The Prime Minister finds himself in one of the more formal engagements of the campaign so far, speaking to a high-end business and international audience, but has some homespun wisdom to share
Labour leader Chris Hipkins has called upon the advice of his mother when he was a child to explain his driving force for being in politics.
"It's easy to see people who've got more than you," Dr Rosemary Hipkins told her two sons. "It's not always easy to see people who have less than you"
Her son said: "So we grew up in a community – deliberately by design, my parents made sure we grew up in a community where we did see people who had less than us, every day. And I'm incredibly grateful to them for basically making sure that was our life at a young age because it gave me an appreciation of the fact that I've lived a very good life and I've had a lot of opportunities that not everybody has had."
Chris Hipkins told an invite-only gathering of finance and business executives at the Park Hyatt hotel at Auckland's Viaduct that that saying, learned at an early age, helped define his worldview – that society had to look out for the less well-off and share economic gains fairly.
His "driving force in politics" was to challenge unfairness in the economic system.
"The political establishment, the government, has a duty to make sure that opportunity is shared. We can't determine what people do with those opportunities, but we can make sure that they have access to them. And there are too many New Zealanders who don't have access to the same opportunities that I had, the good fortune I'm having, and that's why I'm in politics because I think we should change that."
The Bloomberg event, organised by the global finance and business data and news giant, saw Hipkins' speech and a question and answer session live-streamed over Bloomberg screens, after a formal interview for Bloomberg TV.
It was an audience from the big end of town, financial and business heavyweights and Hipkins' speech was a relatively dry run-through of New Zealand's place and aspirations in the world, coupled with the Labour Party's economic targets for this election and a possible third term.
Accompanied by Finance Minister Grant Robertson, it was rarefied campaigning time after an earlier photo opportunity on Wednesday on the hustings with a robot and days of being pursued by shouting or loud-hailer toting fringe party activists.
The Prime Minister attempted to strike an upbeat mood from the beginning. "I want to start by saying how optimistic I am."
He wasn't, then, talking about electoral prospects for the voting starting in just three weeks.
Hipkins cited the speed of New Zealand's recovery from the pandemic, the number of people in work, unemployment below 4 percent, wages up 29 percent under the Labour administrations (higher than inflation), trade deals struck with the UK and EU, net debt "among the lowest in the world" and a continued tick of approval from international rating agencies.
"Add to this our success in reducing both child poverty and climate emissions over the last three years and you'd be forgiven for thinking everything's rosy. Of course it's not. In fact it's very tough. But it's hard everywhere at the moment and New Zealand is particularly exposed to some headwinds due to China's downturn."
He set an aspiration for this country to be "the best and most successful little [trading] country in the world" – the first of five priorities for a Hipkins government if re-elected. The others are to be a global leader in sustainable agricultural technology, a "powerhouse" of renewable energy, to drive creative and digital sectors and to "build out" the premium tourism experience in New Zealand.
The speech was largely Prime Ministerial, setting the NZ Inc position to the world, rather than strictly political in the campaign context.
But Hipkins did allow himself this: "We need to ensure workers share in the rewards of a strong economy. Too many feel they are struggling to get ahead right now. That needs to change.
"In a somewhat unusual reversal of position, it's actually the Labour Party promising to be more fiscally prudent this election. I don't see now as the time for big and unaffordable tax cuts, which will add to inflation. It's also not right to be selling more than $5 billion of Kiwi assets off every year to do this."
In the question and answer session, things got more political, including Hipkins' invoking of his mother's wisdom.
He blanched at a question from Bloomberg Wellington bureau chief Matthew Brockett suggesting neither he nor National leader Christopher Luxon seemed to have the "star power" of Hipkins' predecessor Jacinda Ardern, and there was no sign of "Chrismania" in this campaign.
"I do not necessarily concede that," Hipkins answered flatly. "I think it's going to be a more regular election. The last two have been extraordinary ... we are kind of back to life as normal again and I think this will be a much more normal election campaign."
(Days earlier at a media standup he had also seemed surprised when a journalist suggested he wasn't very good at small talk on the hustings.)
When increased government spending under Labour was contrasted with social issues such as ram raid crime and longer queues at food banks, Hipkins put those problems down to inter-generational failure.
He pushed back on Brockett's question asking if Labour had squandered the chance to be truly transformative after its huge 2020 MMP majority mandate.
"It was a mandate to lead the country through the Covid response. I think we did that incredibly effectively. That's the number one issue. The further away we've got from the pandemic, the more pressure is building up in various areas.
"I still believe we've got a very positive story to tell."
