June 17, 2024 • 33 mins
Labour's leader continues to call the Government tax cuts poorly timed.
The Government's pouring $14.7 billion into it and giving landlords a $3 billion boost.
The tax changes kick in late July against advice from officials who recommend waiting until October.
Chris Hipkins says 12 billion dollars has been borrowed to fund the cuts.
He told Kerre Woodham that he agrees tax brackets need adjusting, but you have to carefully choose when it's done.
Hipkins says this is the worst time to do it, with inflation high and Government revenue declining because of the economic downturn.
WATCH ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Kerry Wooden Morning's podcast from News Talks.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
He'd be.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Good lord, Good Lord. I think I've just managed to
get the earphones in in the nick of time, so
I'm going to be able to hear your calls when
you call in to talk to the leader of the opposition.
Chris Hipkinson's in the studio. Good morning, good morning, Nice
to have you with us. You've been on a charm
offensive up and down the country.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Well, I guess you could call it a charm offensive,
a sort of sort of more a listening offensive. Really.
You know, you lose an election, it's you've got to
get out there and talk to people and hear what
they've got to say.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, that's the thing, it's listening.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Absolutely. And you know, my old friend Mike Moore, of
the late Great Mike Moore used to quip and I
thought it was quite a good quip. Actually, though no
one ever listened their way out of a vote. You
can talk your way out of a vote, but no
one ever listened their way out of a vote. And
I think it's quite true. You know, when you lose
an election, you've got to take some time to get
out there and listen to people and understand, particularly from
those people who voted for US in twenty twenty but
(01:03):
then dinn in twenty twenty three, what made the difference.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, because I think with yours it was a double whammy,
and that you're party faithful. The ones who will always
vote labor always, some of them found themselves voting green
because they were so cross that you'd wasteed you mandate.
And then there was the middle ground going, oh, no,
they've gone way too far. How do you appease the
hard left labor rights as well as get the votes
(01:28):
of the center ground back.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
I think ultimately people vote on values. I mean they
do vote on specific policies for sure, but more than that,
they vote on values, and you know, there's a lot
of common ground that we can find there. We're never
going to please everybody on the you know, on the
on the the core kind of party activists, but we're
also never going to please everybody.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
You know.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
One of the things about politics, you can't please all
of the people all the time. It's just an absolute impossibility. Yeah,
do you certainly not for people who call it a
talk back, But you can't please all of the people
all the time.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
No, But I mean the one thing and I'm not
going to harp back because you know, I've said to
Christopher Luxe and I don't want to hear about the
previous government for much longer, you know, like already you
know now you're on your own.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Cost, they'd have nothing to talk about now.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
No, I did leave quite the mess. But at the
same time, I do you know now you've got to
look forward as well. But I did feel like, do
you think you have had a change in and of
yourself as to why you lost? Because on election that
you didn't it was almost like a telling off to
the nation for not voting for you.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
No, I don't think that's true.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I mean I thought that that was the way it
came across, like I cannot believe you listed all the
things you've done, but you're voted out.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
We also acknowledged that the New Zealanders had voted for
change as well, and that means that we have to
change too. I mean, the twenty twenty six election campaigns
is not going to be a rerun of the twenty
twenty three election campaign. People voted to change in twenty three.
That means in by twenty six we have to have
changed as well. So that's that's what we're in the
process of doing.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Now, Yes, I mean you're very bullish. You think you
can make this a one term coalition government.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Well, I think if you look at all of the
promises they made and they have really delivered on any
of them, it's a chaotic government that's fundamentally taking the
country backwards. You know, where I've said, where they're doing
things that we agree with, will support it, you know,
I know Granny Flat's is a big debate here. You know,
if there are things that we can do to make
it easier to do sensible things, then we will support those.
(03:27):
So you know, I'm open to those discussions.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
How are they taking the country backwards?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Well, when you're borrowing twelve billion dollars more, that's more
money than Robertson borrowed in any of his budgets except
for twenty twenty. Now, twenty twenty was at the height
of the pandemic. But Nicola Willis is borrowing more money
than we ever did other than in twenty twenty. If
you look at the deficits that she's running. If you
took out the wage subsidy, the small business resurgence payment,
(03:53):
and the of course the other one called the resurgence payment.
Those three big ones. Where makes it in the money
was the government was giving the money out to businesses.
If you took those out, the current deficits, that the
government a running a big than any deficits we ever ran.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
And you don't think that they would be running defficits
if it hadn't been for your last six years.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Well, if you give away fourteen billion dollars in tax
cuts and then another three billion dollars in tax cuts
for landlords, then when you're borrowing twelve billion dollars extra,
you're borrowing to pay for those things.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You agreed with tax cuts the last time we chatted.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I do think the bracket adjustments, you know, and that's
what they were there. Yeah, but there's a time, you know,
you've got to pick your timing and doing it at
a time when inflation is high and when government you know,
revenue is declining because of a downturn in the economy,
it's the worst time to do it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
But then you've got people who have never been hard
up before suddenly finding themselves incredibly hard up because of
the tax brackets and because of the galloping inflation.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
And unfortunately the tax cuts that the government are delivering
is going to make that worse because ultimately, if you
look at the extra costs people are going to face,
it's doing nothing to tackle those things and potentially is
in keeping inflation higher for longer, which means interest rates
stay higher for longer, which means the cost of living
continues to be a problem. Reserve Bank has said what
the three three or four big things are that are
(05:13):
keeping you know, interest rates higher At the moment, it's
increasing rates, it's increasing insurance payments, it's increasing rents, and
then of course that leads to increasing interest rates, and
those are the things that are really biting into Kiwi families.
The current government's budget does nothing to address any of those.
In fact, it makes them worse.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
The unintended consequences of your you know, landlords bills and
looking after renters meant that there were fewer rental properties
on the market. That's not true, done a lot.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Not true.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Rents have stabilized just in the last few months.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Well, that's absolutely not true. Actually we were building more new.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Houses talking about rentals, Well, it was.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
The same thing. It's ultimately's a question of how many
houses there are in the market. And we had building
and construction booming building a construction sector has collapsed in
the last six months.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I don't have time to ring in see Ben. I'd
like to ask Chris Hipkins how he plans on getting
support back As a labor voter, I jumped ship is
months in Auckland lockdown sent me into thousands of dollars
of mortgage areas and lost income, all to rid ourselves
of COVID that we all got. Anyway, it's going to
take a hell of a lot of change to get
my support back that Auckland lockdown. I mean, I know
(06:25):
it didn't affect the rest of the country, but you
have no idea.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
It was a huge contributor to the big loss and
support that we experienced here in Auckland. There's no question
about that if you look at It's a really hard
one to argue about, though, because you're arguing against a hypothetical.
So the hypothetical was if we hadn't done that, if
we had just let COVID spread through the country before
we got the vaccination rates to the levels that we did,
(06:51):
what would have happened. We know that the hospitals would
have been much more overwhelmed. There would have been a
lot more people who would have died from COVID than did.
But that's a hypothetical because of course it didn't happen
because of the things that we did. And look, Auckland
took for the team. There's no question about that. It
was bloody hard for Auckland.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
You don't know because you never came here. Well, no
nobody came.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Here when Auckland was lockdown. We didn't. I mean I
came to Auckland straight after the lockdowns had finished. But yes,
I absolutely, absolutely, and I totally get that it was
really really hard for Auckland.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I'm not entirely sure you do. I mean, I think
it's a bit like being in Canterbury when people say
I empathized, you know, about the quakes and having to
live with the ongoing quakes. Until you've lived it, you
don't know.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I think that's true, absolutely true.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Craig, Good morning to you.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Good morning, Good morning mister.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
You.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
You sort of ran on saying how these tax cuts inflationary.
