December 22, 2024 • 10 mins
After the election defeat, the Labour party has had to take a good look in the mirror and reflect.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins tells Tim Beveridge on Summer Breakfast being in opposition means he must focus on the longer term.
“You have to actually think about if we were the government in two years, what would we do differently?”
Hipkins says his major lesson from the election loss is that voters set the question, and politicians must make sure it is the question they are answering. The party now must look forward to what they will do better, rather than what they should have done differently.
“No election is ever a re-battle of the last one.”
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talks. It'd be
follow this and our wide range of podcast now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
After the election defeat, the Labor Party has no doubt
had a bit of a look in the mirror and
reflected on things. It's been a hugely year politically with
lots of political footballs thrown, a bit of theatrics and
for good measure. But where does Labour's leader see the
party going? What does the future hold for Red? And
Chris Hopkins is Labor leader and he joins me now,
(00:38):
good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Good morning, Tim, how are you going?
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I'm good. Merry Christmas, compliments of the season.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
And Merry Christmas to you too.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, let's get into the not so happy stuff. I
guess which is the election loss? Did you see it
coming in a way even though during campaigning, of course
you're never going to concede that, but you were up
against a little bit, won't you.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I think during campaigning you never concede it, but never
let yourself believe that either. And there's a basic survival
instinct to the you know, if you thought you were
going to lose, a very hard to get out of
bed every morning and go off and continue to fight
an election pain. But you know, the reality was, we
knew that there was a lot going against us in
the last election campaign. You know, the after the global pandemic,
(01:20):
the cost of living crunch, which wasn't just happening here
in New Zealand but happening around the world, basically resulted
in every government that has sought re elections and then
being turfed out of office. And then we had the
added fact that you know, in New Zealand, no government
has changed its stuff since the Second World War has
been re elected. A lot of things that weren't necessarily
(01:42):
pointing in the and in the direction of victory for us,
but we still had to, you know, get out there
and give it our best shot.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
What we did on that, I mean, you just talk
about getting out of bed because you've been Prime minister
and now you're in opposition. Is it hard sometimes to
motivate yourself when you're in that position you've been for
the last year.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yes, that you have to focus on the longer term.
So you know, as Prime minister, every day you wake
up and there's something that you have to decide. There's
things that you have to do, there's decisions to be
made in opposition. You tend to, you know, if you
just focus on the day to day, which is responding
to what the government are doing, you know, being that
kind of opposed part of the democratic system. It's not
(02:22):
really enough if you actually think about, okay, well, if
we were the government, you know, in two years, what
would we do differently? And I think so if you
don't balance it out with that, it would become a
bit you know, a bit boring, a bit soult. Yeah
and so and so we have kind of used start
thinking about ideas and so on, and that helps to
(02:43):
keep you going.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, hey, Christire, just dropping out in the odd word
if you just maybe if there's a better ear for
you to use, just be just switched to that now.
But on the I hate the word learnings, but what
have you learned from the last and things where you
think maybe that didn't go quite your way and you
might change next election.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
I think the major lesson for all of us is,
you know, elections, ultimately the voters get to set the
question and an election, not the politicians, and so you've
got to make sure that what you're offering is answering
the question that the voters are asking. And in the
last election campaign it was about the cost of living,
it was about things like crime, and you know, I
think what we were offering what wasn't necessarily hitting the
(03:26):
mark on those issues.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
How would you have better hit the mark? Do you think?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Oh? I mean, I think what we're focused on now
is how we would do that better next time, rather
than going back and saying, oh, if we were going
to do the last campaign again, how would we do
it differently? And I think one of the reasons for
that is no elections ever a rebattle of the last one.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Well, I guess the reason I asked it because you know,
issues like crime, they're not going to be solved overnight,
are they?
