he batted it out of the gym. He didn't
want to be involved in it, did he?
Speaker 3 (15:05):
And yet Mark Mitchell was on the right this morning
admitting that they are going to do that. They are
going to create a law that says that you can't
be homeless in the CBD. Now for everybody who's listening
to that, thinking, well, I don't really like walking past
homeless people on lambdon Key, think about this, Where are
those people going to go? Because if we don't house
them somewhere, they're not going to be living rough on
(15:25):
the CBD streets anymore. They'll be living rough in the suburbs.
So they could be at the bus stop down the
road from your house.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
But they are actually talking about having facilities and accommodation
and accommodating them, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Well, if they did that, then they wouldn't need to
pass a law to ban people from the CBD because
those people would have somewhere else to go.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
But the issue is those people want to be I mean,
it's a very passionate point for me. Those people want
to be on the streets. They don't want to be
out in the suburbs. They don't want to be in
the sub They want to be sitting there getting free
drinks this, free that, and sitting on the streets.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
And if you want to really solve that, you've got
to get to the underlying causes. You've got to give
them a place to go, you've got to give them
a purpose. You've got to actually deal with the mental
health meant issues that are often very prevalent there. Deal
with issues around drug and alcohol abuse, which can often
also be linked with homelessness. Deal with those things, and
that's how you solve the problem. Simply passing a law
(16:19):
that means you can move them out of the CBD
and into the suburbs. That's not going to solve the problem.
It must help though, well no it doesn't. It's just
going to relocate them somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
But if we had accommodation to put them in and
say you stay there, or we're going to lock you up,
put you to jail, you know, we'll look after you,
we'll give you the protection, will help you. Surely that's
going to help.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
But that's not what the government are proposing. So they're
not proposing through this law change to build more emergency accommodation.
In fact, they're booting people out of emergency. We've got
to get a roof over their heads. We've got to
get intensive support wrapped around them so that they're getting
support with their mental health and other issues, going to
make sure they get a decent meal. Do those things
and then we can actually start to really tackle the problem.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
We need to do something. Do we need to do
something absolutely. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Organizations like Wellington City Mission just inspire me because they
deal with this group of people every day and they
have the answer. So we've got to get behind those
organizations and back them to do what they are doing.
And they're doing it well.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Okay, summer breaks coming up. What have you got planned?
What are you going to announce and how are you
going to announce it? Because a couple of year announcements
where people are hearing it before the media are hearing
before you actually get in fun of it. I mean,
the health stuff was quite embarrassing. I mean, how is
that getting slipping through? Look?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
You know, I guess the wheels are a little rusty.
You know, we haven't done this for a couple of
years because we've been focused on doing our job as
the opposition. But I can tell you that the wheels
are starting to spin pretty freely now and you can
expect to see more policy from us. We won't be
doing much over the summer break, though, everyone deserves the
summer hold.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
No better between now and then will there be anything
big that comes out.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
We've got a little bit more between now and Christmas.
But then over Christmas, you know, people don't like politics
over Christmas, and everybody deserves a bit of a break,
So we will take a break over Christmas.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
What are we coming up? Come on?
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Oh, I'm sure you want the great exclusive. We've got
a little bit more between now and Christmas. But you
just have to wait a little bit longer.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Will it be anything that inspires us gets us excited,
so our summer holidays a little bit more. Oh well,
we vote this way, we're going to get this.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I'll tell you the thing that has really inspired a
lot of people, and it's one that the media have
been quite skeptical about. The establishment of the New Zealand
Future Fund, so a sovereign wealth fund that's about investing
in New Zealand so that we can keep our people
and our emerging businesses and our talent in New Zealand.
We've had an overwhelmingly positive response to that. People get
(18:43):
people can see that we are losing talent, we're losing
the innovative businesses that we need to keep in the country.
We're losing them and we need to keep them. And
so the New Zealand Future Fund, I think could be
massive for New Zealand, for our future, and that is
something that I'm inspired about, you know, and I think
the country should be too.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Christian instincts. For coming in. I appreciate you coming in.