What's the difference between that then and raising the minimum
income making the student wage equal to the minimum income.
When it comes to inflationary. I mean, labor was very
(08:04):
happy and raising minimum incomes, which is inflationary to employers,
they obviously had to put their rates up. Student wages
went up to the same thing. But giving middle New
Zealand taking less of their money is inflationary. I don't
get your logic.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
So, I mean, the economists will argue that an increase
in the minimum wage isn't as inflationary as a tax cutters.
So tax cuts put a lot of extra stimulus into
the economy. So you're talking about fourteen billion odd dollars
goes into the economy from the income tax cuts that
the government put out. Increasing the minimum wage would increase
(08:43):
you know, stimulus in the economy by a very small
fraction of that. So you know, tax cuts result in
relatively small amounts of money going to quite a lot
of people, which the cumulative effect of which is that
more money flows into the economy and therefore more you know,
more interesting you know, the more inflation, and therefore the
reserve bankal keep interest rates higher for longer.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
But at the same time, it's not just wage being raised,
is it, Craig. You've also got other people saying, well,
if their wage is going up. My needs to as well. Well.
Speaker 6 (09:12):
I had to with my staff was not I didn't
have anyone or on minimum wage. I've always played above.
But because the minimum wage went up, I to suddenly
give my guyes more money to keep it relative. And
of course it's inflationary. And you know, you can go
to whatever economists you like to get the answer you like,
(09:34):
but the reality is Labour's policies have got this country
in the stock and our grandchildren are.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Going to stop apot I mean ultimly. I think the
thing that drives wage pressure is inflation. So if people
are seeing all their costs going up, then they're going
to be asking for bigger pay increases in order to
meet those extra costs. So if we get the inflation
under control, then the demand for wage growth is less
because one of the you know, I mean, have said
(10:03):
on the other side of the baggaining table plenty over
the last six years. And what those who are doing
the bag and he will say is, you know, our
costs have gone up by x percent, our wages need
to go up by at least that amount. So if
you get the costs, you know, not growing as fast
as they have been, then that will help businesses because
the pressure for wage increases will be less.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
News talks said, be.
Speaker 7 (10:26):
Joe.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
We have their leader of the opposition, Chris Hopkins in
the House, just talking two different ways of getting to
the same place. Really, isn't it? You know, people wanting
the same result. We don't want people suffering. We want
people in decent homes. We want kids wanting to go
to school. We want better educational outcomes. How do you
get there? We don't want people being robbed on the daily.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Either, Absolutely not. I mean I think there's different values
that underpin a lot of the political debate that we have.
I mean, on crime, for example, I would say that
we should focus on preventing crime in the first place
as much as we focus on punishing people after the fact.
And if we did more of the crime prevention work,
then we would have fewer people to punish.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
So I totally agree with that. But you can't just
give the gangs a seat at the table without the
moarning it.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
No, No, that's absolutely right. I mean I think there
was a bit of hyperbole. I mean I looked at
Prime Minister when I was Prime Minister at stopping all
the funding for gangs as well, And one of the
things that sort of made me step back a little
bit from that was that some of the most effective
drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, for example, targeted at gang members,
are run by former gang members, and we'd be pulling
(11:32):
the pin on those. I think, you know, we should
focus on outcomes rather than necessarily being kind of sloganistick
in the way we approach it.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I think you can do both, though I don't think
there's anything wrong at all. I mean absolutely, the whole
point of crime reduction is never having it happen in
the first place. You don't give kids a free pass either.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
No, actually, and that is that is an area where
you know, I think we were a bit too slows.
Towards the end of the time that I was Prime Minister,
I put a bill before the House that really changed
the consequences around youth offending. But what I was there
was a ram rad bill's going through now. But actually
what I was focused on there is consequences that work.
You know, you can have consequences that just make the
(12:16):
situation worse. So if you take a young person who's
twelve thirteen years old, bang them in a jail, you're
actually going to make that problem worse if you have
consequences for them that work, i e. The things that
pull the families in and say to the families, what
are we doing to deal with this dysfunction, Because often
it's the family that's dysfunctional. That's the sort of stuff
we've got to focus on.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
As well as consequences.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Ross.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Good morning to.
Speaker 8 (12:39):
You, Yes, good morning. A question for Misstepkins. You cannot
keep on pushing costs onto people that are in business.
It just does not work. A lot of people cannot
pass their costs on to their customers. I'm in a
situation where I know of property owners in west Auckland
(13:00):
getting eighty percent of the rent that they were in
the eighties. Now you might find out hard to believe,
but I can take you a few properties and I
can show you that that has come about because of
the decline in shopping centers, the decline in the way
people shop. But the costs get put onto them either
through government charges, insurance rates, minimum wages. All these costs
(13:27):
get passed on and a lot of people do not
have the ability to pass those costs onto the public,
so they suffer in silence, and they gradually accept a
less and the less of an income themselves, and there
between a rock and a hard place.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
So I assume that the property owners that you're talking
about are commercial property owners right and residential property owners?
Speaker 8 (13:49):
Is there right commercial property owners? Yes?
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Yeah, okay, I understand. Look, we should always be looking
at how we can do things better and that Espaceially
we introduced we reintroduced commercial property depreciation as a response
following COVID nineteen and the current government of just taken
that away again. So you know, we should we should
always keep those policies around how we can support businesses
(14:12):
at the productive end of the economy. We should always
be looking at how we can do more in that space.
I think one of the challenges we've got is that
in the property area, you know, all of the incentives
support those owning residential properties, and there are probably less
incentives to support those who own commercial properties.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Just a quick one from Chill our supermarket wage costs
extrale even wage increases went up forty four percent over
the last six years.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Well, supermarkets are making over a million dollars a day
in excess profit. So I'm not that sympathetic to the
supermarkets to be honest.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Man, I know things are type for media companies. You
think we'd be able to get some new headphones, wouldn't.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
You, Robert. I'm sort of working on it. I can
mostly hear what people are saying.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
I'm a mum, right, Frank. You want to ask about
tax policy, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7 (15:04):
I do. It's be gains. But first to say thank
you for not putting up or not the politicians' voyagers,
not selling off the sovereign citizens owned as heads, etc.
And the GST. But you know o other nations, sovereign
nations ever go at the capital gains and they put
(15:28):
it back into the infrastructure. Why we used gapless wonders
talking about doing it and then Pike down about it.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
So on the issue around text, I mean, I was
pretty clear when I became Prime minister. I became Prime
minister part way through a parliamentary tym, or towards the
end of a parliamentary term, and I didn't want to
do things that we had said that we were not
going to do. And we had already said that we
weren't going to do capital gains tax or wealth tech
in their last term, and so I thought that I
should honor the commitment that my predecessor, Justinda had made.
(15:56):
I don't think you should change leader and then do
a whole lot of things that you didn't said you
weren't going to do before the last election. But I
do think the fairness of our tech system does need
to be looked at again. If you look at New
Zealand's text system and the overall text take that government
gets in New Zealand compared to Australia, the UK, the US,
we place a much heavier share of that burden on
(16:17):
salary and way journers than those other countries do, and
we need to look at how we can rebalance that.
And you know people are making there are some people
making a lot of money out of asset accumulation, the
value of assets growing, and we don't tax that the
way Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and other countries do.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Just on the supermarkets, please ask Hipkins to retract that
incorrect million dollar profit claim. The ComCom have admitted it
was incorrect as a referring to all supermarkets combined throughout
the country. Surely that would not be one supermarket. Very
inflammatory and misleading.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
That is the COMMUNCE Commission's view of what the excess
profits that supermarkets across the country are making relative to
what a regular level of profit would be.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
What is the excess profit?