Speaker 4 (03:52):
If ever?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
That's but have you spoken with voters specifically and polls
about where you went wrong?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah? I mean, and so in an area like crime,
for example, the current government offered some very simple, kitchy
slogans in that area. But it's people who are discovering
election the slogans that don't actually solve the problem. If
we really want to solve crime, we've kind of got
to get to the root causes of it. And I
think that's where we've got a lot of work to do.
So we're doing quite a bit of work in that
area to say, well, if we want less time in
(04:21):
the community, how can we stop it at the root
cause rather than throw more people in jail afterwards, because
that's expensive and it also doesn't solve crime because they
come out of jail again and then they go on
and reascend.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
In terms of heading towards the next election.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
And I know how you're going to answer this, but
about whether you will be taking the Labor Party to
the next election. But did you stop after the last one.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
And just question whether you should or not?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah? I mean about this last year. Actually, I was
sitting here having exactly this sort of usation myself and saying, well,
it's not just actually about should I stick around and
lead the next election, but do I have the energy
to do another basically another ten years or more of
this because you're not just signing up for three years
in opposition, saying if I'm going to do three has
in opposition, I'm going to be in it to win it.
(05:09):
And then when you win it, you're not going to
just do three years in government. You're going to be
wanting to stick around. That was that was the thought
that I had to sort of work through last summer
and I do still have energy and passion for the
job and made the call that yeah, I did want
to do it again.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Is that part of the reason is that you want
to build up your caucus as well, so there's actually
someone waiting in the wings where you could be confident
to hand it over one day.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I think all good leaders should do that, regardless of
what organization therein. But that's not the main reason for
me wanting to say. I mean, I was Prime Minister
for about eight months before the election, just over eight
months before the election. It wasn't really much time to do,
but I did get a flavor for the job, and
you know, I'd like to have a full three year
go at it, and I think if I did, I
(05:54):
could do that well and put it put forward a
very good care for another three years after that.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Hey, I feel a.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Bit punch strink over the years with talk of capital
gains tax. Where are you maybe with it personally, because
maybe I know that You're party hasn't decided at the
stance on it.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I've always been quite comfortable with the concept. The Labor
Party's still got a wee way to go to work
through exactly what the text policy for the next election
campaign is going to be. I've always said that we
should do our text policy, you know, three years at
a time, which is basically each election you say this
is what we'll do in the next three years, and
then you either do that or you don't win and
you don't do it, and so you know, but we're
(06:33):
working through that for the next election campaign. But you know,
New Zealand's TEX system does have you know, it is
very narrow if you look at other countries that other
countries don't rely on salary and wage journeys for the
share of the tax take that New Zealand does.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
It's interesting, you might say, the concept because every time
people go argue about a CGT, you can mention a
scenario and they go, oh, oh no, I don't like
that part of it. It's pretty complex, isn't it. So
take a while to sort that out, won't it.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
There's a lot of detail. If you're going to do
something like that, you've got to work through the detail.
So you've got to know the circumstances on which it's
going to apply and the circumstance in which it's not
and you know, there's some bottom lines for me. I mean,
I don't think people should pay capital gains tax when
they're selling their family home, for example, if a capital
gains tax was to be introduced.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Hey, the inter rite into fairies. That's the gift that
keeps giving. It's been a blow for this government so far.
But your government didn't solve the issue either. To be fair,
do you have sympathy for the problem that they're trying
to deal with in the Christmas spirit?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
No, I think they've actually made the problem for themselves.
So you know, yes, the costs of the new ports
and the new wharves and the new terminals got more expensive.
The ships themselves were a fixed price cost. So what
did they do. They canceled the one thing that was
actually guaranteed where the price was actually guaranteed. So now
everything's up in the air, the price of the ships,
the price of the wharves, the price of the terminals.
(07:50):
And I think it's pretty unlikely that they're going to
end up with a deal that's save anyone any money.
