Opposition leader Chris Hipkins says he has learned from past mistakes and will avoid wholesale repeal of coalition policies if Labour wins next year’s election, ending the economically damaging stop-start cycle that incoming leaders typically follow. …
While some coalition policies, such as the controversial pay equity reforms, will clearly be on the chopping block, Hipkins said Labour would work with existing settings on infrastructure and RMA reform, even if they do not fully represent the party’s preferences.
“What we won’t do is repeat the cycle that we’ve seen over the last couple of decades of a change of government leading to everything grinding to a halt for a period of time,” he said. “Where the [coalition] government have made decisions around infrastructure investment, even if they weren’t necessarily our first priority, we will keep going, because stopping and starting all the time is one of the reasons why everything takes so long.
This is a welcome pledge. I think the RMA reforms especially are of critical importance and it would be terrible if they didn’t survive a change of government.
A businessman who was at the speech said he thought Hipkins was impressive, and what he said went down very well with the audience.
I do wonder though if Greens and Te Pati Maori have the same view!
Hipkins also pledged to end constant public service overhauls that he said sapped productivity and created uncertainty.
“New governments like to come in – we did this, as the current government are doing it now – they reorganize everything.
I’d like to believe this, but Hipkins is the one who did the disastrous mega-merger of the polytechnics and was part of the government that tried to ram through a mega-merger of the DHBs in just two years.
Hipkins did not go into specifics or address Labour’s tax policies, although he did say Kiwis should stop viewing housing as New Zealand’s primary form of investment, which could hint at a capital gains tax.
In case he hadn’t noticed, house prices have fallen around 25%. Saying you need a CGT to discourage housing investment is ignoring what has happened in the real world.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
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