Speaker 4 (17:06):
So that means you take what is a reasonable level
of profit, I mean businesses should be profitable, and then
you figure out what that reasonable level of profit is,
and then what's the profit they're making in addition to that.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Yeah, I've always wondered what that might be if people
are willing to This is interesting because this is something
I really wanted to do the last time you came in,
and I didn't mention it beforehand and should have. On
his way out of the radio station, can you get
him to walk down Queen Street and have a look
at what the government did to it. Have you walked through?
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah? I was actually just talking about this earlier on
this morning. So now that thing.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
From sky City.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah, it's just now that I don't have the diplomatic protection.
I have been down Queen Street quite a lot just recently,
including at night time, and I can totally understand why
people don't feel safe walking down Queen Street. I think
that's just the it's a less sociable place than it
used to be, and I think, you know, how do
we solve that. Well, I think a much stronger police presence,
(18:04):
even for a short period of time, even for six months,
is probably one of the things that should happen, you know,
and on the beat on the street, visible active police
presence in the CBD in Auckland is absolutely justified at
this point.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
But you've got the mad, the bad and the sad
all still housed in these places that you put them
with nowhere to go, nothing to do.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
I mean, and that social dysfunction didn't just come from nowhere.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Of course it didn't, so, but concentrating people in one
area is always going to cause major issues for those people,
many of whom lovely hairdresser barber who's been there for
thirty years, he's at the end of his tea that
he's been you know, bashed for Watson, his till and
for some poor sad people to sniff the hairspray.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Yeah, I think we need to. I mean that again,
it comes back to focusing on building more houses for
vulnerable people and not putting them all in the same place.
I totally agree with that they need to be spread out,
you know, across the community.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
But I mean, you really do have to have a
look to just see I have.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
I mean, I've spent quite a bit of time and
in central Auckland by myself, you know, just walking through
to get a feel for the place, and like, I
completely understand why people don't feel safe in the Auckland CBD.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
And just how sad it is for those business owners
who are desperately trying to make a buck.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
But it's also a vicious circle because what happens is
because people don't feel safe, there's fewer people in the CBD,
and therefore you end up with, you know, the people
who are making people feel less safe being more more
dominant and more visible, and therefore fewer people come, and
therefore that just continues to you know, it sort of
feels like parts of the CBD, and it's not all,
but parts of the CBD seem to be locked in
(19:39):
that spiral.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Leader of the opposition, Chris Hipkins, is in studio a
textas says, why has your party, Chris turned against farmers
in the farming community. You're just back from field days.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I'm back from field days and it was great. I
had some really positive conversations with farmers, and I really
value the work that farmers do. I absolutely you know,
and as I said at Field Days, I think relationships
between the farming community and the last government had really
broken at the end, and so I think that is
something that we need to do some work on. We
don't hate farmers. In fact, we really value the work
(20:11):
farmers do.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Really that message really didn't get through.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
No, I think that's absolutely correct, that message didn't get through.
I do think that farming is going to face some
big challenges in the next you know, they know, and
the next exactly, and a lot of farmers are already
well ahead of the curve and dealing with that. And
I don't think we gave them enough credit for the
fact that they're already doing a lot of stuff around sustainability,
around tackling climate change that we haven't given them credit for.
(20:36):
We're always looking at what the next step is, and
I think the problem the challenge with that we always
have to look at what the next step is, but
you've actually got to give credit for the steps that
have already been taken.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
I think so. And I think certainly my perception, and
it's not the nationwide perception, but my perception and the
perception from a number of listeners and callers is that
you don't give people enough credit. You don't give business
enough credit for looking after their stuff, you don't give
farmers enough credit for looking after the environment. You don't
give people enough credit for actually wanting the best, not
(21:06):
just for themselves but for each other.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Yeah, and I think that's fair. I mean, I think
the longer you're in government, the more defensive you become.
And I think certainly in some of those areas, we'd
become too defensive towards the end of our time in government.
And you know, I think we should have a constructive
working relationship with business. We should have a constructive working
relationship with the farming community. And I think in government
you have to have a constructive working relationship even with
(21:29):
the people who don't vote for you. You can't go
into it thinking I'm only going to have a good
relationship with the people who vote for us. You have
to be able to go into a room and say, well,
I know you don't vote for me, but we've still
got to work together.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
And I know you can't have a thousand different voices
all coming at you. I get that, But when you've
got people of the caliber of Citi and Taylor saying, look,
we want to help and just getting rebuffed, you know,
and that wasn't just him. It gives a sense of
a bunkered government that knows best.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah, I mean I had some really good conversations with
you and during the COVID period and the suggestions that
he had that he was making, And I've had some
really good conversations with him since then too, and I
think he's a great New Zealander. That doesn't mean we're
always going to agree, and it doesn't mean that always
the ideas that he comes up with are going to
be readily implementable. But you know, that was a really
tough period, the stuff that we were talking with him
(22:19):
about around you know, COVID isolation and so on. We
did actually work with him to you know, trial alternative
ways of doing that.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Yeah, you did, but that but that it wasn't just
from business. There was a real sense that government knows best,
will do it, and almost the idea that you wanted
to create a dependency on government.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Yeah, I definitely don't think that's the case at all.
I mean, I think you know, there's some there's some
really good examples of where government and business can work
hand in hand to the benefit of everybody.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
So I have thought building houses would have been one of.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Them, but building houses should absolutely be one of them.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
And I've heard from so many in the building industry
that they couldn't get meetings. It was just a completely
closed shop.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Well, I mean the contrast now of horses that you've
got a government that says it wants to work with
the housing sector that has collapsed it. So, I mean,
I think text is.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
In the building industry und agreeing with you on that.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Well, building construction activity has collapsed in the last six months.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
It's because people have got no bloody money. Yep, bug
to the economy.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
And the government. But the government pulling all the money
out that we were spending in that sector is actually
making that worse rather than better. I mean how the
government house driven house building program is grinding to a holt,
The work on upgrading schools and hospitals is ground to
a hold. Some of the big transport infrastructure projects of
ground to a holt. And this is stuff that the
government can control. So they're making this situation worse, not better.
(23:43):
At the moment. I hope that they will quickly actually
start to get back to saying what they do want
to do rather than the things that they don't want
to do, so that people can then get on with it.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
But there's a lot of disentangling that does have to
be done.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
Well both carry that's not true. So let's look at
the school building projects. We were building new classrooms and
upgrading classrooms and areas where schools were run down and
needed to be upgraded, or in new classrooms were need
to cope with roll growth. The government's stopping all of
that work to say, are we're going to take another
look at it. Yes, isn't going to make that problem
go away. They're just that we're still going to have
to be.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
But as they pointed out, a number of them were bespoke,
fancy schmancy, not you know, just one utilitarian design that
could be replicated around the country.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
And again that's not true. I used to have sitting
on my desk as Minister of Education, the catalog that
I made the Ministry of Education do of the standard
designs for new school buildings. Schools could go through that
and pick which ones they wanted. They could change the color,
but by and large the designs were standard.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
The idea too, of the modern learning environment that everybody
said wouldn't work and hasn't you know that's had to
be that there was a whole lot of unnecessary work
that was done that's going to have to be undone.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
Well, the conception of the modern learning environment was actually
the last national government not not what we did.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I was told by principles and teachers that they couldn't
get funding unless they put in modern learning environments.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Well, no, we actually changed those. So those standard designs
that I mentioned were designed to give schools the choice.
