Labour leader Chris Hipkins says the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care was one of the hardest things he grappled with as a minister in the last government, and says the report will make for sobering reading.
Hipkins joined Wellington Mornings host Nick Mills to talk about what the report will reveal, as well as other political issues of the week including the sacking of what remained of the Health NZ board and whether Green MP Darleen Tana should stay or go.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from News Talk st.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
B joining us in the studios labor leader and MP
for Romatucka, Chris Hopkins.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good morning, Chris, good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
How are you. I'm very good.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Thank you. I'm great.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So you get a bit of a breakover the school
holidays and do some family stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I did last week. We had a bit of time
last week. You know, although we didn't get weather like
we've got today. I wish we'd had weather like this
over the school holidays. It would have made life easier
with the kids. But yeah, I spent We've had a
three week parliamentary recess. I spent two weeks without around
the country doing visits, and then I spent last week
spending a bit of time with my own kids.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Spending a bit of time in Auckland. I mean, the
party is I mean, obviously trying to rebuild Auckland. Every
time I turned TV on You're at Auckland, I was like,
come on, mate, you're am Attucker's the MP. You get
back here.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Oh, I know, I've been and spent I mean I
obviously spend a lot of time here too, but also
in Duneda and Hamilton, where else in Nelson, you know,
just sort of trying to get around the country and
make sure that we're hearing from a good cross section
of key. We spent some time doing some farm visits
in Hamilton for examples, spending some time on farms, going
places where labor politicians don't normally go, because I think
it's really important, you know, if you want to run
(01:13):
the country, that you should actually listen to the people
who you might not necessarily normally rub shoulders with.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
What's the vibe, like I mean, I mean, is there
a bit of tension towards the coalition? What are you hearing?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
It's a mixed bag, you know, Like I mean, if
you'd go on farms, you know, farmers naturally sort of
tend to lean more towards the right than towards the left.
But having said that, you know, they also know these
big challenges ahead for the farming community, you know, sustainability,
the fact the government have taken their foot off the accelerator,
that doesn't mean that they need to. They know that
because their ability to continue to produce into export is
(01:45):
actually going to depend on our tackling climate change, and
so the farmers do actually know that. So that's still
a live conversation there. Around the rest of the country,
it's a real it is a mixed bag, you know.
You go places like Nelson, they're really feeling the economic
pinch at the moment. Wellington here very very subdued economically.
I mean, the public sector cuts having a big impact
on Wellington as you would be a where Auckland's and
(02:08):
a sort of a real mixed bag as well. So
I mean I would say that there's nowhere where there's
a consistent picture. It really varies.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Someone said to me one of my family members they
see and it said to me a few days ago,
knowing that you were coming on the show, he said,
I wonder if us, as a small business family and
you know in New Wellington and New Zealand, would have
been better off if labor still were in power. And
(02:36):
I looked at him and I went, wow, what an
interesting question, because things are pretty damn tight as you know,
what do you reckon that we would have been better
off with labor?
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yes, I do, and I think it's I mean, and
you know people listening will think, oh, of course he'd
say that. But here's the thing. It's a tough part
of the economic cycle, but the government are making it worse.
So if you take Wellington for example, that we've seen
huge cuts and public sector spending, you know, huge numbers
of people laid off. That has a flow on effect
to the entirety of the econ. So if you're in hospital,
(03:07):
like I know, your family businesses, well, all those people
being laid off is not going to be good for
hospow and Wellington because it means people are going to
be staying home and consolidating and not spending money. That
has a flow on effect to every part of the
economy if they go, you know, pan out. Across the
rest of the country, building and construction has massively slowed
down because of the uncertainty around what the government are
(03:27):
trying to do there, and as a result that again,
that's you know, that's people who aren't going out and
spending money in other parts of the economy. So I think,
you know, it's it was always going to be a
tough year for the country, but they've made it even tougher.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, let's start off for a quick few quick things
about politics. It's Parliament resumed yesterday after you know, you
said three week recess and it was interesting for me
to see Darling Tanna show up. I mean, she's sitting
in that Siberian seat, they call it sitting in Siberia.
I never heard of it that that before, but I
watched Parliament last yesterday and saw that. You know, surely,
(04:03):
you know firstly that she shouldn't have to sit up
there in that horrible seat on her own, should she.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Well, she shouldn't still be there. Let's let's be clear
about that. I mean, she was elected as a Green
List MP, and she's no longer a member of the
Green so she shouldn't be in parliament. And I do
think that there's a difference here between a constituency MP
who's elected to represent an area and someone who's come
in as a list MP because she has no individual
mandate to be in parliament. She's there because she was
(04:28):
a member of the Greens.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
What about if she says, and this is purely me
saying this, she said, I help the Greens. I was,
you know, I was there fighting for the Greens to
get them in there. So I did get I did
get in there.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah, I mean anyone could make that answer. I mean,
our members, our volunteers, our activists, the people that go
and not done, not in parliament. Yeah, and they don't
have an entitlement to be in parliament either. Nobody has
an entitlement to be a member of Parliament.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
And she worked to get Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
But even let's be clear. I'm a constituency MP MP
for Remataka. I think last election, not the most recent one,
but the one before I had the one of the
biggest majorities in the Cory, second only behind just under
our doun. If I had stood a Chris Sipkins independent,
I would have got a couple of hundred votes. You
do you really think that I was Do you really
believe that I was elected because I was the Labor
MP of the labor candidate in that area.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
See, i'd argue with you. I would have argued that
your profile would have got you in.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Well, yeah, but how did I get that profile? I
got that profile by being a labor MP.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Tell Ardie save that when he's gone to that's another thing.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
But only we could do that with sports team.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah where did they become famous? They stay there?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
We need a walker jumping law for our sports team.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, okay, sorry, I shouldn't have even brought that up.