Do we have another catch up? We'll have another catch up.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Before Christmas, won't we I'm sure we will.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, thank you for everything, Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.
I'm going to never have another read of the capital
gains tax and see if I get my head around
it even more and sell sell, sell, sell, sell, sell.
I say, twenty nine and a half minutes past eleven,
we'll be back. You know what we're going to talk
about when we come back. No, I'm not going to
even tell you. It's the weirdest subject that I have
(19:32):
ever done in four and a half years on radio.
You know what it is.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I would never want to guess the weirdest subject.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
You know what it is? Yeah, tell me women's urinals? Right?
Have you heard about it?
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I don't think either of us qualified to comment on
that now, but have you.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Heard about it?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
I have you know? How woman takes them three and
a half times as long to get to a bathroom
at an event, a concert or as you know, they
can't get them the lose, so someone in England's invented
a urinal like a men's urinal for women and they're
coming to Australas this summer for the big, big rollout
of the big concerts and stuff. You you look as disgusted
as I am.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I'm thinking this is dangerous territory for you to go into, Nick,
But good luck.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
That's you know what's Grace's grace, what's what's the chat
about it? She's brought it up, she said, that's it.
We're going to talk about it. Thanks, appreciate you, thanks
for your opinion on it.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills, listen live
to news Talks It'd Be Wellington from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from news Talk Said b.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
MP for Room Attucker and the Labor leader Chris Hipkins
joins us in the studio. Morning morning. How are you
feeling very good? Thank you?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
It feels on the way, although a bit of a
cold snap this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
What no, it wasn't was it.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
It's just a bit chilly out there. There's a bit
of a chili breeze.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Chilli outed upper Heart, Warmantown, Warman, Lyle Bay. This morning
it was very warm. Let's start by the just announced
the fogus unemployment went up one point one now five
point three. What's your take on that?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Well, this is the highest number of people unemployed since
about nineteen ninety four. You know Christopher Lux and Nikoloylis
they said they were going to fix the economy. It
feels an awful lot like they're making it worse, not better.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
What is the number? Do you know the number?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I haven't got the exact number. It's the highest number
since nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
What would you have done? What would labor have done
to actually fix us?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
We've got to get people back into we have got
to focus on investments. That get people working again. So
let's look at where the biggest job losses have been.
Twenty thousand fewer people working and building and construction, and
the government scaling back and canceling projects has been a big,
big driver of that. So the government stopped building state houses,
they stopped they stopped a whole lot of roading projects,
(01:26):
they stopped a whole lot of classrooms being built, they
stopped a whole lot of hospitals being upgraded. That contributed
to twenty thousand fewer people in building and construction. And
you could go through a number of other areas where
we've seen the government pull its investment back and people
lose their jobs.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
They are talking like they're opening things up and making
things easier, and you know, the riml whatever it is,
it's changing it and making it easier z you know,
working out to getting jobs and people working.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
It's just all rhetoric, you know, it's all rhetoric and slogans.
And the reality is that things are continuing to get worse.
More people are losing their jobs by the day, Unemployment
continues to go up, more people are signing up for
a job seeker benefit on a daily basis. Under this government.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Do you think the fact that they have been really,
really tough on things like the ird have been really
a lot tougher than they've ever been before, do you
think that's also transforming into actual job losses.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Well, this government's a lot like the Game of Simon says,
you've actually got to look at what they do rather
than what they say they're doing. So they talk about being, oh,
you know, we're a low tax government. If you're a
tax payer being chased by the IID, it probably doesn't
feel that way at the moment. Nikola Willison and Christopher
Luxon have been busy hiking up fees and levies all
over the show, finding all sorts of new ways for
(02:42):
the government to raise additional revenue because they're not willing
to be upfront with Kiwis about the fact that they
can't make their budget add up. I think what they're
doing at the moment and chasing getting the idea out
they're chasing businesses so aggressively has the potential to actually
dampen down the chances of an economic recovery. In an
(03:03):
economic downturn, businesses will find themselves in a range of situations,
and the government does have a responsibility to help people
through that.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Now I know the answer to this, but I've got
to ask the question because I have so many small
and medium sized businesses. When I talk to them on
the streets and talk to them and on the show,
they say they're not sure anymore whether it's national or labor.