So there were options there for whether they had single
cell classrooms or whether they had more open spaces. The
standard designs allowed for both of those things.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Right, when it comes to kind order, have you done
away with and agreed that the let's just love them
to death and they'll become better people, let's keep them
in tendencies is not going to work.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
If you're talking about tendancies, I think we need to
think about how we manage that. So I was talking
to a kind of or a tenancy manager recently who
said that for some of those tenants, it's very much
where you put them matters a lot. So they have
dealt with some of the antisocial behavior by some of
them from some of those tenants, by moving where those
tenants are, and the antisocial behavior has gone away. So
(25:48):
I think afviction should always be the last you know,
the last call, but it should be an option where
people are repeatedly moved around and no matter where you
put them they cause problems. Then I think, you know,
that's a bigger problem that we've got to deal with.
We've also got to remember, where do they go once
they're a victims.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Well, we've had this discussion, and it's go into the
motel where somebody is desperately waiting for a home. Just
replace them, put them to the back of the queue.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
But the challenge is you end up with people on
the streets.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
If you take somebody out of an emergency motel, put
them into the trashed but now refurbished, going over to
home that chummy was in, Chummy can now go to
the emergency housing.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
And then you still have problems in emergency housing, which
you know, which we clearly do have a lot of
problems in emergency housing. Fundamentally, I think we've got to
find ways of getting these people into an environment where
they do have the stable accommodation, but where the antisocial
behavior stops.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
This is going to look attractive on the videos and
as we're all scratching at our eas Sorry about that. Rich,
Good morning to you.
Speaker 7 (26:50):
Are you good?
Speaker 5 (26:52):
My question for Chris, I guess for me, like I
voted for labor in twenty seventeen, I voted for labor
in twenty twenty.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
I thought you guys were doing all right through here, but.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
In that last up to the after election, I just
kind of fell away from you. I just felt like
the middle New Zealand was just forgotten about. You always
see minimum wage kind of going up, and we don't
misfit that, but it's just you know, this government's been
in for about six months, so you guys have been
in government. You know, you are in this government for
(27:25):
six years. How are you going to get someone like me?
And there's going to be a lot of other people
in the same kind of mindset as myself to get
you to come back to you and vote for you again,
because I just kind of feel that you just didn't
seem to care about us. It just seemed that Middle
New Zealand was forgotten about and I was just frustrated,
where here's a new government that they're actually trying to
(27:47):
get us back on track. It's kind of like, how
can I really take you guys seriously when you go
look at your track recording, how are you going to
get someone like me to vote for you the next selection,
because people like Middle New Zealand tell me that.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Yeah, thanks very much. I mean, look, I think you know,
saying we're going to get the country back on track
is an easy slogan. Actually evidence suggests so far they're
not having much progress, much success with that. I think
what we have to do in the next couple of
years is make sure that we are offering something different
in twenty twenty six to what the current government are offering,
but also to what we offered last time. And for me,
(28:21):
one of the most fundamental things one of the reasons
I'm in politics, one of the reasons I'm in the
Labor Party is I believe the notion, and that really
strongly in the notion that people who are working hard
every day should be able to get ahead. And I've
met far too many Kiwis who are working really hard
who feel like they can't get ahead. And that isn't
necessarily new, but it's a problem that feels like it's
(28:41):
getting worse and worse over several decades now. So a
lot of people working people feel like, you know, that
they're not having the opportunity to buy their own home.
They're hard work isn't paying enough for them to be
able to give their kids the sort of future that
they want to be able to give them. And so,
you know, as we focus on what are we going
to offer at the next election, that's very much front
(29:03):
of mine for me. How do we make sure that
people feel like through their own hard work that they're
actually getting ahead and creating a better life for themselves
and their families. And it's going to require some new
thinking on our part. We're going to have to have
some new ways.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
It really is because the last ones didn't work. The
last three years had the first three years you were
in a coalition government and there were some there was
some new thinking, new ideas. It didn't work. Like you
promised the idea of homes that would be readily available
for hard work and kiwis you promised that your child
poverty would go down. You know that all of those
(29:36):
good things, and in fact people just felt ripped off.
I think because it was over promised and not delivered.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Yeah, I mean I look back. I've looked back on
the last six years. I look back on stuff that
I'm really proud of, and things that you know, we
didn't targets, we didn't hit, you know, goals that we
had that we didn't achieve. And we can't underestimate the
fact that for three years of that six years there
was a huge disruption and no one wants to talk
about it anymore. And I saw you just rolling your
eyes there, Carrie. But the reality is that did COVID
(30:06):
disrupted everything? If you're in a business and you say, what,
you know, how did the last six years go for us?
Every one of them will tell you that COVID nineteen
disrupted everything.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yes, but it didn't have to for as long as
it did, especially in this country.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
Well, if you wanted to avoid the huge number of
avoidable deaths that we had around the rest of the world,
then yes it did.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
It didn't. It did not have to go on that
second year as long as it did. It is completely
that Seriously.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
The decisions around lockdowns and so on were directly related
to vaccination. Once we got the country to a point
where you know, COVID nineteen could spread without huge widespread death.
Then we were able to ease off and wind all
of that back. But if we had done that before
vaccination had been rolled out across the country, the results
would have been some you know, it would have all
(30:54):
been in vain. You know, the sacrifices people made would
have all been in vain.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
All the warriors tickets in the world were not going
to get some of the most vulnerable and inverted commas vaccinated.
If you've visited the farm, all the reason people live
up there is so that they don't get swept up
into government mandates and government dictates. They are off the
grid and they want to stay that way. So you
could we could still be in lockdown in Auckland and
(31:18):
the vaccination rates would have stayed the same.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
We've got vaccination rates into sort of. I think it
was ninety six percent for ninety four percent for adults
having had two doses of the vaccination. It was one
of the highest vaccination rates in the world. And it
is one of the reasons.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Well, actually, after saying no, thank you will go to
the back of.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
The line, it is well, we never said, well, I
think you will go to the back of the line,
we said that we're going to roll out what was
then the best available vaccine rather than rolling out the
ones that have had other problems.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
If you're going to you know, no, I know that
this lovely one hundred and six year old man I
know had covids of it all looks forward to seeing
his one hundred and seventh. He's still got his driver's life.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
You can't just assume that's going to be the result
for everything. It's not going to be evidence. Clear evidence
from every other country around the world that had COVID
spread like wildfire before there was a shows that it
wasn't true.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
I live completely differently to the way we live. But
nonetheless we will argue this, and historians will argue for
years to come. News talks said, be oh, that's it.
Really we don't agree on that much. We agree we
want a better New Zealand. Of course that's how we
get there. But we do agree too that we need
new headphones.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Absolutely. I think I think it's time for news talksz'd
be to splash out and get some new head faces
New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
We don't get government grants.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
In an interview where I'm saying that I'm out around
the country listening to people. The video footage is going
to show me having my hands over both my ears
as I try and stuff the ear pieces into my
ears so that I can hear what the callers are saying.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
So I've got some sort of tick anyway, So what
do you well, we'll have you know, these are regulars.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Now next time, it'd be good to hear what you
are going to do because by that time you'll have formulated.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Well, it depends how soon you want to get me
back here. But I mean we've still got two years
to go in this political term, so you know, during
that time we'll do policy development, but we're not in
a position really to have a whole lot of new things,
you know, until we start getting towards the next election campaign.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
So yeah, so what will you do in the meantime.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
Well, it is it's about listening and it's about engaging
with new ideas. I think we do need some new
ideas and that's what we'll be working on.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Okay, you chose this one, Yeah, thanks.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
To get better?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Are you trolling national in the coalition government?