I just maybe think when you said that, so should
the Greens get rid of it? Should they use the
Woker jumping you know, legislation that does so against Should
they use that and get rid of Yes?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I think they should. I mean, ultimately, that's what the
law is there for. It's there to make sure that
what people vote for, you know, under MMP elections, is
what they actually get. I think the idea that people
can get elected under a party being under m MP
and then jump around and distort the proportionality parliament. I
don't think that's consistent with what he was expected when
they voted for MMP.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Will they jump it? Well, it doesn't sound quite right, but.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I mean they've opposed that having the law in the
first place, but if they were to invoke it, I
think it would be justified.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Okay. The other thing we saw yesterday is Whinston pieces
accused Debbie Naw're a packer of asking an our word question.
Is that word so bad? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I just think it's not appropriate. I mean it's that
word has so many connotations, particularly for our disability community,
and I just think we're in the twenty fifth century now,
you know this isn't the nineteen seventies anymore.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Why did nothing happen about it? Why did we well?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I mean, look, ultimately that's a question for the Speaker.
But I mean I think Winston Peters should just move
into the twenty first century.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Really, so nothing's going to happen, but nothing will be
done about it.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I mean, that's a question for Jerry Brownly. I don't
think it's unlikely. I think, I mean, these things, if
you don't deal with them in the moment, time moves on.
I mean, if I had been the Speaker, I would
have been making sure that he apologized for it. But
you know, time's moved on.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Okay, let's talk about Health New Zealand. The government this
week sacked what was left of the board and appointed
a commissioner after Riti said the government department was spending
over one hundred and thirty million dollars over and above
its budget each month. First off, is the issue as
bad as the government has said it now?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I mean, look, I think the spin machine's been out
of control this week. The washing machines tipped over on
its side. The truth here is the board had mostly resigned.
There were only two members of the board left so
there making you know, they were their hand was kind
of forced, and they're now trying to spin their way
out of a problem that is of their own making.
So let's put some facts on the table. Yes, Health
end Z ran a deficit last year, as their own
(07:52):
annual report said, it highlighted the fact that there was
a pay equity settlement, there were holiday pay you know,
Holiday's Act pay remediation going on there, and that was
what crowded their one off deficit last year because they
had to account for those things.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
They're taking the blame for it, you know that. I mean,
but they are coming at you saying that all this
is your problem, not their problem. They're going to fix
your problem.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
But it's absolutely not. And actually you saw the new
commissioner and the chief executive out there yesterday saying, well,
one of the biggest issues is they've recruited a whole
lot more nurses this year and that's one of the
things that's added to their deficit. So or it created
this deficit that the government are talking about. So that's
happened under National's watch, not under ours.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
But it's fourteen layers of management, I mean fourteen layers
I mean, I can't even can't even think you you
can't even think like that. I mean, that's your that's
got to be brought back to you go.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
That's the claim they've made. They haven't produced any evidence
to actually demonstrate that's what's happening. But it is one
of the reasons why we created, you know, one national
health entity in the first place, because the layers of
management and administration and duplication around the country was nuts.
And the idea that if you're living in New Plymouth,
your health your access to healthcare is different, or if
you're living in Wellington or Timaru, that's crazy. We should
(09:01):
all have access to a really robust, quality public health system,
regardless of where the country we live.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Twelve months on, two years on, three years on, do
you still think the idea was right?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
I still think having one national health system is the
right idea for New Zealand. There's still a lot more
work to be done, but let's also just be really
realistic about this. Every year that I was sitting around
the cabinet table, the Minister of Health and I was
Minister of Health for one of them would come along
to cabinet and say costs have gone up. We need
to increase the health budget because the un inescapable reality
(09:34):
is every day the cost of health gare goes up,
salaries go up, wages go up. But even more than that,
the science. The cost of the science goes up. There's
new drugs that can treat more conditions, there's more people.
We've got an older population. The population gets older by
the day.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Are you slightly concerned that the new coalition government might
go back?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
I don't think they're going to go back to twenty DHBs.
That would be economically illiterate or enumerate to do that.
It just makes no sense at all. Having more of
a regional structure within one health organization does make sense.
You know, you can't everything out of Wellington.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
So you think that will happen.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Well we had been moving towards four regions, saving four
and I think that's about right for a country the
size of New Zealand. They say they indicated on Monday
they're continuing to head in that direction. I think that's
a sensible move.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
What do you think that is? Auckland, Wellington, christ Church
and Darned I can't.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Remember the exact map. No, I think it's more more
weighted towards sort of more regions in the North Island
and the South Island. But I can't remember the exact breakdown.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
You were in the studio with Chris Hopkins, Labor Leader Royal.
