Much has been made of Chris Hipkins not disclosing Labour Party policy positions in the lead-up to the November 2026 general election.
Hipkins’ ostensible reason for not (yet?) announcing policy is that he wanted to wait until after the Government delivered its budget on 28 May. He hints that he may begin to announce Labour policies in June.
Hipkins pretend reason for remaining tight lipped is that he wants to fully understand New Zealand’s fiscal position before unleashing his pearls of political policy wisdom. But of course Hipkins doesn’t care one iota about New Zealand’s fiscal position. He didn’t care when Labour was last in power, and he doesn’t now. He’s of the Leftist Just-Print-&-Borrow-&-Tax-More-Money school of economic lunacy.
Media channels and journalists from all parts of the political spectrum have weighed in on Mummy’s Boy Hipkins keeping mum on policy. In one of my most viewed Substacks, I’ve previously covered the prospect of Hipkins becoming Prime Minister again:
HIPKINS, FROM POLITICAL GRAVE TO COMMIE CRADLE?
John McLean 30 Jan
Media channels and journalists from all parts of the political spectrum have weighed in on Mummy’s Boy Hipkins keeping mum on policy. In one of my most viewed Substacks, I’ve previously covered the prospect of Hipkins becoming Prime Minister again:
HIPKINS, FROM POLITICAL GRAVE TO COMMIE CRADLE?
John McLean 30 Jan
New Zealand’s latest political polls have spoken. Labour Party leader Chris “Chippy” Hipkins, currently languishing in the political wilderness, is the person whom New Zealanders would most prefer to be New Zealand’s Prime Minister. The same polls indicate that the Labour Party is New Zealand’s most popular political party.
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Jonathan Ayling, former head of the Free Speech Union in a 28 May piece for The Herald, has argued that it would be illegitimate for Labour to regain power after the next election without revealing its policy programme. Jonathan compares Hipkins’ silence to the policy void of Sir Keir Starmer’s British Labour Party before the 2024 British election, and points out that “Starmer is now fighting for his political survival”. But no lawfully-elected Government is illegitimate simply because it’s been tight lipped on policy.
A day earlier on 27 May, in another piece for The Herald, Jamie Ensor bravely speculated that Labour may delay longer than June before beginning to announce its policies. No kidding, Jamie.
In a 27 May piece for Scoop, Leftie Doyen Gordon Campbell heavily criticized Hipkins, opening with “Chris Hipkins is testing the patience (and allegiance) of every centre-left voter”. Gordon laments that “Unfortunately, Labour has not broken away from the economic model that has held sway in this country for the past 40 years, despite the manifest failures of that approach”. Gordon bemoans that, “Labour really isn’t a centre-left party. It’s a soft right-wing party”. Gordon dwells in a different world.
Red Radio New Zealand has purported to treat Hipkins’ silence on policy seriously, as if he’s a serious political figure worthy of being taken seriously. In doing so, RNZ has reported on criticism of Hipkins’ hush from Labour’s political opponents, ACT Leader David Seymour and National’s Finance Minister Nicola Willis.
Political pundits claim that Hipkins’ cunning tactic is to make the Labour Party a “small target”; in other words, not present policies that might be amenable to criticism. And, to give Hipkins his due, Labour is New Zealand’s highest polling political party and Hipkins is probably – gulp - New Zealanders’ current preferred Prime Minister.
But for two very good reasons, all this journalistic noise about Hipkins’ muteness on policy is just vapid chatter.
First, no Labour Party policy promises from Hipkins can or should be taken seriously. He says whatever conveniently fits his ideologies, and never recants or repents.
Secondly, and more importantly, we know with a high degree of certainty – without Hipkins having to open his tight little lips - what Labour will do if it gets into power.
Labour will not return to power except in coalition with the Green and Māori political parties. And neither the Greens nor Te Pati Māori will go into power with Labour without injecting their own policies into the coalition arrangements.