It's probably going to end up being more expensive because
they're also going to they've lost all the money that's
been spent so far and they're going to have to
pay a contract termination fee with the people who were
going to build the previous ships.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
But I guess you can't really separate it out by
just saying they canceled the one thing because the one
thing was attached to the other thing, which was the elephant.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Wasn't it the cost of the infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
But you still need to pay for the infrastructure. So
even if you buy two smaller ships, you still need
new warves and terminals. And I think what they're proposing
to do at the moment and say, oh, we're just
going to buy new ships and we'll have them berthing
at the old terminals. The old terminals, if you've seen them,
they're past their useful life. If a ship hits them
at a decent speed, they'll probably just fall into the sea.
So you know, they're still to pay for pilot, won't
(08:35):
we Yeah, that's right exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Sorry, were you would you still is there a chance
that you would have had to change your way you
were heading with IRXDL.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Would it still be going ahead?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
The ships would still be going ahead. We had said
to Kiwi Raw, Hey, we've got to start reducing the
cost of these these wharves and port terminals because that
was getting ridiculously expensive, and so we're One of the
reasons they had to make a decision after the election
was when Kiri Raal came to us before the election
and said, hey, this is getting more expensive. We need
more money. We'd said, no, you know, we want to
talk to you about how we get the cost of
(09:09):
this down. Again, the ships themselves, we're absolutely not the problem.
So they canceled the wrong part. They should have gone
ahead with building the ships. The other thing is, even
if they decided oll, you know, we think we're probably
going to go with smaller ships, they could have sold
the two big ships and made a profit on them
because you know, we got them at such a good price.
So they just made the wrong decision at every level.
And canceling there.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Just thinking of the period of the holiday period that's
coming up. You're taking a bit of time off, and
you've got a summer spot you want to share with
us where you're sneaking away to.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yeah, I'm on the Kapiti coast here. Make sure the
beach house doesn't have very good cell phone coverage, which
is why I was disappearing a bit before. So we've
had to get we've had to get broadband put on
so that we can keep in touch with the world.
But yeah, I'm hoping just to put a gardening, a
bit of a lot of reading. I've bought a flat
pack kitchen the other day, so I'm going to be
in smaller that tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Well that's your Christmas completely ruined. Hey, Chris, look good
luck for next year, and I hope you have a
great break and think for your time this morning.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
For more from News Talk st B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to a podcast from News Talks. It'd be
follow this and our wide range of podcast now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
After the election defeat, the Labor Party has no doubt
had a bit of a look in the mirror and
reflected on things. It's been a hugely year politically with
lots of political footballs thrown, a bit of theatrics and
for good measure. But where does Labour's leader see the
party going? What does the future hold for Red? And
Chris Hopkins is Labor leader and he joins me now,
(00:38):
good morning.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Good morning, Tim, how are you going?
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I'm good. Merry Christmas, compliments of the season.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
And Merry Christmas to you too.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, let's get into the not so happy stuff. I
guess which is the election loss? Did you see it
coming in a way even though during campaigning, of course
you're never going to concede that, but you were up
against a little bit, won't you.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I think during campaigning you never concede it, but never
let yourself believe that either. And there's a basic survival
instinct to the you know, if you thought you were
going to lose, a very hard to get out of
bed every morning and go off and continue to fight
an election pain. But you know, the reality was, we
knew that there was a lot going against us in
the last election campaign. You know, the after the global pandemic,
(01:20):
the cost of living crunch, which wasn't just happening here
in New Zealand but happening around the world, basically resulted
in every government that has sought re elections and then
being turfed out of office. And then we had the
added fact that you know, in New Zealand, no government
has changed its stuff since the Second World War has
been re elected. A lot of things that weren't necessarily
(01:42):
pointing in the and in the direction of victory for us,
but we still had to, you know, get out there
and give it our best shot.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
What we did on that, I mean, you just talk
about getting out of bed because you've been Prime minister
and now you're in opposition. Is it hard sometimes to
motivate yourself when you're in that position you've been for
the last year.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yes, that you have to focus on the longer term.