Speaker 4 (33:26):
Well it's a little bit of that, but also, you know,
the UK election is coming up, and it's looking very
good for the Labor Party over in the UK at
the moment, so there's hope. There's always hope.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Gary Chris Hopkins, leader of the Opposition. Nice to have
you in. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
For more from Kerry Wooden Mornings, listen live to news
talks it'd be from nine am weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Kerry Wooden Morning's podcast from News Talks.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
He'd be.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Good lord, Good Lord. I think I've just managed to
get the earphones in in the nick of time, so
I'm going to be able to hear your calls when
you call in to talk to the leader of the opposition.
Chris Hipkinson's in the studio. Good morning, good morning, Nice
to have you with us. You've been on a charm
offensive up and down the country.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Well, I guess you could call it a charm offensive,
a sort of sort of more a listening offensive. Really.
You know, you lose an election, it's you've got to
get out there and talk to people and hear what
they've got to say.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, that's the thing, it's listening.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Absolutely. And you know, my old friend Mike Moore, of
the late Great Mike Moore used to quip and I
thought it was quite a good quip. Actually, though no
one ever listened their way out of a vote. You
can talk your way out of a vote, but no
one ever listened their way out of a vote. And
I think it's quite true. You know, when you lose
an election, you've got to take some time to get
out there and listen to people and understand, particularly from
those people who voted for US in twenty twenty but
(01:03):
then dinn in twenty twenty three, what made the difference.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, because I think with yours it was a double whammy,
and that you're party faithful. The ones who will always
vote labor always, some of them found themselves voting green
because they were so cross that you'd wasteed you mandate.
And then there was the middle ground going, oh, no,
they've gone way too far. How do you appease the
hard left labor rights as well as get the votes
(01:28):
of the center ground back.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
I think ultimately people vote on values. I mean they
do vote on specific policies for sure, but more than that,
they vote on values, and you know, there's a lot
of common ground that we can find there. We're never
going to please everybody on the you know, on the
on the the core kind of party activists, but we're
also never going to please everybody.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
You know.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
One of the things about politics, you can't please all
of the people all the time. It's just an absolute impossibility. Yeah,
do you certainly not for people who call it a
talk back, But you can't please all of the people
all the time.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
No, But I mean the one thing and I'm not
going to harp back because you know, I've said to
Christopher Luxe and I don't want to hear about the
previous government for much longer, you know, like already you
know now you're on your own.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Cost, they'd have nothing to talk about now.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
No, I did leave quite the mess. But at the
same time, I do you know now you've got to
look forward as well. But I did feel like, do
you think you have had a change in and of
yourself as to why you lost? Because on election that
you didn't it was almost like a telling off to
the nation for not voting for you.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
No, I don't think that's true.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I mean I thought that that was the way it
came across, like I cannot believe you listed all the
things you've done, but you're voted out.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
We also acknowledged that the New Zealanders had voted for
change as well, and that means that we have to
change too. I mean, the twenty twenty six election campaigns
is not going to be a rerun of the twenty
twenty three election campaign. People voted to change in twenty three.
That means in by twenty six we have to have
changed as well. So that's that's what we're in the
process of doing.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Now, Yes, I mean you're very bullish. You think you
can make this a one term coalition government.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Well, I think if you look at all of the
promises they made and they have really delivered on any
of them, it's a chaotic government that's fundamentally taking the
country backwards. You know, where I've said, where they're doing
things that we agree with, will support it, you know,
I know Granny Flat's is a big debate here. You know,
if there are things that we can do to make
it easier to do sensible things, then we will support those.
(03:27):
So you know, I'm open to those discussions.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
How are they taking the country backwards?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Well, when you're borrowing twelve billion dollars more, that's more
money than Robertson borrowed in any of his budgets except
for twenty twenty. Now, twenty twenty was at the height
of the pandemic. But Nicola Willis is borrowing more money
than we ever did other than in twenty twenty. If
you look at the deficits that she's running. If you
took out the wage subsidy, the small business resurgence payment,
(03:53):
and the of course the other one called the resurgence payment.
Those three big ones. Where makes it in the money
was the government was giving the money out to businesses.
If you took those out, the current deficits, that the
government a running a big than any deficits we ever ran.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
And you don't think that they would be running defficits
if it hadn't been for your last six years.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Well, if you give away fourteen billion dollars in tax
cuts and then another three billion dollars in tax cuts
for landlords, then when you're borrowing twelve billion dollars extra,
you're borrowing to pay for those things.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You agreed with tax cuts the last time we chatted.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I do think the bracket adjustments, you know, and that's
what they were there. Yeah, but there's a time, you know,
you've got to pick your timing and doing it at
a time when inflation is high and when government you know,
revenue is declining because of a downturn in the economy,
it's the worst time to do it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
But then you've got people who have never been hard
up before suddenly finding themselves incredibly hard up because of
the tax brackets and because of the galloping inflation.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
And unfortunately the tax cuts that the government are delivering
is going to make that worse because ultimately, if you
look at the extra costs people are going to face,
it's doing nothing to tackle those things and potentially is
in keeping inflation higher for longer, which means interest rates
stay higher for longer, which means the cost of living
continues to be a problem. Reserve Bank has said what
the three three or four big things are that are
(05:13):
keeping you know, interest rates higher At the moment, it's
increasing rates, it's increasing insurance payments, it's increasing rents, and
then of course that leads to increasing interest rates, and
those are the things that are really biting into Kiwi families.
The current government's budget does nothing to address any of those.
In fact, it makes them worse.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
The unintended consequences of your you know, landlords bills and
looking after renters meant that there were fewer rental properties
on the market. That's not true, done a lot.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Not true.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Rents have stabilized just in the last few months.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Well, that's absolutely not true. Actually we were building more new.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Houses talking about rentals, Well, it was.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
The same thing. It's ultimately's a question of how many
houses there are in the market. And we had building
and construction booming building a construction sector has collapsed in
the last six months.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I don't have time to ring in see Ben. I'd
like to ask Chris Hipkins how he plans on getting
support back As a labor voter, I jumped ship is
months in Auckland lockdown sent me into thousands of dollars
of mortgage areas and lost income, all to rid ourselves
of COVID that we all got. Anyway, it's going to
take a hell of a lot of change to get
my support back that Auckland lockdown. I mean, I know
(06:25):
it didn't affect the rest of the country, but you
have no idea.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
It was a huge contributor to the big loss and
support that we experienced here in Auckland. There's no question
about that if you look at It's a really hard
one to argue about, though, because you're arguing against a hypothetical.
So the hypothetical was if we hadn't done that, if
we had just let COVID spread through the country before
we got the vaccination rates to the levels that we did,
(06:51):
what would have happened. We know that the hospitals would
have been much more overwhelmed. There would have been a
lot more people who would have died from COVID than did.
But that's a hypothetical because of course it didn't happen
because of the things that we did. And look, Auckland
took for the team. There's no question about that. It
was bloody hard for Auckland.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
You don't know because you never came here. Well, no
nobody came.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Here when Auckland was lockdown. We didn't. I mean I
came to Auckland straight after the lockdowns had finished. But yes,
I absolutely, absolutely, and I totally get that it was
really really hard for Auckland.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I'm not entirely sure you do. I mean, I think
it's a bit like being in Canterbury when people say
I empathized, you know, about the quakes and having to
live with the ongoing quakes. Until you've lived it, you
don't know.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I think that's true, absolutely true.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Craig, Good morning to you.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Good morning, Good morning mister.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
You.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
You sort of ran on saying how these tax cuts inflationary.
What's the difference between that then and raising the minimum
income making the student wage equal to the minimum income.
