Ani O'Brien: Labour’s State of the Nation: Softer, smaller, safer

I went to the Labour Party State of the Nation

Today I found myself somewhere I have not been for sometime… A Labour Party event. I used to be a Labour Party member and in fact they still send me auto-emails asking me to renew. Before that even, I was a Greens member, but we were all naive and high once. In 2020, for the first time I cast my vote for the centre-right after being effectively excommunicated from polite progressive society over my insistence that humans cannot change sex and gender ideology activism was becoming a problem.

That political journey left me politically homeless for a while until I learned that politics is about tradeoffs. I needed to pick a side to work with and the centre-right was willing to at least talk about women’s rights, the left were not.

The experience taught me some valuable lessons about the pitfalls of tribalism and the importance of letting your own values and principles guide you to make the necessary tradeoffs to get what you care about done.

My vote will never be guaranteed to any party. I swore to myself I would not approach an election simply backing “my team”. Instead I repeatedly weigh up what matters to me and who serves those interests best. Sounds pretty self-evident, but it isn’t as common as you think. A great deal of people see politics as a matter of picking a team and, come hell or high water, hating the other team.

So when libertarian anarchist and fellow professional irritant Damien Grant invited me to Labour’s State of the Nation, hosted by the Auckland Business Chamber, I said yes.

If democracy is struggling all over the world, as Leader of the Opposition Chris Hipkins himself later suggested, the least we can do is still show up in rooms with people we disagree with. It is after all an election year.

Former National Minister Maurice Williamson was at my table, attending as an Auckland Councillor. While on the next table over was Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. Maurice did not mince words about what he perceived as a distinct lack of substance in Hipkins’ speech, and on the other hand the Mayor made no secret of his apparent preference for a Labour Government. He threw in a few quips and even a “hear hear!” when Hipkins referred to the need for central government to get out of the way and devolve to Auckland Council. I honestly think the Mayor might have been the most enthusiastic attendee.

It was a speech I had heard Chris Hipkins give before. The lines have been well-repeated, there were no new policy announcements, and I felt I learned more about Hipkins’ approach to the election and potentially governing again in the Q&A with Simon Bridges after. However, to be fair to the Labour leader, this is likely strategic. Most New Zealanders do not take the interest in politics that I do and will not hear him speak repeatedly. Message discipline is sometimes just repeating the same stuff for a slightly different audience to ensure that as many Kiwis as possible hear it at least once.

“Jobs. Health. Homes.” was a slogan they introduced last year and it was core to his speech today. While I remember being unimpressed with it when they first trotted it out, its simplicity serves them well now. The problem will come when they need to speak on issues outside of those core facets because, crime, for example, is difficult to ram to any of the categories.

Incidentally, I don’t recall him mentioning any law and order issues or policies at all. Whether that is because it simply isn’t a priority or that the current Government did such a great job in that area that Labour don’t want to draw attention to it, I am not sure. It is extraordinary to observe, however, that when safety, ram raids, and justice were such key issues of the last election, they were not mentioned today.

The speech was diagnostic rather than prescriptive. As I say, we got a run down of the wrongs of this government, but beyond three “free” doctor visits (taxpayer funded) and the mysterious Future Fund, we were left without much of an idea of how Labour will do things differently. There were references to resources, talent, innovation, exports, industry, the right words. “Productivity” came up a lot along with the admission that has been declining in our lands under successive governments. It has “stagnated,” he said.

It did not even feel that the messages being communicated were particularly tailored to the very specific Auckland business community to whom Hipkins’ spoke. He mentioned the desire to win over Auckland, acknowledging that 2023 was particularly brutal for his party in our big city, but the most tantalising tidbit we Aucklanders got was a rule out of any tolling of the Auckland Harbour Bridge. He did say they support the idea of a second crossing, but given they had a crack at getting that going when they were last in government, that isn’t surprising.