The Royal Commission into Abuse in State Care has been
released today. I know you've done a lot of work
on This is a part of stuff that you have
been involved with. I don't know what. We don't know what, Senate,
but it's going to be very very good reading. I
mean you would have seen some of it. You must have.
You know, you must have seen some of it in
(10:53):
your in your time. How big is this going to be?
Speaker 3 (10:56):
It's going to be massive, and you know, I have
to tell you, across the six years that we're in government,
it's one of the hardest issues that I grappled with
as a minister because the history here is so long,
so convoluted, and the I guess the history of denial
and cover up really makes it pretty confronting. I mean,
these are the horrific things that happened to the survivors
(11:17):
of abuse in state care, the lengths to which the
state and faith based organizations and others who were involved
went to cover it up and to deny that it
had happened, and how hard they had to fight to
even just to be heard, I think is really confronting.
And so you'll see that in the in the report.
It's a massive report. I mean, there's eighteen volumes of
it or something like that, seventeen kilos. Yeah, So I'll
(11:40):
work my way through that in time. So of course,
I'm not going to have time to read it before
we first start to talk about it this afternoon, although
hopefully you know, I've read some of it as much
as I can within the times that I've had available.
But I've read the interim report two years ago, which
was a much shorter report, and even that was just
eye watering, and and it's still happening, you know, and
(12:01):
I think we've got to be We've got to be
frank about that.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Why has there never been any talk about common consation?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Well, that does it? So rather than compensation, the word redress,
because redress is not just compensation, it can include other things, apologies,
and you know, actually admission of what's happened is really
important for some of the people involved. You know, they've
lived their whole life being told that it didn't happen.
Actually for a lot of them, redress A big part
of redresses to have it acknowledged what happened to them,
(12:29):
but also compensation too, So we made some interim measures
as a government to provide redress to particularly those who
needed it urgently, because you know, some of these people
are now getting on quite a bit and we wanted
to make sure that they got that redress before they
passed away. We started some work with the survivors on
(12:50):
developing a different redress system, and my goal was to
have that ready to go fairly soon after the final
report was delivered. Now I don't know what's happened to
that in the last nine months or so, but I
hope that the government will be able to speed that
up because we've got to make this We're never going
to make it right. What do you think we've got
to do something.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
What do you actually think it's going to tell us?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I think it's the report. I think report overall will
just highlight horrific cases of abuse. It's going to probably
chronicle how that was allowed to happen. It will have
pretty graphic, I think, in confronting descriptions of some of
the things that happened. It'll talk I imagine it's going to
canvas the battle that the survivors have had to be
(13:32):
heard to be taken seriously, and I think it will
also chronicle some of the things that the state has
done in order to try and manage the state's risk
at the expense of the survivors.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I want to do something that we don't normally do
in the show. We want to talk about American politics.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Oh yeah, yeah, well there's a bit happening over there.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
What do you think, Yeah, what made you give you
that idea? Yeah, it's not something that we actually usually
talk about, but it's hard not to talk about it.
Looking at the US, Trump was shot, Joe Biden stepped down,
and Camilla Harris now looks to be the Democratic nominee.
What does this mean for New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I mean, I saw a front page of one of
the newspapers over there that said, you know, the bullet
grazed grazed Trump and killed Biden. And the truth is,
you know, there's there's just the sort of massive disruption
that's happening in American politics at the moment can't be underestimated.
I think it's quite possible that Kamala Harris is going
(14:29):
to get real momentum behind her and maywell pull off
a you know, a surprise upset victory, and that ultimately
that's probably better for New Zealand. I think a Democrat
in the White House is likely to be better for
New Zealand than sort of a more protectionist Donald Trump regime.
But yeah, it's certainly fascinating to watch.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I have said during the week when this has all
been unfolding, that I kind of get this, rightly or wrong.
We get this feel of Jazinder Ardun's story, you know,
coming from nowhere. You know, people want to change, fresh,
new change. I kind of feel, I don't know, rightly
or wrongly, feel it could happen.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I saw Joe Biden's where he endorsed, you know, Kamala
Harris to be his successor as a Democratic candidate, and
he signed it off with let's do this. I thought, oh,
I've heard that before. That feels very familiar and it
worked worked for us, so you know, maybe it's going
to work for her.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
You worry that the division in US politics will eventually
make its way down here. Arguably it kind of already
has already has.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
And but I think we've got to look at the
underlying reasons for that. You know that the polarization doesn't
come from nowhere, it's you know, Donald Trump uses different
language to describe things that I hear key he's talking
about now So that idea that you know, wealth is
being concentrated in a high in a very small number
of people. So the economy is growing, but that growth
isn't being evenly or fairly shared amongst the people who
(15:49):
are helping to generate it. Donald Trump will say things
like the systems rigged, you know, but ultimately the same,
the same kind of problem I think exists in New Zealand,
and it's I think the challenge for us as politicians
is to make sure that we're not leaving room for popar,
that we're actually addressing some of these underlying issues.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Last week the government revealed its emission plans. While we're
on track to meet the next two debatable The second
one isn't it slightly debatable? But budget The government is
relying on planting trees and advanced technologies for the third.