That's better for small and medium businesses in New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
If you're a smaller medium business in New Zealand, you're
going to be better off when your customers have money
to spend. Which governments give your customers more money to spend,
it's labor governments. So when your customers are earning more
money because their wages are growing faster, that's going to
be better for your business. When your customers have good
jobs and their unemployment is lower, that's going to be
good for your business. When the economy is growing faster,
(03:54):
that's going to be good for your business. Look at
the stats over the last thirty years. Which governments have
delivered those things, lower unemployment, higher economic growth, more money
in people's pockets. It's labor governments have delivered that, not
national governments.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So how quickly if you became Prime minister and I'd
lose the bet that we've had. If you become Prime
minister this time next year, how quickly would we see
a turnaround? Tell our listeners how quickly things could become
better under labor. Because I'm an optimist, but I'm also
a realist, and my real reality is that you'd come
(04:29):
in and say, oh, everything's and problems are It's going
to take a while. Gosh, what national's just done to
your country.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
You can't turn the economy around immediately, but you can
certainly stop the things that the current government are doing
that are making it worse. So we have to get
the government investing again. And some of the results of
that could be quite quick. So if you take state
house building for example, if we could get the State
house build program up and running again reasonably quickly, that
would be thousands of extra people in work, and that
(04:57):
flows through into the rest of the economy. We get
some of the basic maintenance projects up and running again,
so getting schools properly maintained, getting ho hospitals upgraded, getting
police stations, fire stations, you know, all that work that
we were doing in government that's ground to a halt.
Now start getting that back up and running again. These
are investments in our future. But if you think about
(05:17):
a school classroom, so school classroom gets upgraded, who gets
work out of that. It's not just your builders. It's
the people who are laying the carpet, It's the people
who are selling the paint, It's the people who are
putting in the electronic whiteboards. All of those people could
get more and more work and therefore more economic activity
for the whole economy under a labor government.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
But to be fair, you were in there for six years.
You could have done all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
And we were The tragedy of it was we were
doing those things and this government stopped it. You go
around and visit the fire stations around that.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
You weren't fixing plases, that Nelson Hospital, which is you
know that's.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Hospital projects are the biggest, and they're the ones that
take the longest because they are big, complex projects. But
go and visit schools around the country. Every single state
school received upgrades under labor. A whole chunk of our
fire stations were completely rebuilt under labor. Police stations were
getting money police Some of our police stations are in
a woeful state. We're investing in upgrading those. The current
(06:17):
government have ground all of that to a halt.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
But they'll say the opposite. They'll say that they are
now getting things done where you didn't and you had
the opportunity.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Look old old fashioned adage, I know, follow the money.
The money isn't being spent despite all of the rhetoric.
They are spending about two billion dollars a year less
on capital spending, that's infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, everything, about
two billion dollars a year less than when they became
the government. So follow the money, don't listen to what
(06:48):
they say. Look at what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And why why should we listen to you not them?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Well, because we've shown that we can do these things.
You know, as Minister of Education, I put quite a
lot of stimy. I listened to the economy through school upgrades,
and we actually did spend that money. We gave schools
eighteen months to spend the money and they spent, and
small businesses in towns all over New Zealand benefited from
that investment.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Now for that to become a reality, you've got to
get into bed with a couple of other parties. Do
you agree with that or do you think that you
can get enough votes come next election to actually control
be Parliament on your own.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
My objective is to grow Labors support as high as
I possibly can. If you know, MMP does require you
to work with other parties, but there's a range of
different working relationships you can have. It doesn't need to
be like it is now. You know, Christopher Lexon lets
David Seymour and Winston Peter's run circles around him on
a daily basis.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
But that'll be exactly the same situation with Chloe and
the party. MA absolutely not. It has to be. It's
a reality that you're going to have to be holding
hands with them and they we might have Tamitha Paul
as the police Minister.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Absolutely that I can categorically rule that out. That is
absolutely not true. Chloe Swarbrock is finance, it's not half
So you do not have to sell your soul to
get the smaller parties into government. You know they want
to be in government. Christoph Luxen basically is doing a
whole lot of things that he said he wasn't going
to do to keep Winston Beaters and David see More happy.