To be honest, the most audience-customised aspect of Hipkins’ remarks was the fact that when he accused the Coalition Government of tax cuts for tobacco lobbyists and “tech bros,” he conspicuously left out his usual “tax cuts for landlords”. It is fair to assume, perhaps, that there might have been a few landlords in the room.

He briefly made the case for his Capital Gains Tax (CGT) with the caveats that it is simple and narrow. He reminded his audience that Australia has had a CGT for some forty years too. If National and Labour could both just admit that our existing Brightline Test is in effect a CGT-lite, that would save us all a lot of grief. But it suits them both to play pretend on that one.

Infrastructure got a good chunk of attention with the Labour leader criticising the amount of chopping and changing from government to government and how that hampers long term delivery. A good message, but one he cancelled out by categorically declaring that the LNG Import Terminal will not go ahead on his watch.

He argued that Labour’s oil and gas ban has been misrepresented and is not responsible for increased energy prices; lucky Shane Jones was not in the room to heckle him. Hipkins did say that gas remains part of the energy mix, but nonetheless rejected the terminal as adding cost through imported energy. It is very clear they intend to prosecute this issue and pin the prospect of future increases in power bills on National.

Paying the requisite amount of lip service to climate change, he warned fossil fuels are only going to get more expensive. But again, aside from not doing the LNG terminal there was nothing to tell us what Labour intend to do balance their competing priorities of saving the planet and lowering energy costs. The Greens increasingly don’t try to pretend this can be balanced preferring to just to envisage unrealistic car-less, mining-free utopias in which they fly to Japan on holidays and still have an iPhone, but Labour need to find answers or they will fall off the tightrope. “Affordable,” another of the day’s key words, is not one that is frequently associated with climate policies.

Kudos to Hipkins for calling out big business to their face, commenting on how difficult it is for Kiwis to stomach high energy prices when the energy companies are making record profits. He also called out some other sectors represented in the room he reckoned should do better by New Zealanders including the grocery sector. Not sure it was the right group of people for the message, but it landed well with me.

Much of the speech felt like it was circling the perimeter rather than cutting to the bone. He kept returning to key themes including a message National used at the last election that hard work should pay off in New Zealand, but it doesn’t. He framed the economy as rewarding the wrong things, particularly housing speculation, and returned to how this is impacting the number of Kiwis moving overseas over and over again.

Hipkins claimed that the equivalent of the combined populations of Napier, New Plymouth, and Rotorua, have left New Zealand in the past two years. I checked Stats NZ and my numbers did not add up. The two year net loss of New Zealand citizens was 83,700 in 2024-2025 and the populations of Napier + New Plymouth + Rotorua = 234,500. There are often may ways to do these kinds of comparisons though so I will seek clarity on the numbers they are using. It is a clever way to demonstrate the point and, pending accuracy, I expect we will see it used frequently.

Flying dangerously close to inadvertently slagging off New Zealand as Luxon did last election with “wet and whiney”, Hipkins said that “we” haven’t made New Zealand good enough for our children. Clearly Labour want to terrify all parents and grandparents that all of their kids are going to move overseas if they vote this government back in, but it is a framing of which they will need to be cautious.

One of his stronger narratives is the one constructed around change. He said New Zealanders did not vote for the government they got. He conceded the country voted for change, but argued that the coalition has not delivered on its promises to “fix the economy”. This is a fair point. I have written several times about the problem National has simply due to Christopher Luxon overpromising early on that they could turn things around quickly. This is one of the biggest challenges they have to overcome this year. As Hipkins quipped “change only matters if it delivers”.

His best line of the day was when he returned to “Jobs. Health. Homes” and followed it up with “that is not a slogan, it is a to do list.” Slick. Hat tip to the speechwriters. Use that one again, folks.

While Hipkins did acknowledge that “we didn’t get everything right last time in Government,” I would really like some specifics. I think most Kiwis, especially those crucial swing voters would be keen to learn if it was, for example, economic policy, co-governance, or restructuring the health system in the middle of a pandemic, that he regrets. It is difficult to make a judgment on whether to believe his party is capable of change, if you don’t know what bits they think need changing and what bits they would do again.

