As debate prep goes, this was a light workout for Labour leader Chris Hipkins.
Facing around 60 people in the Glen Innes headquarters of Labour’s Tāmaki candidate Max Harris, Hipkins faced 16 questions from members of the public and party members, allowing him to run through his positions and sculpt his answers.
He faces National leader Christopher Luxon on Wednesday night on the NZME-TV3 debate, evidently confident after his win-by-acclamation in the first round a week ago.
Asked what he’d take forward from that debate into this one, he said: “Well, clearly people like it when I answer questions.”
“There’s no audience for this [Wednesday] debate. It’s sort of a bit more of a three-way conversation, this one, so it’ll be interesting, slightly different format, not one that either Christopher Luxon or I have done before.”
He was among friends in GI. One questioner started with: “Thank you very much for coming to Tāmaki. We don’t see too many Labour people here of your calibre.”
They used to see Labour big names: While the electorate has been National or Act-held since 1960, it was none other than a future deputy leader Bob Tizard who lost it, then, to Robert Muldoon. Before that Tom Skinner, later the leading trade unionist, had held it for a term in the 1940s.
Harris faces the usual uphill battle, with the seat dominated by the affluent eastern bays and Meadowbank through to part of Remuera, but also with Glen Innes and now Point England voters.
Hipkins’ visit follows Act’s David Seymour and Luxon out east. He optimistically regarded their intense interest in the seat as a sign they might be worried. Harris is something of a standout candidate, with a history of activity in the labour and human rights movements and a nationwide standing on the left.
Hipkins didn’t oversell Harris or over-promise success but told the crowd the Labour man had “a lot to offer Tāmaki and a lot to offer New Zealand. We look forward to welcoming him to Parliament.”
The high profile of the battle to the death between National and Act in the seat shows the extent of the right’s voter base, but conversely offers a slim hope of a sharp split in the right vote, allowing one strong alternative (Harris) a chance through the middle.
Labour might say it wants to welcome Harris to Wellington, but it did not find it in itself to offer him a party list spot higher than 29th, which dangles a possible but not probable chance of success.
Inviting Hipkins to his electorate battle put Harris in the crosshairs of the National campaign chair Simeon Brown, who dug up a dated record of support from Harris for a quote about “tax being love” to suggest he represented a high tax element in Labour’s campaign.
Harris replied to that with a straight bat, supporting Hipkins’ Labour’s policy package and calling Brown desperate. Hipkins said there was room for a range of views in Labour but all backed its programme now to make the National-led coalition a one-term government.
So how did Hipkins do, on debate eve, running through public concerns?
First, he’d told the crowd in his opening that Labour had calculated the average NZ household now paid $6000 more a year in costs than it had before Luxon took office.
Strangely, that revelation received no audience reaction, no gasps, jeers, murmurs or cries of shame. It seemed like people were trying to work out what that might actually mean.
The so-called Cost-of-Luxon calculation also drew some raised eyebrows from the media pack, particularly after Labour had objected so strongly to National’s own attack advertisements creating the concept of Nine New Taxes under a Labour-led government.
But Hipkins was unapologetic, saying his party’s claim was based on facts while the other side’s were lies. He’d earlier said this campaign featured the most dishonesty of any he’d been involved in.
Whether the $6000 figure stands up to scrutiny – it doesn’t, for example, compensate for any small annual gain households might have experienced from tax cuts early in the term or from interest rate reductions – will be for coming days and weeks.
But right now it feels like a number and a phrase to expect Hipkins to rattle off on television on Wednesday night and Luxon to either try to debunk or to overwhelm with further one-party facts alleging even worse risks with a change of government.
What did we learn from the Q&A?
Hipkins confirmed the age of superannuation would remain at 65 under a Labour government, but he saw merit in “a bipartisan conversation” on aged care beds and health care for the elderly.
“In principle” he agreed that Labour ought to have zero tolerance for homelessness, adding it was more than just building homes but included better alcohol and drug addiction and mental health services.
He ran through Labour’s cost-of-living package – public transport fares cap, freezing proposed fuel excise increases, cheaper home solar panels, three publicly funded GP visits a year.
The state of health services was a major feature of the public’s questions. People variously told Hipkins and Harris the problems in the “health workforce are much worse than you think”, “beyond crisis point and I witness that every week”, “really diabolical and worse than you see on the news”.
Hipkins said Labour would improve access to GPs and primary care, help GPs get into local practices, pay care workers an immediate $4 an hour and restore pay equity negotiations and work on long-term funding contracts for care services, not “month by month”.
Questioned by media afterwards, he said Labour would pour billions more into the health system for specialists, doctors and other needs, but accepted Labour’s fiscal plan aimed to spend just the same as forecast by the current Government.
Hipkins told the crowd a Labour administration would examine the corporate buy-ups of family medical care. “One thing that does worry me, and we’ve got some work to do on this, is the corporatisation of primary care. We do need to return back to the family practices. That’s something I’d like to have a good crack at, while back in government.
“It’s absolutely important to deliver a local, responsive health care.”
He said he had a family member having to wait a month, “the end of the month just to get a doctor’s appointment and that’s because the practice he’s been part of has been corporatised so when he goes in, in some cases he’s handed an iPad and had a digital consult in some other part of the country. That’s because the local has been taken out of his local primary care. We need to work hard to put the local back into it.”
Asked what might be done about vaping, he said Labour proposed a licensing regime for the sale of both vapes and tobacco, giving the same degree of control as over the sale of alcohol.
“Through that licensing we would like to reduce the number of places where you can buy vapes.”
He said Labour’s initiatives on vaping when last in power hadn’t gone far enough, and while the current Government “seems quite happy” with the vaping increase, “I’m not happy with that”.
“Vaping should be a smoking cessation tool, not a new addiction tool to get young New Zealanders hooked.”
That policy did get a clap and a cheer.
A woman asked if he was happy with Labour’s stance over anti-Māori and anti-Treaty rhetoric and Hipkins said he was confident in his team to push back against it.
“I’m very proud of Labour’s stand against racism, the racism directed against Māori under this Government has been inexcusable. The dialling back of so much progress that had been made as a country over the last 40 or 50 years has been appalling … They’ve turned their back on all of that work that happened across successive governments.”
He said racism against migrant communities, “coming out in Parliament … emboldens other people to act like that, right through the community”.
“I want to set a culture from the top of zero tolerance for racism. Nobody will be tolerated exhibiting racist sentiments in any government I lead.”
Under the gaze of Labour’s first Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage from a portrait on Harris’ HQ wall, and with memories of grandees Tizard and Skinner, one more Labour name made an indirect appearance.
Former leader Helen Clark had from the UK texted a party supporter overnight, who read out three messages: “To Chris, we need you as Prime Minister”, “To Max – it’s time Tāmaki returned after [66] years to Labour. We need you”, and “Keep up the good work, Tāmaki, and change yourselves to a Labour electorate.”
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