What do you make of this?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I just think we that you know, they're trying to
escape reality here. We've actually got to reduce our emissions.
We can't plant our way out of the climate crisis.
Why not, well, because ultimately that they're not permanently capturing
the emissions. You know, ultimately though, trees to get cut
down eventually, And if you look at pine trees, for example,
we're creating ourselves a world of headaches further ahead. Look
(16:43):
at the number of pine trees that are falling over
now because they haven't actually been harvested. So we've got
we've got some challenges ahead for us in that space.
And also it's not sustainable to simply say you're going
to plant your way out. We've got to reduce our emissions.
But the good news is there's good news here. The
good news is that there is technology that can do this.
There is technology available right now. If we look at
(17:04):
farming emissions, there's stuff we can do now to actually
reduce our farming emissions. So this could be a huge
opportunity for New Zealand. Look at the amount of electricity.
I'm sitting in a studio where everything's electronic, right. We're
all using electricity every day, more and more of it
every day. But the proportion of our electricity in New
Zealand that already comes from renewable energy sources. Gives us
(17:25):
a massive competitive advantage as a country, and there's a
huge potential for us to grow really good, well paying
jobs off the back of being a renewable energy powerhouse.
We already are. We've just got to keep the momentum going.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Do you accept that acting on climate change as strongly
as you did when you're in government, that eventually it
was going to cost us as a country.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
No, I think it'll cost us not to. There's massive
opportunities for us if we do this right. So here's
a good example. If we go to one hundred percent
renewable electricity generation and we do that well, we could
have one of the lowest electricity prices, holds our electricity
prices in the world. Think of what competitive advantage that
opens up for us. So in this new world, I
don't know if you've ever used Chat GPT. Right, if
(18:06):
you go and do a search on chat GPT, it
uses the processes that are processing that somewhere else, you know,
at a data processing center, are using eight times the
electricity that is used if you do a search on Google.
So you're getting the same information, but AI is energy hungry,
so data centers are now a gold mine and they
(18:28):
could be huge for New Zealand. You know, hook up
the data centers to some of our renewable electricity and
suddenly we've got this huge job rich environment that could
be a boom for New Zealand. So there's just massive
opportunities ahead for us.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I just want to quickly ask you. I know you've
got to go, but a young, serious young offend of
boot camps. The government's getting pretty serious on this. There
seends to be a lot of support for it. What
do you think of it? Do you think it's going
to work.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
It's not going to work. But they tried it last time,
so you had some sort of system. Yeah, so there's
I mean, let's look at the numbers. So they did
their boot camps last time, and eighty percent of those kids,
so that eight out of ten went on and reoffended.
We put in place a circuit breaker program that was
about intensive mentoring and support and going in because I mean,
these kids' lives are dysfunctional, the families are often dysfunctional.
(19:17):
There's drug and alcohol addiction, there's abuse to domestic violence.
So we put in this intensive system that really kind
of got to the root cause of the problem. Seventy
five percent of those kids didn't reoffend, so for you know,
three out of four of them didn't go on to refend.
So you've got a program here which we know results
in kids going on to reoffend. You've got another program
(19:37):
that we know massively reduces reoffending. So three out of
four kids don't reoffend. That's where we should be putting
our energy.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Why did the government, the new coalition government does not
take up your system and carry on with.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
It because of boot camp is a good slogan, you know,
I mean this is we've got government by slogan. Now
it's all about catchy phrases rather than rather than doing
stuff that's actually going to make a difference.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
And that you don't feel that it will make a
different don't make feel that it would make people feel safer.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
No, I mean, boot camps aren't going to change. If
we want people to feel safer, then we've got to
deal with the root causes of the problem. You know,
two of the biggest drivers of crime in New Zealand
are poverty and unemployment. Deal with those and we'll have
a lot less crime in the first place.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Those are things that you could have done in the
six years that you were empowered, and.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
We lifted tens of thousands of kids out of poverty.
We've got a lot more work to do in that.
You know, ultimately the whole economic system contributes to kids
living in poverty and contributes to unemployment. We've got to
flip that around.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Just one really really quick one, because we just did
it last hour. The use of drugs, you know, legal
drugs is sort of seeming to be going numbers seem
to be getting higher. Are you feeling that we've.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Got a methan fetterming crisis in New Zealand? It's undeniable.