To give them their due, unlike Labour, the Greens have announced numerous policy positions:
- New/increased taxes (wealth, inheritance, 45% marginal personal tax rate, 33% corporate tax rate)
- Guaranteed minimum State funded income of $400 per week
- Free GP doctors and dentists visits
- Elimination of fossil fuels in favour of solar and wind turbine power generation
- Reinstatement of the ban on oil and gas exploration
- Revocation of all fast-track mining consents
- Cutting fertilizer use (the same cunning plan that collapsed Sri Lankan’s economy)
- Heightened commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi
- General “Deindustrialization” of New Zealand
- Constitutional recognition of a separate Māori nation, reflecting the myth that Māori did not cede sovereignty to a unitary government for all New Zealanders
- Give the Treaty of Waitangi legislated constitutional supremacy
- Make the findings of the Waitangi Tribunal binding on the Government, such that the Tribunal will become a combined paramount New Zealand Court and upper house of Parliament, with the power to strike down legislation considered to be inconsistent with the Treaty of Waitangi and its amorphous “Principles”, all under the auspices of a sinister, constitutional high priest, the “Te Tiriti Commissioner”
- Abolish all prisons by 2040
- Ban sea drilling for oil and gas
- Give Crown and Department of Conservation Land to Māori groups
- Make all personal income up to $30,000 tax-free
- Increase the top marginal tax rate to 48%
- Introduce wealth taxes
- Impose new taxes on foreign-owned companies, undeveloped land and vacant houses
It’s also reasonable to expect that Labour will finish the job it started when last in power, to merge Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand into a massive State media propaganda machine for Liberal Progressive agendas. Fractious fractional-Māori Willie Jackson will consummate his Orwellian ambition.
With an L/G/M Coalition Government, the current Government’s promise to abolish the Woke Censorious Broadcasting Standards Authority will be unfulfilled. Media channels such as The Platform and Reality Check Radio that don’t fully subscribe to New Aotearoa Orthodoxy will be gone.
Therefore, for all practical purposes, we know precisely what Labour will do if it regains governmental power. It will restart the money-printing presses, fall in with its Greens/Māori Party coalition partners and forge ahead with the creation of a Neo-Marxist, Māori Dystopia. Western freedoms and civil liberties will be stripped. Two-tier policing will be reinstituted. New Zealand will collapse, Venezuela-style, into a failed State run by cultural and tribal elites. There is no ambiguity here. The future, if Labour/Greens/Māori win, is in plain sight.
And there’s a name for this distinct prospect of State sponsorship, curation and control of official ideological narratives. It’s Fascism. There’s a myth that Fascism is the preserve of the Right. Germany’s Nazi Party was socialist.
FASCISTS!
John McLean 3 November 2023
It’s currently fashionable in New Zealand for those on the putative political Left to label people they disagree with as “Fascists”. For instance, anyone who ventures to suggest that the Treaty of Waitangi does not create a “partnership” between a racially stereotyped mythical unity called “Maori” and the New Zealand Government (or perhaps non-Maori New…
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One decisive thing that will happen following a Labour/Greens/Māori Government is that Justice Melanie Harland will issue her judgment upholding Māori pseudo-tribe Ngāi Tahu’s claim to almost all the fresh water in the South Island. Ngāi Tahu made its Court claim in 2020, with the substantive hearing back in early 2025.
Harland has parked her judgment knowing that, if she issues it during the term of the current Government, the National/ACT/NZ First coalition will pass legislation to overrule it. But the Race Identitarian Lefties are lurking and working in lockstep, poised to hand control of South Island fresh water to Ngāi Tahu. And a Labour/Greens/Māori Party coalition Government would be simply delighted to let that happen.
John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced
12 comments:
God defend NZ from labour greens and fractional decendants of once were Māoris.
This family will be gone.
One of the most significant policies of both the Greens and TPM is that Maori be given the right of first refusal whenever anyone sells land. They are quite about how the price will be set. That means that in every city, all land and buildings will soon need to be leased from local iwi, who will have a monopoly. Also, TPM want all publicly owned land to be transferred to Maori, so all National Parks will end up like the Ureweras.
From this article i take one aspect -
[quote] -
"Free GP doctors and dentists visits" [end quote].