(08:17):
That's not the way MMP should operate. When you say
you're not going to do something you shouldn't do it.
Small parties can promote things that they you know, sure,
but you don't have as a bigger party. You don't
have to support that. If you've told the voters that
you're not going.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
To all the goings on at the moment to party Mary,
is that helping or hindering you?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Oh, we're going to be aiming to win every one
of those Mardy electorates at the next election. I think
Marty voters aren't being served there by the representatives that
they have with Marty Party MP's at the moment. They're
too busy fighting with themselves and they're not actually representing
the people who they're there to serve.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Now we've heard through the media that there's a lot
of the elders of Marriedom getting together to try and
clean them up, tiding them up, sort them out. Are
they talking to you as well?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
We've got a very strong relationship with Mary across the country. Look,
the party vote. Labour won the party vote in every
one of the Mardy electrons and so my message to
Marty voters across the country is, if you want to
get rid of this government and you want a strong,
stable alternative that's going to actually focus on unifying the
country and leading the country forward in a positive way.
Vote Labor not just with your party vote, but give
(09:25):
us your electric vote as well.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
How will you work with two radical parties? Two parties
are there to protest rather than actually change and improve.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Well, Winston Peters and David Seamore seem to be there
to protest as well at the moment. And my message
to New Zealander is we've got to stop letting the
smaller parties call all of the shots. Christopher Luxon got
what thirty eight percent of the vote at the last
election versus David Seymour, who got what eight percent? He
doesn't act like it. He acts like David Seamoll was
(09:54):
the one who's in charge.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Right. Chris Hipkins is with me now. Now I'm going
to really start this segment off with something that I
don't quite think that I understand fully enough. Babe's first
majority major policy. I mean, it's the biggest announcement. I've
been asking about it every time you come in here.
Capital gains tax. I can't really understand it. Give it
(10:17):
to me clearly, make me understand. And if I can't
quite understand the whole thing. A lot of our listeners
can't eat it.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
So it's a very simple tax that we're proposing, a
very simple capital gains tax that would apply to residential
property excluding the family home and commercial property. It would
apply to those properties sold after the first of July
twenty twenty seven, and only on the gains made after
first of July twenty twenty seven. So all of the
(10:45):
capital gains that you've already made, that's all locked in.
Any gain that you made in addition to that after
the first of July, you would pay a capital gains
tax on that of twenty eight percent, which is the
same as the company tax rate.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So is this a drive to get people to sell
people that own investment properties to sell them before the
twenty twenty seven Is that an idea to try and
get more stock in the market.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
If people do choose to divest, you know, that will
open up some opportunities for first home buyers. But long term,
it's about sending the signal that we want to move
away from an economy that's focused, you know, solely, not
not solely, but focused largely on the property market, to
one that's focused on investing in productive businesses that create
good jobs. So we've exempted. You know, let's be clear
(11:29):
what's not covered by the capital gains tax. Businesses are
not covered. Key we save it is not covered. The
family home is not covered. Farms are not covered. We
want to we want to get people investing in the
productive side of the economy that creates jobs and opportunity.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
What happens if I live in town because I work
in town, but I've got my batch, and why can
I that I go out to every weekend, spend a
few days out there, go out Thursday and say Thursday
to Sunday, and then come back into town. Does that
still have to have to pay capital gains on that?
Speaker 3 (11:56):
So the exemption applies to your family home. So family
home will never be taxed, but secondary properties they will
be subject to a capital gains tax. What if you'd
ownly but only after the first of July twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Seve Okay, So so what if you had them in
a trust.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Whether they're held in a company or a trust is immaterial.