When it comes to inflationary. I mean, labor was very
(08:04):
happy and raising minimum incomes, which is inflationary to employers,
they obviously had to put their rates up. Student wages
went up to the same thing. But giving middle New
Zealand taking less of their money is inflationary. I don't
get your logic.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
So, I mean, the economists will argue that an increase
in the minimum wage isn't as inflationary as a tax cutters.
So tax cuts put a lot of extra stimulus into
the economy. So you're talking about fourteen billion odd dollars
goes into the economy from the income tax cuts that
the government put out. Increasing the minimum wage would increase
(08:43):
you know, stimulus in the economy by a very small
fraction of that. So you know, tax cuts result in
relatively small amounts of money going to quite a lot
of people, which the cumulative effect of which is that
more money flows into the economy and therefore more you know,
more interesting you know, the more inflation, and therefore the
reserve bankal keep interest rates higher for longer.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
But at the same time, it's not just wage being raised,
is it, Craig. You've also got other people saying, well,
if their wage is going up. My needs to as well. Well.
Speaker 6 (09:12):
I had to with my staff was not I didn't
have anyone or on minimum wage. I've always played above.
But because the minimum wage went up, I to suddenly
give my guyes more money to keep it relative. And
of course it's inflationary. And you know, you can go
to whatever economists you like to get the answer you like,
(09:34):
but the reality is Labour's policies have got this country
in the stock and our grandchildren are.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Going to stop apot I mean ultimly. I think the
thing that drives wage pressure is inflation. So if people
are seeing all their costs going up, then they're going
to be asking for bigger pay increases in order to
meet those extra costs. So if we get the inflation
under control, then the demand for wage growth is less
because one of the you know, I mean, have said
(10:03):
on the other side of the baggaining table plenty over
the last six years. And what those who are doing
the bag and he will say is, you know, our
costs have gone up by x percent, our wages need
to go up by at least that amount. So if
you get the costs, you know, not growing as fast
as they have been, then that will help businesses because
the pressure for wage increases will be less.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
News talks said, be.
Speaker 7 (10:26):
Joe.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
We have their leader of the opposition, Chris Hopkins in
the House, just talking two different ways of getting to
the same place. Really, isn't it? You know, people wanting
the same result. We don't want people suffering. We want
people in decent homes. We want kids wanting to go
to school. We want better educational outcomes. How do you
get there? We don't want people being robbed on the daily.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Either, Absolutely not. I mean I think there's different values
that underpin a lot of the political debate that we have.
I mean, on crime, for example, I would say that
we should focus on preventing crime in the first place
as much as we focus on punishing people after the fact.
And if we did more of the crime prevention work,
then we would have fewer people to punish.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
So I totally agree with that. But you can't just
give the gangs a seat at the table without the
moarning it.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
No, No, that's absolutely right. I mean I think there
was a bit of hyperbole. I mean I looked at
Prime Minister when I was Prime Minister at stopping all
the funding for gangs as well, And one of the
things that sort of made me step back a little
bit from that was that some of the most effective
drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, for example, targeted at gang members,
are run by former gang members, and we'd be pulling
(11:32):
the pin on those. I think, you know, we should
focus on outcomes rather than necessarily being kind of sloganistick
in the way we approach it.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I think you can do both, though I don't think
there's anything wrong at all. I mean absolutely, the whole
point of crime reduction is never having it happen in
the first place. You don't give kids a free pass either.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
No, actually, and that is that is an area where
you know, I think we were a bit too slows.
Towards the end of the time that I was Prime Minister,
I put a bill before the House that really changed
the consequences around youth offending. But what I was there
was a ram rad bill's going through now. But actually
what I was focused on there is consequences that work.
You know, you can have consequences that just make the
(12:16):
situation worse. So if you take a young person who's
twelve thirteen years old, bang them in a jail, you're
actually going to make that problem worse if you have
consequences for them that work, i e. The things that
pull the families in and say to the families, what
are we doing to deal with this dysfunction, Because often
it's the family that's dysfunctional. That's the sort of stuff
we've got to focus on.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
As well as consequences.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Ross.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Good morning to.
Speaker 8 (12:39):
You, Yes, good morning. A question for Misstepkins. You cannot
keep on pushing costs onto people that are in business.
It just does not work. A lot of people cannot
pass their costs on to their customers. I'm in a
situation where I know of property owners in west Auckland
(13:00):
getting eighty percent of the rent that they were in
the eighties. Now you might find out hard to believe,
but I can take you a few properties and I
can show you that that has come about because of
the decline in shopping centers, the decline in the way
people shop. But the costs get put onto them either
through government charges, insurance rates, minimum wages. All these costs
(13:27):
get passed on and a lot of people do not
have the ability to pass those costs onto the public,
so they suffer in silence, and they gradually accept a
less and the less of an income themselves, and there
between a rock and a hard place.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
So I assume that the property owners that you're talking
about are commercial property owners right and residential property owners?
Speaker 8 (13:49):
Is there right commercial property owners? Yes?
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Yeah, okay, I understand. Look, we should always be looking
at how we can do things better and that Espaceially
we introduced we reintroduced commercial property depreciation as a response
following COVID nineteen and the current government of just taken
that away again. So you know, we should we should
always keep those policies around how we can support businesses
(14:12):
at the productive end of the economy. We should always
be looking at how we can do more in that space.
I think one of the challenges we've got is that
in the property area, you know, all of the incentives
support those owning residential properties, and there are probably less
incentives to support those who own commercial properties.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Just a quick one from Chill our supermarket wage costs
extrale even wage increases went up forty four percent over
the last six years.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Well, supermarkets are making over a million dollars a day
in excess profit. So I'm not that sympathetic to the
supermarkets to be honest.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Man, I know things are type for media companies. You
think we'd be able to get some new headphones, wouldn't.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
You, Robert. I'm sort of working on it. I can
mostly hear what people are saying.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
I'm a mum, right, Frank. You want to ask about
tax policy, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7 (15:04):
I do. It's be gains. But first to say thank
you for not putting up or not the politicians' voyagers,
not selling off the sovereign citizens owned as heads, etc.
And the GST. But you know o other nations, sovereign
nations ever go at the capital gains and they put
(15:28):
it back into the infrastructure. Why we used gapless wonders
talking about doing it and then Pike down about it.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
So on the issue around text, I mean, I was
pretty clear when I became Prime minister. I became Prime
minister part way through a parliamentary tym, or towards the
end of a parliamentary term, and I didn't want to
do things that we had said that we were not
going to do. And we had already said that we
weren't going to do capital gains tax or wealth tech
in their last term, and so I thought that I
should honor the commitment that my predecessor, Justinda had made.
(15:56):
I don't think you should change leader and then do
a whole lot of things that you didn't said you
weren't going to do before the last election. But I
do think the fairness of our tech system does need
to be looked at again. If you look at New
Zealand's text system and the overall text take that government
gets in New Zealand compared to Australia, the UK, the US,
we place a much heavier share of that burden on
(16:17):
salary and way journers than those other countries do, and
we need to look at how we can rebalance that.
And you know people are making there are some people
making a lot of money out of asset accumulation, the
value of assets growing, and we don't tax that the
way Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and other countries do.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Just on the supermarkets, please ask Hipkins to retract that
incorrect million dollar profit claim. The ComCom have admitted it
was incorrect as a referring to all supermarkets combined throughout
the country. Surely that would not be one supermarket. Very
inflammatory and misleading.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
That is the COMMUNCE Commission's view of what the excess
profits that supermarkets across the country are making relative to
what a regular level of profit would be.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
What is the excess profit?