Wastewater testing shows that meth use goes up on a
regular basis, and that is a crisis for New Zealand
because these are lives that are being absolutely wasted. So
I think we have to we've got to really focus
on turning that around. If we turned around drug and
(21:07):
alcohol addiction, and particularly looking at some of the hard
drugs in methanphetamine and so on. I'm not talking about
people who smoke a joint in the weekend. I'm talking
about people are on the hard drugs. We turn their
lives around, then we're going to have less crime, we're
going to have a more productive economy that we're going
to have less pressure on the health system, less pressure
on the police. It's all upside. We've got to really
(21:29):
focus on it.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Thank you very much, Thank you very much for coming,
and good luck for the rest of the week. Have
a great week in Parliament. I think it's going to
be a pretty exciting time over the next few days
based on what we've seen so far. Chris Hopkins, who
is Labour's leader.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills. Listen live
to news talks It'd be Wellington from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from News Talk st.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
B joining us in the studios labor leader and MP
for Romatucka, Chris Hopkins.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good morning, Chris, good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
How are you. I'm very good.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Thank you. I'm great.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So you get a bit of a breakover the school
holidays and do some family stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I did last week. We had a bit of time
last week. You know, although we didn't get weather like
we've got today. I wish we'd had weather like this
over the school holidays. It would have made life easier
with the kids. But yeah, I spent We've had a
three week parliamentary recess. I spent two weeks without around
the country doing visits, and then I spent last week
spending a bit of time with my own kids.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Spending a bit of time in Auckland. I mean, the
party is I mean, obviously trying to rebuild Auckland. Every
time I turned TV on You're at Auckland, I was like,
come on, mate, you're am Attucker's the MP. You get
back here.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Oh, I know, I've been and spent I mean I
obviously spend a lot of time here too, but also
in Duneda and Hamilton, where else in Nelson, you know,
just sort of trying to get around the country and
make sure that we're hearing from a good cross section
of key. We spent some time doing some farm visits
in Hamilton for examples, spending some time on farms, going
places where labor politicians don't normally go, because I think
it's really important, you know, if you want to run
(01:13):
the country, that you should actually listen to the people
who you might not necessarily normally rub shoulders with.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
What's the vibe, like I mean, I mean, is there
a bit of tension towards the coalition? What are you hearing?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
It's a mixed bag, you know, Like I mean, if
you'd go on farms, you know, farmers naturally sort of
tend to lean more towards the right than towards the left.
But having said that, you know, they also know these
big challenges ahead for the farming community, you know, sustainability,
the fact the government have taken their foot off the accelerator,
that doesn't mean that they need to. They know that
because their ability to continue to produce into export is
(01:45):
actually going to depend on our tackling climate change, and
so the farmers do actually know that. So that's still
a live conversation there. Around the rest of the country,
it's a real it is a mixed bag, you know.
You go places like Nelson, they're really feeling the economic
pinch at the moment. Wellington here very very subdued economically.
I mean, the public sector cuts having a big impact
on Wellington as you would be a where Auckland's and
(02:08):
a sort of a real mixed bag as well. So
I mean I would say that there's nowhere where there's
a consistent picture. It really varies.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Someone said to me one of my family members they
see and it said to me a few days ago,
knowing that you were coming on the show, he said,
I wonder if us, as a small business family and
you know in New Wellington and New Zealand, would have
been better off if labor still were in power. And
(02:36):
I looked at him and I went, wow, what an
interesting question, because things are pretty damn tight as you know,
what do you reckon that we would have been better
off with labor?
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yes, I do, and I think it's I mean, and
you know people listening will think, oh, of course he'd
say that. But here's the thing. It's a tough part
of the economic cycle, but the government are making it worse.
So if you take Wellington for example, that we've seen
huge cuts and public sector spending, you know, huge numbers
of people laid off. That has a flow on effect
to the entirety of the econ. So if you're in hospital,
(03:07):
like I know, your family businesses, well, all those people
being laid off is not going to be good for
hospow and Wellington because it means people are going to
be staying home and consolidating and not spending money. That
has a flow on effect to every part of the
economy if they go, you know, pan out. Across the
rest of the country, building and construction has massively slowed
down because of the uncertainty around what the government are
(03:27):
trying to do there, and as a result that again,
that's you know, that's people who aren't going out and
spending money in other parts of the economy. So I think,
you know, it's it was always going to be a
tough year for the country, but they've made it even tougher.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, let's start off for a quick few quick things
about politics. It's Parliament resumed yesterday after you know, you
said three week recess and it was interesting for me
to see Darling Tanna show up. I mean, she's sitting
in that Siberian seat, they call it sitting in Siberia.
I never heard of it that that before, but I
watched Parliament last yesterday and saw that. You know, surely,
(04:03):
you know firstly that she shouldn't have to sit up
there in that horrible seat on her own, should she.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Well, she shouldn't still be there. Let's let's be clear
about that. I mean, she was elected as a Green
List MP, and she's no longer a member of the
Green so she shouldn't be in parliament. And I do
think that there's a difference here between a constituency MP
who's elected to represent an area and someone who's come
in as a list MP because she has no individual
mandate to be in parliament. She's there because she was
(04:28):
a member of the Greens.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
What about if she says, and this is purely me
saying this, she said, I help the Greens. I was,
you know, I was there fighting for the Greens to
get them in there. So I did get I did
get in there.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah, I mean anyone could make that answer. I mean,
our members, our volunteers, our activists, the people that go
and not done, not in parliament. Yeah, and they don't
have an entitlement to be in parliament either. Nobody has
an entitlement to be a member of Parliament.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
And she worked to get Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
But even let's be clear. I'm a constituency MP MP
for Remataka. I think last election, not the most recent one,
but the one before I had the one of the
biggest majorities in the Cory, second only behind just under
our doun. If I had stood a Chris Sipkins independent,
I would have got a couple of hundred votes. You
do you really think that I was Do you really
believe that I was elected because I was the Labor
MP of the labor candidate in that area.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
See, i'd argue with you. I would have argued that
your profile would have got you in.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Well, yeah, but how did I get that profile? I
got that profile by being a labor MP.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Tell Ardie save that when he's gone to that's another thing.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
But only we could do that with sports team.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah where did they become famous? They stay there?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
We need a walker jumping law for our sports team.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, okay, sorry, I shouldn't have even brought that up.
