Hipkins fires first salvo as Parliament opens
Labour leader Chris Hipkins has attacked policy contradictions within the National-coalition Government in his opening salvo from the Opposition benches.
Hipkins lashed out at Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his coalition partners, ACT leader David Seymour and NZ First leader Winston Peters, during a raucous session in the House after it reopened yesterday.
“I actually respect the fact that New Zealanders in this last election voted for change. I don’t think the change that they’re getting is the change they were voting for ... I don’t think that this was the change that they had in mind,” Hipkins said. “For the first time in New Zealand’s history, this will be a one-term National government.”
Hipkins was heckled throughout his speech, a response to the Speech from the Throne delivered earlier in the day by the governor-general.
The freshly minted Opposition leader said the Government was pursuing a “mishmash of confused priorities”, promising “unaffordable” tax cuts and embarrassing New Zealand internationally by promising to unwind smokefree policies.
“Just bitter,” Luxon called to Hipkins, after he attacked Finance Minister Nicola Willis for a claimed lack of attention to the Government’s books.
Hipkins said Labour would in Opposition seek to “bring New Zealanders together, not drive a wedge between Kiwis”.
But, in an effort to drive a wedge between the parties, Hipkins said he looked forward to seeing how NZ First responded to the new Government’s repeal of changes to the Overseas Investment Act, which Labour introduced at the “behest” of NZ First.
Luxon, in a lengthy speech in response, attacked a decimated Labour caucus, now totalling 32 “uncomfortable people over there with survivor’s guilt”.
"We heard from a bitter, and a twisted, and in a negative Chris Hipkins ... You could see him sitting over there asking the question, how has he survived when nearly half of his caucus lost their jobs under his leadership?
“I’ve been thinking about Chris Hipkins – just a little bit,” Luxon said – to which Labour’s finance spokesperson Grant Robertson said: “Way too much! More than you should have.”
Luxon said Hipkins was like an “arsonist” hanging around at the scene of the crime while the firefighters – the National Party – arrive.
Hipkins afterwards said Luxon had been “inflammatory, if you’ll excuse the pun”.
Meanwhile, in his speech, deputy prime minister Peters returned to criticism of the media for a claimed failure to cover his election events, spoke of surviving a Serious Fraud case into his party’s donations in 2020, and attacked “the people posing here yesterday” - Te Pāti Māori MPs.
He said Te Pāti Māori would never be the voice of Māori; certainly not its leader Rawiri Waititi who was “so decolonised he wears a cowboy hat”.
Peters called on senior Labour MP Willie Jackson to quit Parliament so Labour could be rebuilt to “what was once a great party”.
“It has forgotten the workers. It wouldn’t know a worker if it fell over one.”
Waititi said the new Government had “opened the floodgates of hatred towards Māori” and given government departments “permission to hurt our people”. He told Peters his Government would be the “last gasp” of a generation terrified of no longer being the majority. “We will welcome you. We will feed you. We will help you ... And yes, Shane Jones, we will farewell you.”