Chris Hipkins: Labour leader on the party's newly-announced Future Fund

More investment in New Zealand businesses is Labour's announced goal in a policy released today.

It's modelling the Future Fund off the existing Super Fund, to be seeded with $200 million in Crown money and existing assets.

It'll invest solely in local projects. 

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says this project is designed to create jobs and keep more wealth here at home.

"We're focused on long-term investments, we own all of those existing public assets for a reason."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heather due to see ours.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
The Labor Party has announced its first major policy ahead
of next year's election. It's a Future Fund. The Future
Fund will use capital from some Crown assets to invest
in Kiwi businesses and infrastructure projects. And the Labor Party
leader Chris Hopkins is with us.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Now, how HP can I Heather?

Speaker 2 (00:16):
What's the actual goal of this fund?

Speaker 1 (00:19):
We want to back New Zealand businesses and invest in
New Zealand. We need to see more of our wealth
being invested back here in New Zealand rather than flowing overseas.
So by using some of our existing public assets, our
resisting state assets, putting them into a future fund, using
the returns from them to reinvest in growing New Zealand businesses,
we can create jobs and keep more wealth here at home.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Okay, So this fund is not able to invest in
overseas businesses, is it.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
No, We've got the New Zealand Superannuation Fund that can
do that. So this will be complementary to the New
Zealand Superfund, but in terms of our sovereign wealth investment abroad,
they will continue to be managed by the New Zealand Superfund.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Right, you're putting in two hundred million dollars in cash.
Are you're also putting in assets?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Right, So we're not being specific right now on which companies,
which existing our companies would go in because there are
market disclosure issues and so on. Some of those are
partially publicly listed companies. But we've said all of that
out in government.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I mean, isn't the mere fact that you've mentioned that
likely to have a market impact because there are only
so many that are partially listed.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Well, it's almost impossible to announce something like this without
giving some information. But we're not going to go and
identify which specific companies we're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Is the fund able to if it looks at let's
say one of the crown owned companies and thinks this
is not really actually a good investment, it's not performing well,
is it able to sell it down?

Speaker 1 (01:38):
The companies that we'll be putting in there is the
seed funding will not be able to be sold, but
the companies that the fund invests in will be able
to be They will be able to buy and sell those.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Why can it? What are these companies that we put
in as the seed funding are just crappy companies? By contrast?
Why can't they sell them?

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Well? We want to have. We're focused on a long
term investment. So we own all of those public assets
for a reason, and they're often reasons that are overlooked,
but they're often have you know, quite some time we
just owntry.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
We've always owned them, chippy, we don't need to own them.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
I disagree here there. I mean if you actually go
and look at the purpose of what's left being you know,
there were there that was an argument that might have
applied previously, But most of the stuff where there wasn't
a good case for crown ownership's now already been sold.
What's left there's normally a public interest in still owning it.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Okay, So if you take six hundred thousand dollars or
six hundred million dollars sorry annually in crown asset dividends
to put into this fund, doesn't that mean that the
government has six hundred million dollars less to spend on
health and education.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
We'll set out a fiscal plan before the elections.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
So you're going to have to You will have to
find some other way to replace that money, won't you?

Speaker 1 (02:47):
What will We will show you know what we're envisaging
in terms of dividend diversion into that fund versus are
still coming to the crown, and then we'll be clear
how we balance the budget. So the fiscal plan will
show how we will balance the governments.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
That's going to mean extra tax, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
I thought there's a number of choices. We have different
choices to what the current government would make in terms
of a spending You know, we'll have different spending choices
to them.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
You will have spend less than a national part of government.
So the only possibility is that you raise more tax.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Well, you know, we'll set out our text policy soon.
That's on the way. But what I'm saying is we
will make different choices of it. They remember, this is
the government that said they weren't going to borrow for
text cuts and is now borrowing almost the entire amount
of the text cuts.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Now, is this an idea that you just nicked straight
from Winston Peter's working with Grant Robertson in the twenty
seventeen to twenty twenty government.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
I mean it was something that Grant Robertson had started
to do some work on pre COVID that didn't progress
during COVID, But yes, with it's something we've been working
on for a while.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Okay, Chippy, thanks very much, appreciate it. Chris Hopkins, Labor
Party leader.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
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