So you know, as Prime minister, every day you wake
up and there's something that you have to decide. There's
things that you have to do, there's decisions to be
made in opposition. You tend to, you know, if you
just focus on the day to day, which is responding
to what the government are doing, you know, being that
kind of opposed part of the democratic system. It's not
(02:22):
really enough if you actually think about, okay, well, if
we were the government, you know, in two years, what
would we do differently? And I think so if you
don't balance it out with that, it would become a
bit you know, a bit boring, a bit soult. Yeah
and so and so we have kind of used start
thinking about ideas and so on, and that helps to
(02:43):
keep you going.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, hey, Christire, just dropping out in the odd word
if you just maybe if there's a better ear for
you to use, just be just switched to that now.
But on the I hate the word learnings, but what
have you learned from the last and things where you
think maybe that didn't go quite your way and you
might change next election.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
I think the major lesson for all of us is,
you know, elections, ultimately the voters get to set the
question and an election, not the politicians, and so you've
got to make sure that what you're offering is answering
the question that the voters are asking. And in the
last election campaign it was about the cost of living,
it was about things like crime, and you know, I
think what we were offering what wasn't necessarily hitting the
(03:26):
mark on those issues.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
How would you have better hit the mark? Do you think?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Oh? I mean, I think what we're focused on now
is how we would do that better next time, rather
than going back and saying, oh, if we were going
to do the last campaign again, how would we do
it differently? And I think one of the reasons for
that is no elections ever a rebattle of the last one.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Well, I guess the reason I asked it because you know,
issues like crime, they're not going to be solved overnight,
are they?
Speaker 4 (03:52):
If ever?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
That's but have you spoken with voters specifically and polls
about where you went wrong?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah? I mean, and so in an area like crime,
for example, the current government offered some very simple, kitchy
slogans in that area. But it's people who are discovering
election the slogans that don't actually solve the problem. If
we really want to solve crime, we've kind of got
to get to the root causes of it. And I
think that's where we've got a lot of work to do.
So we're doing quite a bit of work in that
area to say, well, if we want less time in
(04:21):
the community, how can we stop it at the root
cause rather than throw more people in jail afterwards, because
that's expensive and it also doesn't solve crime because they
come out of jail again and then they go on
and reascend.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
In terms of heading towards the next election.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
And I know how you're going to answer this, but
about whether you will be taking the Labor Party to
the next election. But did you stop after the last one.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
And just question whether you should or not?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah? I mean about this last year. Actually, I was
sitting here having exactly this sort of usation myself and saying, well,
it's not just actually about should I stick around and
lead the next election, but do I have the energy
to do another basically another ten years or more of
this because you're not just signing up for three years
in opposition, saying if I'm going to do three has
in opposition, I'm going to be in it to win it.
(05:09):
And then when you win it, you're not going to
just do three years in government. You're going to be
wanting to stick around. That was that was the thought
that I had to sort of work through last summer
and I do still have energy and passion for the
job and made the call that yeah, I did want
to do it again.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Is that part of the reason is that you want
to build up your caucus as well, so there's actually
someone waiting in the wings where you could be confident
to hand it over one day.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I think all good leaders should do that, regardless of
what organization therein. But that's not the main reason for
me wanting to say. I mean, I was Prime Minister
for about eight months before the election, just over eight
months before the election. It wasn't really much time to do,
but I did get a flavor for the job, and
you know, I'd like to have a full three year
go at it, and I think if I did, I
(05:54):
could do that well and put it put forward a
very good care for another three years after that.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Hey, I feel a.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Bit punch strink over the years with talk of capital
gains tax. Where are you maybe with it personally, because
maybe I know that You're party hasn't decided at the
stance on it.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I've always been quite comfortable with the concept. The Labor
Party's still got a wee way to go to work
through exactly what the text policy for the next election
campaign is going to be. I've always said that we
should do our text policy, you know, three years at
a time, which is basically each election you say this
is what we'll do in the next three years, and
then you either do that or you don't win and
you don't do it, and so you know, but we're
(06:33):
working through that for the next election campaign. But you know,
New Zealand's TEX system does have you know, it is
very narrow if you look at other countries that other
countries don't rely on salary and wage journeys for the
share of the tax take that New Zealand does.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
It's interesting, you might say, the concept because every time
people go argue about a CGT, you can mention a
scenario and they go, oh, oh no, I don't like
that part of it. It's pretty complex, isn't it. So
take a while to sort that out, won't it.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
There's a lot of detail. If you're going to do
something like that, you've got to work through the detail.