I just maybe think when you said that, so should
the Greens get rid of it? Should they use the
Woker jumping you know, legislation that does so against Should
they use that and get rid of Yes?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I think they should. I mean, ultimately, that's what the
law is there for. It's there to make sure that
what people vote for, you know, under MMP elections, is
what they actually get. I think the idea that people
can get elected under a party being under m MP
and then jump around and distort the proportionality parliament. I
don't think that's consistent with what he was expected when
they voted for MMP.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Will they jump it? Well, it doesn't sound quite right, but.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I mean they've opposed that having the law in the
first place, but if they were to invoke it, I
think it would be justified.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Okay. The other thing we saw yesterday is Whinston pieces
accused Debbie Naw're a packer of asking an our word question.
Is that word so bad? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I just think it's not appropriate. I mean it's that
word has so many connotations, particularly for our disability community,
and I just think we're in the twenty fifth century now,
you know this isn't the nineteen seventies anymore.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Why did nothing happen about it? Why did we well?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I mean, look, ultimately that's a question for the Speaker.
But I mean I think Winston Peters should just move
into the twenty first century.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Really, so nothing's going to happen, but nothing will be
done about it.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I mean, that's a question for Jerry Brownly. I don't
think it's unlikely. I think, I mean, these things, if
you don't deal with them in the moment, time moves on.
I mean, if I had been the Speaker, I would
have been making sure that he apologized for it. But
you know, time's moved on.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Okay, let's talk about Health New Zealand. The government this
week sacked what was left of the board and appointed
a commissioner after Riti said the government department was spending
over one hundred and thirty million dollars over and above
its budget each month. First off, is the issue as
bad as the government has said it now?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I mean, look, I think the spin machine's been out
of control this week. The washing machines tipped over on
its side. The truth here is the board had mostly resigned.
There were only two members of the board left so
there making you know, they were their hand was kind
of forced, and they're now trying to spin their way
out of a problem that is of their own making.
So let's put some facts on the table. Yes, Health
end Z ran a deficit last year, as their own
(07:52):
annual report said, it highlighted the fact that there was
a pay equity settlement, there were holiday pay you know,
Holiday's Act pay remediation going on there, and that was
what crowded their one off deficit last year because they
had to account for those things.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
They're taking the blame for it, you know that. I mean,
but they are coming at you saying that all this
is your problem, not their problem. They're going to fix
your problem.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
But it's absolutely not. And actually you saw the new
commissioner and the chief executive out there yesterday saying, well,
one of the biggest issues is they've recruited a whole
lot more nurses this year and that's one of the
things that's added to their deficit. So or it created
this deficit that the government are talking about. So that's
happened under National's watch, not under ours.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
But it's fourteen layers of management, I mean fourteen layers
I mean, I can't even can't even think you you
can't even think like that. I mean, that's your that's
got to be brought back to you go.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
That's the claim they've made. They haven't produced any evidence
to actually demonstrate that's what's happening. But it is one
of the reasons why we created, you know, one national
health entity in the first place, because the layers of
management and administration and duplication around the country was nuts.
And the idea that if you're living in New Plymouth,
your health your access to healthcare is different, or if
you're living in Wellington or Timaru, that's crazy. We should
(09:01):
all have access to a really robust, quality public health system,
regardless of where the country we live.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Twelve months on, two years on, three years on, do
you still think the idea was right?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
I still think having one national health system is the
right idea for New Zealand. There's still a lot more
work to be done, but let's also just be really
realistic about this. Every year that I was sitting around
the cabinet table, the Minister of Health and I was
Minister of Health for one of them would come along
to cabinet and say costs have gone up. We need
to increase the health budget because the un inescapable reality
(09:34):
is every day the cost of health gare goes up,
salaries go up, wages go up. But even more than that,
the science. The cost of the science goes up. There's
new drugs that can treat more conditions, there's more people.
We've got an older population. The population gets older by
the day.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Are you slightly concerned that the new coalition government might
go back?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
I don't think they're going to go back to twenty DHBs.
That would be economically illiterate or enumerate to do that.
It just makes no sense at all. Having more of
a regional structure within one health organization does make sense.
You know, you can't everything out of Wellington.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
So you think that will happen.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Well we had been moving towards four regions, saving four
and I think that's about right for a country the
size of New Zealand. They say they indicated on Monday
they're continuing to head in that direction. I think that's
a sensible move.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
What do you think that is? Auckland, Wellington, christ Church
and Darned I can't.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Remember the exact map. No, I think it's more more
weighted towards sort of more regions in the North Island
and the South Island. But I can't remember the exact breakdown.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
You were in the studio with Chris Hopkins, Labor Leader Royal.