The question is whether if it's your family home and
it's held in a trust, then it's still exempt. If
it's your holiday home and I'm in this situation. You know,
I've got a holiday home. It's held in a family trust.
If I sold that ten years from now, I would
pay a capital gain on the increase in value from
the first of July to the point where I saw.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
So how are you going to work the valuations? Is
it going to be the government valuation, the council valuation
or do we get all have to get individual valuations
because some value is going to be making a lot
of money.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
So there's with all things in the tax system. There
are a range of options for people. So you can
use a straight line valuation, which is basically you take
the purchase price, you take the sale price, and then
you basically divide the gain by the number of years
in between, and then you figure out how many of
those years fall after the first of July twenty twenty seven.
So that would be the simplest method. So you can
(13:03):
use that. That's called the straight line method. But if
your capital gains tax were all earlier on in the piece,
and actually your property hasn't generated much gain in the
last few years, you wouldn't want to use that. You'd
actually want to use a different valuation. So you can
get a value you can get a professional valuation in.
So there are a range of options, and the Text
Working Group sets all of those out.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
When I first heard it, I said to someone, I
think the biggest winner is this is value valuers. And
I still still think it's probably you know, value is
going to make a lot of money out of this,
aren't they for the first couple of years.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Well, if you take a residential property, for example, there's
a lot of you can get pretty good valuations, pretty
quick and pretty cheap using those online valuation tools. At
the moment, would they be suffice Well, the IID would
set out guidance on that, but I would imagine, given
the number of properties that we'd be talking about, that
there would be quite simple tools that would have become
available at a relatively low cost to the mum and
(13:57):
dad investor with a rental property.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
I wish that they just used the CVS or the
council valuations, because my counsel valuation has got my house
worth a million dollars more than I think it's word.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
So the Text Working Group does include that in their
options for evaluation. There will be some circumstances where that's
not necessarily going to be the best option for the
individual investor. And so that's why the idea will release guidance.
But the text working Group canvassed all the options. Rateable
values is one of them.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
How's it been received by your followers?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Pretty positively? I think New Zealanders can see that we
need to change what we're doing. We have two hundred
New Zealanders every day getting on a plane and leaving
the country permanently. We need to create jobs, we need
to create opportunity, and we need to give our kids
a sense that they're going to be able to buy
their own homes because without those things, they're just giving
up and leaving.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
So how did you hear about the homelessness stuff? God,
this is very fascinating. In Parliament yesterday you asked Christopher
Luxen a question and he hit you for six I
mean he batted it out of the gym. He didn't
want to be involved in it, did he?
Speaker 3 (15:05):
And yet Mark Mitchell was on the right this morning
admitting that they are going to do that. They are
going to create a law that says that you can't
be homeless in the CBD. Now for everybody who's listening
to that, thinking, well, I don't really like walking past
homeless people on lambdon Key, think about this, Where are
those people going to go? Because if we don't house
them somewhere, they're not going to be living rough on
(15:25):
the CBD streets anymore. They'll be living rough in the suburbs.
So they could be at the bus stop down the
road from your house.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
But they are actually talking about having facilities and accommodation
and accommodating them, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Well, if they did that, then they wouldn't need to
pass a law to ban people from the CBD because
those people would have somewhere else to go.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
But the issue is those people want to be I mean,
it's a very passionate point for me. Those people want
to be on the streets. They don't want to be
out in the suburbs. They don't want to be in
the sub They want to be sitting there getting free
drinks this, free that, and sitting on the streets.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
And if you want to really solve that, you've got
to get to the underlying causes. You've got to give
them a place to go, you've got to give them
a purpose. You've got to actually deal with the mental
health meant issues that are often very prevalent there. Deal
with issues around drug and alcohol abuse, which can often
also be linked with homelessness. Deal with those things, and
that's how you solve the problem. Simply passing a law
(16:19):
that means you can move them out of the CBD
and into the suburbs. That's not going to solve the problem.