Speaker 4 (17:06):
So that means you take what is a reasonable level
of profit, I mean businesses should be profitable, and then
you figure out what that reasonable level of profit is,
and then what's the profit they're making in addition to that.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Yeah, I've always wondered what that might be if people
are willing to This is interesting because this is something
I really wanted to do the last time you came in,
and I didn't mention it beforehand and should have. On
his way out of the radio station, can you get
him to walk down Queen Street and have a look
at what the government did to it. Have you walked through?
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah? I was actually just talking about this earlier on
this morning. So now that thing.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
From sky City.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah, it's just now that I don't have the diplomatic protection.
I have been down Queen Street quite a lot just recently,
including at night time, and I can totally understand why
people don't feel safe walking down Queen Street. I think
that's just the it's a less sociable place than it
used to be, and I think, you know, how do
we solve that. Well, I think a much stronger police presence,
(18:04):
even for a short period of time, even for six months,
is probably one of the things that should happen, you know,
and on the beat on the street, visible active police
presence in the CBD in Auckland is absolutely justified at
this point.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
But you've got the mad, the bad and the sad
all still housed in these places that you put them
with nowhere to go, nothing to do.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
I mean, and that social dysfunction didn't just come from nowhere.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Of course it didn't, so, but concentrating people in one
area is always going to cause major issues for those people,
many of whom lovely hairdresser barber who's been there for
thirty years, he's at the end of his tea that
he's been you know, bashed for Watson, his till and
for some poor sad people to sniff the hairspray.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Yeah, I think we need to. I mean that again,
it comes back to focusing on building more houses for
vulnerable people and not putting them all in the same place.
I totally agree with that they need to be spread out,
you know, across the community.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
But I mean, you really do have to have a
look to just see I have.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
I mean, I've spent quite a bit of time and
in central Auckland by myself, you know, just walking through
to get a feel for the place, and like, I
completely understand why people don't feel safe in the Auckland CBD.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
And just how sad it is for those business owners
who are desperately trying to make a buck.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
But it's also a vicious circle because what happens is
because people don't feel safe, there's fewer people in the CBD,
and therefore you end up with, you know, the people
who are making people feel less safe being more more
dominant and more visible, and therefore fewer people come, and
therefore that just continues to you know, it sort of
feels like parts of the CBD, and it's not all,
but parts of the CBD seem to be locked in
(19:39):
that spiral.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Leader of the opposition, Chris Hipkins, is in studio a
textas says, why has your party, Chris turned against farmers
in the farming community. You're just back from field days.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I'm back from field days and it was great. I
had some really positive conversations with farmers, and I really
value the work that farmers do. I absolutely you know,
and as I said at Field Days, I think relationships
between the farming community and the last government had really
broken at the end, and so I think that is
something that we need to do some work on. We
don't hate farmers. In fact, we really value the work
(20:11):
farmers do.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Really that message really didn't get through.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
No, I think that's absolutely correct, that message didn't get through.
I do think that farming is going to face some
big challenges in the next you know, they know, and
the next exactly, and a lot of farmers are already
well ahead of the curve and dealing with that. And
I don't think we gave them enough credit for the
fact that they're already doing a lot of stuff around sustainability,
around tackling climate change that we haven't given them credit for.
(20:36):
We're always looking at what the next step is, and
I think the problem the challenge with that we always
have to look at what the next step is, but
you've actually got to give credit for the steps that
have already been taken.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
I think so. And I think certainly my perception, and
it's not the nationwide perception, but my perception and the
perception from a number of listeners and callers is that
you don't give people enough credit. You don't give business
enough credit for looking after their stuff, you don't give
farmers enough credit for looking after the environment. You don't
give people enough credit for actually wanting the best, not
(21:06):
just for themselves but for each other.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Yeah, and I think that's fair. I mean, I think
the longer you're in government, the more defensive you become.
And I think certainly in some of those areas, we'd
become too defensive towards the end of our time in government.
And you know, I think we should have a constructive
working relationship with business. We should have a constructive working
relationship with the farming community. And I think in government
you have to have a constructive working relationship even with
(21:29):
the people who don't vote for you. You can't go
into it thinking I'm only going to have a good
relationship with the people who vote for us. You have
to be able to go into a room and say, well,
I know you don't vote for me, but we've still
got to work together.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
And I know you can't have a thousand different voices
all coming at you. I get that, But when you've
got people of the caliber of Citi and Taylor saying, look,
we want to help and just getting rebuffed, you know,
and that wasn't just him. It gives a sense of
a bunkered government that knows best.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah, I mean I had some really good conversations with
you and during the COVID period and the suggestions that
he had that he was making, And I've had some
really good conversations with him since then too, and I
think he's a great New Zealander. That doesn't mean we're
always going to agree, and it doesn't mean that always
the ideas that he comes up with are going to
be readily implementable. But you know, that was a really
tough period, the stuff that we were talking with him
(22:19):
about around you know, COVID isolation and so on. We
did actually work with him to you know, trial alternative
ways of doing that.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Yeah, you did, but that but that it wasn't just
from business. There was a real sense that government knows best,
will do it, and almost the idea that you wanted
to create a dependency on government.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Yeah, I definitely don't think that's the case at all.
I mean, I think you know, there's some there's some
really good examples of where government and business can work
hand in hand to the benefit of everybody.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
So I have thought building houses would have been one of.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Them, but building houses should absolutely be one of them.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
And I've heard from so many in the building industry
that they couldn't get meetings. It was just a completely
closed shop.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Well, I mean the contrast now of horses that you've
got a government that says it wants to work with
the housing sector that has collapsed it. So, I mean,
I think text is.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
In the building industry und agreeing with you on that.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Well, building construction activity has collapsed in the last six months.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
It's because people have got no bloody money. Yep, bug
to the economy.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
And the government. But the government pulling all the money
out that we were spending in that sector is actually
making that worse rather than better. I mean how the
government house driven house building program is grinding to a holt,
The work on upgrading schools and hospitals is ground to
a hold. Some of the big transport infrastructure projects of
ground to a holt. And this is stuff that the
government can control. So they're making this situation worse, not better.
(23:43):
At the moment. I hope that they will quickly actually
start to get back to saying what they do want
to do rather than the things that they don't want
to do, so that people can then get on with it.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
But there's a lot of disentangling that does have to
be done.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
Well both carry that's not true. So let's look at
the school building projects. We were building new classrooms and
upgrading classrooms and areas where schools were run down and
needed to be upgraded, or in new classrooms were need
to cope with roll growth. The government's stopping all of
that work to say, are we're going to take another
look at it. Yes, isn't going to make that problem
go away. They're just that we're still going to have
to be.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
But as they pointed out, a number of them were bespoke,
fancy schmancy, not you know, just one utilitarian design that
could be replicated around the country.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
And again that's not true. I used to have sitting
on my desk as Minister of Education, the catalog that
I made the Ministry of Education do of the standard
designs for new school buildings. Schools could go through that
and pick which ones they wanted. They could change the color,
but by and large the designs were standard.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
The idea too, of the modern learning environment that everybody
said wouldn't work and hasn't you know that's had to
be that there was a whole lot of unnecessary work
that was done that's going to have to be undone.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
Well, the conception of the modern learning environment was actually
the last national government not not what we did.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I was told by principles and teachers that they couldn't
get funding unless they put in modern learning environments.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Well, no, we actually changed those. So those standard designs
that I mentioned were designed to give schools the choice.