The Royal Commission into Abuse in State Care has been
released today. I know you've done a lot of work
on This is a part of stuff that you have
been involved with. I don't know what. We don't know what, Senate,
but it's going to be very very good reading. I
mean you would have seen some of it. You must have.
You know, you must have seen some of it in
(10:53):
your in your time. How big is this going to be?
Speaker 3 (10:56):
It's going to be massive, and you know, I have
to tell you, across the six years that we're in government,
it's one of the hardest issues that I grappled with
as a minister because the history here is so long,
so convoluted, and the I guess the history of denial
and cover up really makes it pretty confronting. I mean,
these are the horrific things that happened to the survivors
(11:17):
of abuse in state care, the lengths to which the
state and faith based organizations and others who were involved
went to cover it up and to deny that it
had happened, and how hard they had to fight to
even just to be heard, I think is really confronting.
And so you'll see that in the in the report.
It's a massive report. I mean, there's eighteen volumes of
it or something like that, seventeen kilos. Yeah, So I'll
(11:40):
work my way through that in time. So of course,
I'm not going to have time to read it before
we first start to talk about it this afternoon, although
hopefully you know, I've read some of it as much
as I can within the times that I've had available.
But I've read the interim report two years ago, which
was a much shorter report, and even that was just
eye watering, and and it's still happening, you know, and
(12:01):
I think we've got to be We've got to be
frank about that.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Why has there never been any talk about common consation?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Well, that does it? So rather than compensation, the word redress,
because redress is not just compensation, it can include other things, apologies,
and you know, actually admission of what's happened is really
important for some of the people involved. You know, they've
lived their whole life being told that it didn't happen.
Actually for a lot of them, redress A big part
of redresses to have it acknowledged what happened to them,
(12:29):
but also compensation too, So we made some interim measures
as a government to provide redress to particularly those who
needed it urgently, because you know, some of these people
are now getting on quite a bit and we wanted
to make sure that they got that redress before they
passed away. We started some work with the survivors on
(12:50):
developing a different redress system, and my goal was to
have that ready to go fairly soon after the final
report was delivered. Now I don't know what's happened to
that in the last nine months or so, but I
hope that the government will be able to speed that
up because we've got to make this We're never going
to make it right. What do you think we've got
to do something.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
What do you actually think it's going to tell us?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I think it's the report. I think report overall will
just highlight horrific cases of abuse. It's going to probably
chronicle how that was allowed to happen. It will have
pretty graphic, I think, in confronting descriptions of some of
the things that happened. It'll talk I imagine it's going to
canvas the battle that the survivors have had to be
(13:32):
heard to be taken seriously, and I think it will
also chronicle some of the things that the state has
done in order to try and manage the state's risk
at the expense of the survivors.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I want to do something that we don't normally do
in the show. We want to talk about American politics.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Oh yeah, yeah, well there's a bit happening over there.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
What do you think, Yeah, what made you give you
that idea? Yeah, it's not something that we actually usually
talk about, but it's hard not to talk about it.
Looking at the US, Trump was shot, Joe Biden stepped down,
and Camilla Harris now looks to be the Democratic nominee.
What does this mean for New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I mean, I saw a front page of one of
the newspapers over there that said, you know, the bullet
grazed grazed Trump and killed Biden. And the truth is,
you know, there's there's just the sort of massive disruption
that's happening in American politics at the moment can't be underestimated.
I think it's quite possible that Kamala Harris is going
(14:29):
to get real momentum behind her and maywell pull off
a you know, a surprise upset victory, and that ultimately
that's probably better for New Zealand. I think a Democrat
in the White House is likely to be better for
New Zealand than sort of a more protectionist Donald Trump regime.
But yeah, it's certainly fascinating to watch.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I have said during the week when this has all
been unfolding, that I kind of get this, rightly or wrong.
We get this feel of Jazinder Ardun's story, you know,
coming from nowhere. You know, people want to change, fresh,
new change. I kind of feel, I don't know, rightly
or wrongly, feel it could happen.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I saw Joe Biden's where he endorsed, you know, Kamala
Harris to be his successor as a Democratic candidate, and
he signed it off with let's do this. I thought, oh,
I've heard that before. That feels very familiar and it
worked worked for us, so you know, maybe it's going
to work for her.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
You worry that the division in US politics will eventually
make its way down here. Arguably it kind of already
has already has.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
And but I think we've got to look at the
underlying reasons for that. You know that the polarization doesn't
come from nowhere, it's you know, Donald Trump uses different
language to describe things that I hear key he's talking
about now So that idea that you know, wealth is
being concentrated in a high in a very small number
of people. So the economy is growing, but that growth
isn't being evenly or fairly shared amongst the people who
(15:49):
are helping to generate it. Donald Trump will say things
like the systems rigged, you know, but ultimately the same,
the same kind of problem I think exists in New Zealand,
and it's I think the challenge for us as politicians
is to make sure that we're not leaving room for popar,
that we're actually addressing some of these underlying issues.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Last week the government revealed its emission plans. While we're
on track to meet the next two debatable The second
one isn't it slightly debatable? But budget The government is
relying on planting trees and advanced technologies for the third.