So you've got to know the circumstances on which it's
going to apply and the circumstance in which it's not
and you know, there's some bottom lines for me. I mean,
I don't think people should pay capital gains tax when
they're selling their family home, for example, if a capital
gains tax was to be introduced.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Hey, the inter rite into fairies. That's the gift that
keeps giving. It's been a blow for this government so far.
But your government didn't solve the issue either. To be fair,
do you have sympathy for the problem that they're trying
to deal with in the Christmas spirit?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
No, I think they've actually made the problem for themselves.
So you know, yes, the costs of the new ports
and the new wharves and the new terminals got more expensive.
The ships themselves were a fixed price cost. So what
did they do. They canceled the one thing that was
actually guaranteed where the price was actually guaranteed. So now
everything's up in the air, the price of the ships,
the price of the wharves, the price of the terminals.
(07:50):
And I think it's pretty unlikely that they're going to
end up with a deal that's save anyone any money.
It's probably going to end up being more expensive because
they're also going to they've lost all the money that's
been spent so far and they're going to have to
pay a contract termination fee with the people who were
going to build the previous ships.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
But I guess you can't really separate it out by
just saying they canceled the one thing because the one
thing was attached to the other thing, which was the elephant.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Wasn't it the cost of the infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
But you still need to pay for the infrastructure. So
even if you buy two smaller ships, you still need
new warves and terminals. And I think what they're proposing
to do at the moment and say, oh, we're just
going to buy new ships and we'll have them berthing
at the old terminals. The old terminals, if you've seen them,
they're past their useful life. If a ship hits them
at a decent speed, they'll probably just fall into the sea.
So you know, they're still to pay for pilot, won't
(08:35):
we Yeah, that's right exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Sorry, were you would you still is there a chance
that you would have had to change your way you
were heading with IRXDL.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Would it still be going ahead?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
The ships would still be going ahead. We had said
to Kiwi Raw, Hey, we've got to start reducing the
cost of these these wharves and port terminals because that
was getting ridiculously expensive, and so we're One of the
reasons they had to make a decision after the election
was when Kiri Raal came to us before the election
and said, hey, this is getting more expensive. We need
more money. We'd said, no, you know, we want to
talk to you about how we get the cost of
(09:09):
this down. Again, the ships themselves, we're absolutely not the problem.
So they canceled the wrong part. They should have gone
ahead with building the ships. The other thing is, even
if they decided oll, you know, we think we're probably
going to go with smaller ships, they could have sold
the two big ships and made a profit on them
because you know, we got them at such a good price.
So they just made the wrong decision at every level.
And canceling there.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Just thinking of the period of the holiday period that's
coming up. You're taking a bit of time off, and
you've got a summer spot you want to share with
us where you're sneaking away to.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yeah, I'm on the Kapiti coast here. Make sure the
beach house doesn't have very good cell phone coverage, which
is why I was disappearing a bit before. So we've
had to get we've had to get broadband put on
so that we can keep in touch with the world.
But yeah, I'm hoping just to put a gardening, a
bit of a lot of reading. I've bought a flat
pack kitchen the other day, so I'm going to be
in smaller that tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Well that's your Christmas completely ruined. Hey, Chris, look good
luck for next year, and I hope you have a
great break and think for your time this morning.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
For more from News Talk st B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.
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