So there were options there for whether they had single
cell classrooms or whether they had more open spaces. The
standard designs allowed for both of those things.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Right, when it comes to kind order, have you done
away with and agreed that the let's just love them
to death and they'll become better people, let's keep them
in tendencies is not going to work.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
If you're talking about tendancies, I think we need to
think about how we manage that. So I was talking
to a kind of or a tenancy manager recently who
said that for some of those tenants, it's very much
where you put them matters a lot. So they have
dealt with some of the antisocial behavior by some of
them from some of those tenants, by moving where those
tenants are, and the antisocial behavior has gone away. So
(25:48):
I think afviction should always be the last you know,
the last call, but it should be an option where
people are repeatedly moved around and no matter where you
put them they cause problems. Then I think, you know,
that's a bigger problem that we've got to deal with.
We've also got to remember, where do they go once
they're a victims.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Well, we've had this discussion, and it's go into the
motel where somebody is desperately waiting for a home. Just
replace them, put them to the back of the queue.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
But the challenge is you end up with people on
the streets.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
If you take somebody out of an emergency motel, put
them into the trashed but now refurbished, going over to
home that chummy was in, Chummy can now go to
the emergency housing.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
And then you still have problems in emergency housing, which
you know, which we clearly do have a lot of
problems in emergency housing. Fundamentally, I think we've got to
find ways of getting these people into an environment where
they do have the stable accommodation, but where the antisocial
behavior stops.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
This is going to look attractive on the videos and
as we're all scratching at our eas Sorry about that. Rich,
Good morning to you.
Speaker 7 (26:50):
Are you good?
Speaker 5 (26:52):
My question for Chris, I guess for me, like I
voted for labor in twenty seventeen, I voted for labor
in twenty twenty.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
I thought you guys were doing all right through here, but.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
In that last up to the after election, I just
kind of fell away from you. I just felt like
the middle New Zealand was just forgotten about. You always
see minimum wage kind of going up, and we don't
misfit that, but it's just you know, this government's been
in for about six months, so you guys have been
in government. You know, you are in this government for
(27:25):
six years. How are you going to get someone like me?
And there's going to be a lot of other people
in the same kind of mindset as myself to get
you to come back to you and vote for you again,
because I just kind of feel that you just didn't
seem to care about us. It just seemed that Middle
New Zealand was forgotten about and I was just frustrated,
where here's a new government that they're actually trying to
(27:47):
get us back on track. It's kind of like, how
can I really take you guys seriously when you go
look at your track recording, how are you going to
get someone like me to vote for you the next selection,
because people like Middle New Zealand tell me that.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Yeah, thanks very much. I mean, look, I think you know,
saying we're going to get the country back on track
is an easy slogan. Actually evidence suggests so far they're
not having much progress, much success with that. I think
what we have to do in the next couple of
years is make sure that we are offering something different
in twenty twenty six to what the current government are offering,
but also to what we offered last time. And for me,
(28:21):
one of the most fundamental things one of the reasons
I'm in politics, one of the reasons I'm in the
Labor Party is I believe the notion, and that really
strongly in the notion that people who are working hard
every day should be able to get ahead. And I've
met far too many Kiwis who are working really hard
who feel like they can't get ahead. And that isn't
necessarily new, but it's a problem that feels like it's
(28:41):
getting worse and worse over several decades now. So a
lot of people working people feel like, you know, that
they're not having the opportunity to buy their own home.
They're hard work isn't paying enough for them to be
able to give their kids the sort of future that
they want to be able to give them. And so,
you know, as we focus on what are we going
to offer at the next election, that's very much front
(29:03):
of mine for me. How do we make sure that
people feel like through their own hard work that they're
actually getting ahead and creating a better life for themselves
and their families. And it's going to require some new
thinking on our part. We're going to have to have
some new ways.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
It really is because the last ones didn't work. The
last three years had the first three years you were
in a coalition government and there were some there was
some new thinking, new ideas. It didn't work. Like you
promised the idea of homes that would be readily available
for hard work and kiwis you promised that your child
poverty would go down. You know that all of those
(29:36):
good things, and in fact people just felt ripped off.
I think because it was over promised and not delivered.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Yeah, I mean I look back. I've looked back on
the last six years. I look back on stuff that
I'm really proud of, and things that you know, we
didn't targets, we didn't hit, you know, goals that we
had that we didn't achieve. And we can't underestimate the
fact that for three years of that six years there
was a huge disruption and no one wants to talk
about it anymore. And I saw you just rolling your
eyes there, Carrie. But the reality is that did COVID
(30:06):
disrupted everything? If you're in a business and you say, what,
you know, how did the last six years go for us?
Every one of them will tell you that COVID nineteen
disrupted everything.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yes, but it didn't have to for as long as
it did, especially in this country.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
Well, if you wanted to avoid the huge number of
avoidable deaths that we had around the rest of the world,
then yes it did.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
It didn't. It did not have to go on that
second year as long as it did. It is completely
that Seriously.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
The decisions around lockdowns and so on were directly related
to vaccination. Once we got the country to a point
where you know, COVID nineteen could spread without huge widespread death.
Then we were able to ease off and wind all
of that back. But if we had done that before
vaccination had been rolled out across the country, the results
would have been some you know, it would have all
(30:54):
been in vain. You know, the sacrifices people made would
have all been in vain.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
All the warriors tickets in the world were not going
to get some of the most vulnerable and inverted commas vaccinated.
If you've visited the farm, all the reason people live
up there is so that they don't get swept up
into government mandates and government dictates. They are off the
grid and they want to stay that way. So you
could we could still be in lockdown in Auckland and
(31:18):
the vaccination rates would have stayed the same.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
We've got vaccination rates into sort of. I think it
was ninety six percent for ninety four percent for adults
having had two doses of the vaccination. It was one
of the highest vaccination rates in the world. And it
is one of the reasons.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Well, actually, after saying no, thank you will go to
the back of.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
The line, it is well, we never said, well, I
think you will go to the back of the line,
we said that we're going to roll out what was
then the best available vaccine rather than rolling out the
ones that have had other problems.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
If you're going to you know, no, I know that
this lovely one hundred and six year old man I
know had covids of it all looks forward to seeing
his one hundred and seventh. He's still got his driver's life.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
You can't just assume that's going to be the result
for everything. It's not going to be evidence. Clear evidence
from every other country around the world that had COVID
spread like wildfire before there was a shows that it
wasn't true.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
I live completely differently to the way we live. But
nonetheless we will argue this, and historians will argue for
years to come. News talks said, be oh, that's it.
Really we don't agree on that much. We agree we
want a better New Zealand. Of course that's how we
get there. But we do agree too that we need
new headphones.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Absolutely. I think I think it's time for news talksz'd
be to splash out and get some new head faces
New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
We don't get government grants.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
In an interview where I'm saying that I'm out around
the country listening to people. The video footage is going
to show me having my hands over both my ears
as I try and stuff the ear pieces into my
ears so that I can hear what the callers are saying.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
So I've got some sort of tick anyway, So what
do you well, we'll have you know, these are regulars.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Now next time, it'd be good to hear what you
are going to do because by that time you'll have formulated.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Well, it depends how soon you want to get me
back here. But I mean we've still got two years
to go in this political term, so you know, during
that time we'll do policy development, but we're not in
a position really to have a whole lot of new things,
you know, until we start getting towards the next election campaign.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
So yeah, so what will you do in the meantime.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
Well, it is it's about listening and it's about engaging
with new ideas. I think we do need some new
ideas and that's what we'll be working on.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Okay, you chose this one, Yeah, thanks.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
To get better?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Are you trolling national in the coalition government?
Speaker 4 (33:26):
Well it's a little bit of that, but also, you know,
the UK election is coming up, and it's looking very
good for the Labor Party over in the UK at
the moment, so there's hope. There's always hope.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Gary Chris Hopkins, leader of the Opposition. Nice to have
you in. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
For more from Kerry Wooden Mornings, listen live to news
talks it'd be from nine am weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.