Should this "come to pass" I can see into the future, when entering the surgeries of either /or - a visibly placed container, with lid, with hole in center and the following sign 'pinned' above it -
"Any money donations toward the
- wages of staff
- re purchase of all/any equipment
- maintenance of building & interior
- staff morning tea fund -
would be gratefully appreciated".
Thank You.
I also think that the New Zealand Public (if they have not already) need to acquire books on the Russian Revolution (1917 >) and read just how this event began the re-shaping of World Politics, establishment of Unions & specific Political Parties & their associated Policies, that prevail today.
The Greens and TPM have also proposed the abolition of prisons.
Don’t worry John, National is a shoo-in for the next election. With the speed of an aging snail it will immediately set out to…oh… increase Parliamentary salaries. It will then try to find its 2023 promises, with a view to updating them for eventual implementation in, about, say, 2035. So, nothing to worry about eh? It will be interesting to see if my local Brisbane news has anything pungent to say about all of this frenetic activity.
McLean does tend to get a little overexcited and perhaps he sometimes needs a nice cup of tea and a little lie down before bursting into print. But he does highlight the obvious problem with Hipkins' "low profile " approach which is that, if is no fresh policy is being presented to the electorate, then the electorate is perfectly entitled to assume nothing has changed since the last time. But Hipkins' desperate bonfire of policies immediately prior to the last election shows he has no integrity when it comes to defending his party line, even after living and breathing it for five years. So essentially, Labour is now an unknown quantity under Hipkins, which is probably even more dangerous that their fessing up with a manifesto, any manifesto, for the electorate to consider. After all, to a politician there's no mandate like having no mandate. And as Trump demonstrates daily, who needs policy when you are personally God's gift to your people. And as the American people proved by re-electing him to power, they really couldn't care less. Horrifying thought that half the population is below average though.
Such a LGQBT #!%! (Left Green Quasi Brown Totalitarian F..... ) coalition will cause the economy to collapse before the even get to don their biggest tikis and haka to protest and refuse the oath in parliament. The collapse in asset values from the withdrawal of business and funds from NZ will make all the past share market collapses look like a trading blip.
Agree the item as well as the comments. As long as the Grrrrreens, the Racists and Labour ( or, what used to be Labour) continue to take turns with the revolver aimed at their respective feet, the centre-right Govt should return to power. The proportions might adjust somewhat, that’s all.
John, I think all popular uprisings and political revolutions are driven by the Left of the political divide. That's understandable; they are the ones who are most embittered about the fact that others have greater wealth and social status than they do. In previous centuries they may have been partially justified, when the "haves" maintained obscenely extravagant lifestyles and the "have-nots" were prevented by rigid societal class structures and authoritarian feudal rule from ever climbing up the ladder. Hence the French, Russian, Chinese and Cambodian revolutions, to name but a few. But as dramatically illustrated by George Orwell in his book Animal Farm, the revolutionaries don't take long to emulate their former oppressors, and they typically leave them for dead (literally) in terms of retribution. Then left-wing regimes become embarrassing, and it all gets a bit awkward. That's when the socialists conveniently label their former comrades in arms as "fascists" so as to distance themselves from them, and in fact attribute right-wing characteristics to them. The Nazis are a classic example.
And what of Willie Jackson and his despicable involvement with MUMA? Are the legal wheels turning slowly, or what? Or does wee Willie have an invincible teflon coat because he's Maori, just like the Te Papa exhibit vandal? So much for 'one law for all' and 'equality' in front of it?
Anonymous 6.29 - Willie Jackson 'Maori'? At well below 5% (around 2% I have read), that nobody can prove/disprove anyway.
Until the idiot palmer legislation is replaced with a more practical definition of who qualifies as a maori, we will continue to wallow in this mire.
Or simply remove any racial based privileges.
My wife's ancestors arrived here in the 1830s, mine in 1867.
How in the hell can people like Jackson think they have some superior right to call themselves a 'New Zealander'.
This should all be a non argument in today's world.
It simply does not matter.
Follow the dosh, as usual.
We have lost the ability to tell these stirring, self serving con artists to eff off.
It has worked well for both maori and pakeha
in the past.
What has changed?
Ameni
Anon @ 8:35 - 100%.
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