It was actually in the Q&A section with Bridges, that Hipkins provided the most satisfactory insights into his mindset, in my view. In the course of discussion he expressed that were he to get the opportunity to lead New Zealand again, he would “not try to do as much”. He wants to focus on fewer things and do them well.

He was candid that he was “worried about promising too much” pointing to the National Party tax cut promise that ended being rammed through in what he says was the wrong time and to poor affect. This might have been the only time he got agreement from Maurice Williamson.

He also softened on the idea that the government have been a total failure, saying multiple times words to the effect of “if it is sensible” we will keep it. He singled out some of the deregulation of the construction industry by this government as “sensible” changes he will keep.

However, he would not be pushed into giving a definitive answer on whether his party will join National and Act in voting for the India Free Trade Agreement to pass. He gave it the ol’ “gotta do due diligence”. He signalled strongly that Labour’s concern centres on the enormous investment clause in the FTA, comparing it to the smaller one we agreed to with China. He called out the Government’s “shifting narratives” on student visas, but does not appear to share the concerns of New Zealand First.

Bridges also had a crack at getting him to comment on his relationship with Winston Peters, but apart from saying he had not ruled out working with anyone, he didn’t really say much.

An interesting, and somewhat surprising answer came when Bridges asked him how PM Hipkins 2.0 would be different and he said he is a “softer politician”. He went right back to the beginning of his Parliamentary career saying that having worked for Trevor Mallard prior, he tried to emulate him at first and as he has got older that has softened. Thank goodness he never copied his mentor in having a scrap outside Parliament! The “reality of governing,” especially during the pandemic, knocked the edges off him, he says.

I wanted to claw my own face off when he added that he is a “kinder person now.” Auckland in particular, he should remember, had the experience of “kindness” being rammed down their throats while they were locked in their homes for far longer than they should have been (as Hipkins has previously admitted) leading to a plethora of financial, social, familial, and mental problems for a lot of people. The word “kindness” probably hits the mark with his base still, but for a chunk of those he needs to convince to switch allegiances, it is triggering.

So what were my takeaways? Well, it is clear that Chris Hipkins wants to be seen as a chastened leader who has learned from 2023. A man who has learned the cost of overreach, under-delivery, and some other unspoken stuff that we might eventually hear about, hopefully. He explicitly does not want to repeat what he characterises as a cycle of broken promises and this is all very pragmatic. Wise even. But it is also small.

It was not a speech that will electrify a base. It was restrained and decidedly anti-transformative. It was pitched to be reassuring, sensible, not scary. And you know what, that may appeal to voters fatigued by turbulence. Maybe Labour is betting that voters want less drama in a world that feels increasingly in unprecedented space..

A softer leader with smaller ambitions who will make your kids want to stay here. Somehow.

We will all have to wait and see if Chris Hipkins comes through on the promise that policy announcements will come later and they will give us the solutions to the problems he is getting very good at describing, but not offering an alternative plan for.

I certainly saw nothing today that would convince me to once again vote Labour. I would like to see the coalition see through some more of their plans and be given enough time to actually see results. Three years is not long as Hipkins himself conceded today when he described that what he has planned for New Zealand is longterm and will require time.

I am very glad I attended the event though. It has really invigorated me to think about the kind of writing I want to do this year. I am not trying to be the mainstream media. I have neither the time nor the resources to be reporting on everything, but I enjoy sharing my thoughts with my readership on things I think are interesting. I have my biases and I think honesty is the best policy on that front so excuse me if I let it all hang out.

I will do my best to attend as many events as I am invited to this election year by any of the parties (or third party supporters). I suspect there will be some who will have no interest in my presence, that’s okay. But if we’re all serious about the long term health of our democracy, we need to engage outside of our bubbles and I’d like to be able to offer my readers much more than just one perspective.

Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.