What do you make of this?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I just think we that you know, they're trying to
escape reality here. We've actually got to reduce our emissions.
We can't plant our way out of the climate crisis.
Why not, well, because ultimately that they're not permanently capturing
the emissions. You know, ultimately though, trees to get cut
down eventually, And if you look at pine trees, for example,
we're creating ourselves a world of headaches further ahead. Look
(16:43):
at the number of pine trees that are falling over
now because they haven't actually been harvested. So we've got
we've got some challenges ahead for us in that space.
And also it's not sustainable to simply say you're going
to plant your way out. We've got to reduce our emissions.
But the good news is there's good news here. The
good news is that there is technology that can do this.
There is technology available right now. If we look at
(17:04):
farming emissions, there's stuff we can do now to actually
reduce our farming emissions. So this could be a huge
opportunity for New Zealand. Look at the amount of electricity.
I'm sitting in a studio where everything's electronic, right. We're
all using electricity every day, more and more of it
every day. But the proportion of our electricity in New
Zealand that already comes from renewable energy sources. Gives us
(17:25):
a massive competitive advantage as a country, and there's a
huge potential for us to grow really good, well paying
jobs off the back of being a renewable energy powerhouse.
We already are. We've just got to keep the momentum going.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Do you accept that acting on climate change as strongly
as you did when you're in government, that eventually it
was going to cost us as a country.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
No, I think it'll cost us not to. There's massive
opportunities for us if we do this right. So here's
a good example. If we go to one hundred percent
renewable electricity generation and we do that well, we could
have one of the lowest electricity prices, holds our electricity
prices in the world. Think of what competitive advantage that
opens up for us. So in this new world, I
don't know if you've ever used Chat GPT. Right, if
(18:06):
you go and do a search on chat GPT, it
uses the processes that are processing that somewhere else, you know,
at a data processing center, are using eight times the
electricity that is used if you do a search on Google.
So you're getting the same information, but AI is energy hungry,
so data centers are now a gold mine and they
(18:28):
could be huge for New Zealand. You know, hook up
the data centers to some of our renewable electricity and
suddenly we've got this huge job rich environment that could
be a boom for New Zealand. So there's just massive
opportunities ahead for us.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I just want to quickly ask you. I know you've
got to go, but a young, serious young offend of
boot camps. The government's getting pretty serious on this. There
seends to be a lot of support for it. What
do you think of it? Do you think it's going
to work.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
It's not going to work. But they tried it last time,
so you had some sort of system. Yeah, so there's
I mean, let's look at the numbers. So they did
their boot camps last time, and eighty percent of those kids,
so that eight out of ten went on and reoffended.
We put in place a circuit breaker program that was
about intensive mentoring and support and going in because I mean,
these kids' lives are dysfunctional, the families are often dysfunctional.
(19:17):
There's drug and alcohol addiction, there's abuse to domestic violence.
So we put in this intensive system that really kind
of got to the root cause of the problem. Seventy
five percent of those kids didn't reoffend, so for you know,
three out of four of them didn't go on to refend.
So you've got a program here which we know results
in kids going on to reoffend. You've got another program
(19:37):
that we know massively reduces reoffending. So three out of
four kids don't reoffend. That's where we should be putting
our energy.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Why did the government, the new coalition government does not
take up your system and carry on with.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
It because of boot camp is a good slogan, you know,
I mean this is we've got government by slogan. Now
it's all about catchy phrases rather than rather than doing
stuff that's actually going to make a difference.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
And that you don't feel that it will make a
different don't make feel that it would make people feel safer.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
No, I mean, boot camps aren't going to change. If
we want people to feel safer, then we've got to
deal with the root causes of the problem. You know,
two of the biggest drivers of crime in New Zealand
are poverty and unemployment. Deal with those and we'll have
a lot less crime in the first place.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Those are things that you could have done in the
six years that you were empowered, and.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
We lifted tens of thousands of kids out of poverty.
We've got a lot more work to do in that.
You know, ultimately the whole economic system contributes to kids
living in poverty and contributes to unemployment. We've got to
flip that around.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Just one really really quick one, because we just did
it last hour. The use of drugs, you know, legal
drugs is sort of seeming to be going numbers seem
to be getting higher. Are you feeling that we've.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Got a methan fetterming crisis in New Zealand? It's undeniable.
Wastewater testing shows that meth use goes up on a
regular basis, and that is a crisis for New Zealand
because these are lives that are being absolutely wasted. So
I think we have to we've got to really focus
on turning that around. If we turned around drug and
(21:07):
alcohol addiction, and particularly looking at some of the hard
drugs in methanphetamine and so on. I'm not talking about
people who smoke a joint in the weekend. I'm talking
about people are on the hard drugs. We turn their
lives around, then we're going to have less crime, we're
going to have a more productive economy that we're going
to have less pressure on the health system, less pressure
on the police. It's all upside. We've got to really
(21:29):
focus on it.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Thank you very much, Thank you very much for coming,
and good luck for the rest of the week. Have
a great week in Parliament. I think it's going to
be a pretty exciting time over the next few days
based on what we've seen so far. Chris Hopkins, who
is Labour's leader.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills. Listen live
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