It must help though, well no it doesn't. It's just
going to relocate them somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
But if we had accommodation to put them in and
say you stay there, or we're going to lock you up,
put you to jail, you know, we'll look after you,
we'll give you the protection, will help you. Surely that's
going to help.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
But that's not what the government are proposing. So they're
not proposing through this law change to build more emergency accommodation.
In fact, they're booting people out of emergency. We've got
to get a roof over their heads. We've got to
get intensive support wrapped around them so that they're getting
support with their mental health and other issues, going to
make sure they get a decent meal. Do those things
and then we can actually start to really tackle the problem.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
We need to do something. Do we need to do
something absolutely. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Organizations like Wellington City Mission just inspire me because they
deal with this group of people every day and they
have the answer. So we've got to get behind those
organizations and back them to do what they are doing.
And they're doing it well.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Okay, summer breaks coming up. What have you got planned?
What are you going to announce and how are you
going to announce it? Because a couple of year announcements
where people are hearing it before the media are hearing
before you actually get in fun of it. I mean,
the health stuff was quite embarrassing. I mean, how is
that getting slipping through? Look?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
You know, I guess the wheels are a little rusty.
You know, we haven't done this for a couple of
years because we've been focused on doing our job as
the opposition. But I can tell you that the wheels
are starting to spin pretty freely now and you can
expect to see more policy from us. We won't be
doing much over the summer break, though, everyone deserves the
summer hold.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
No better between now and then will there be anything
big that comes out.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
We've got a little bit more between now and Christmas.
But then over Christmas, you know, people don't like politics
over Christmas, and everybody deserves a bit of a break,
So we will take a break over Christmas.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
What are we coming up? Come on?
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Oh, I'm sure you want the great exclusive. We've got
a little bit more between now and Christmas. But you
just have to wait a little bit longer.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Will it be anything that inspires us gets us excited,
so our summer holidays a little bit more. Oh well,
we vote this way, we're going to get this.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I'll tell you the thing that has really inspired a
lot of people, and it's one that the media have
been quite skeptical about. The establishment of the New Zealand
Future Fund, so a sovereign wealth fund that's about investing
in New Zealand so that we can keep our people
and our emerging businesses and our talent in New Zealand.
We've had an overwhelmingly positive response to that. People get
(18:43):
people can see that we are losing talent, we're losing
the innovative businesses that we need to keep in the country.
We're losing them and we need to keep them. And
so the New Zealand Future Fund, I think could be
massive for New Zealand, for our future, and that is
something that I'm inspired about, you know, and I think
the country should be too.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Christian instincts. For coming in. I appreciate you coming in.
Do we have another catch up? We'll have another catch up.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Before Christmas, won't we I'm sure we will.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, thank you for everything, Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.
I'm going to never have another read of the capital
gains tax and see if I get my head around
it even more and sell sell, sell, sell, sell, sell.
I say, twenty nine and a half minutes past eleven,
we'll be back. You know what we're going to talk
about when we come back. No, I'm not going to
even tell you. It's the weirdest subject that I have
(19:32):
ever done in four and a half years on radio.
You know what it is.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I would never want to guess the weirdest subject.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
You know what it is? Yeah, tell me women's urinals? Right?
Have you heard about it?
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I don't think either of us qualified to comment on
that now, but have you.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Heard about it?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
I have you know? How woman takes them three and
a half times as long to get to a bathroom
at an event, a concert or as you know, they
can't get them the lose, so someone in England's invented
a urinal like a men's urinal for women and they're
coming to Australas this summer for the big, big rollout
of the big concerts and stuff. You you look as disgusted
as I am.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I'm thinking this is dangerous territory for you to go into, Nick,
But good luck.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
That's you know what's Grace's grace, what's what's the chat
about it? She's brought it up, she said, that's it.
We're going to talk about it. Thanks, appreciate you, thanks
for your opinion on it.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills, listen live
to news Talks It'd Be Wellington from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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